The Squad (12 page)

Next night in Dublin members of the Squad again joined with the Dublin brigade for a raid, this time on the sheds of the Irish Steam Packet Company at Sir John Rogerson’s Quay. There were twenty-five to thirty men involved in this raid for ammunition. They started the raid between 10.30 and 11 p.m.

‘One of the party got over the railings and smashed a pane of glass in the lower window, allowing him to slip off the catch and get through,’ said Vinny Byrne. He opened a wicket gate from inside. Some men stayed on patrol but the majority entered the sheds. They did not realise that the ammunition had been moved by the military the previous day. The raiders did not know where to look, so they just took pot-luck in opening various cases.

‘I remember opening a case and finding that its contents consisted of sticks of black liquorice,’ Byrne added. ‘I filled my pockets and had a good chew for a day or two.’

The order was given to abandon the raid, as there was obviously little use in their search. ‘After all our trouble, we found nothing,’ Byrne noted. Most of those involved in the raid lived on the north side of the city, but Byrne was staying south of the Liffey. As he was on Tara Street he heard some shooting from the College Green area. He went by College Street but did not see anything unusual.

The following night DMP Constable John M. Walsh from Galbally, near Enniscorthy, County Wexford, was killed in Dublin. Pat McGrath and his brother Gabriel had been due to take part in an operation that was called off. As they were returning to their home in Belgrave Square, Rathmines, they crossed Westmoreland Street at the foot of Grafton Street, where they were challenged by two armed policemen. The McGraths fired on the police who returned fire. Pat was hit in the right shoulder. Gabriel raced up College Street, firing as he ran, fatally wounding Walsh. His colleague, Sergeant Dunleavy, was also wounded.

Pat McGrath was critically ill and was taken to Mercer’s hospital before being moved to King George V hospital (later St Brichin’s), where he eventually recovered. He later told Liam Archer that a man dressed as a priest visited him and tried hard to get him to make his confession. Some instinct made him refuse, even though he was seriously ill. He was later convinced the ‘priest’ was the British agent, John Charles Byrne, alias Jameson, but it was some thirty years later that Archer recalled this story and he possible confused Byrne with Allen Bell.

Byrne had gone to England but returned with a case of pistols to demonstrate his supposed sincerity. Tobin brought him and the portmanteau of Webley revolvers to 56 Bachelor’s Walk where New Ireland Assurance had premises over Kapp & Peterson’s at the corner of Bachelor’s Walk and Sackville. Byrne handed over the case to Thornton in the hallway of Kapp & Peterson’s. His story was that he had got the revolvers through communist sources.

‘I immediately walked straight through the hall and down the steps in Kapp & Peterson’s basement, and Tobin took Jameson away,’ Thornton explained. ‘When the coast was clear I handed the portmanteau of revolvers over to Tom Cullen who was waiting at 32 Bachelor’s Walk, which was the Quartermaster General’s stores.’ Thornton had already asked Jim McNamara to keep his ears open at Dublin Castle about any possible raid because of Collins’ suspicions that Byrne was in touch with Scotland Yard. ‘About mid-day I got a message from McNamara telling me that the New Ireland Assurance Society’s premises at Bachelor’s Walk would be raided at ‘I joined Tobin and Cullen at McBirney’s on the far side of the river at 3 o’clock to await developments,’ Thornton continued. At 3 o’clock crown forces raided the Bachelor’s Walk building. They first went into the cellar and ransacked it. They then searched the whole building, but found nothing other than an Irish Volunteer’s cap. They returned at 1 o’clock the following morning and smashed in the front door. They had picks and shovels and proceeded to dig up the basement looking for a secret passage. Byrne’s fate was sealed.

Liam Tobin told Joe Dolan that he would be meeting Byrne in d’Olier Street at a certain time on 2 March 1920. Dolan was to take a careful look at Byrne so that he could identify him for members of the Squad who would kill him that evening.

‘Paddy [O’]Daly, Tom Kilcoyne and Ben Barrett were to carry out the execution,’ Dolan recalled. ‘Tom Kilcoyne, Ben Barrett and myself met outside Gardiner Street Church and proceeded on bicycles to the place of execution as pre-arranged.’

That evening [O’]Daly met Byrne at the Granville hotel on Sack ville Street. He was supposed to be bringing him to see Collins out in the grounds of the lunatic asylum in Glasnevin. ‘When he came along the road I identified him to Barrett and Kilcoyne. We held him up and searched him and took all his documents. Paddy [O’]Daly stayed back and didn’t take part in the search.’

Byrne tried to bluff them about his friendship with Collins and Tobin, but the Squad members knew better. They asked him if he wished to pray.

‘No,’ he replied.

‘We are only doing our duty,’ one of the Squad said to him.

‘And I have done mine,’ he replied, drawing himself to attention as they shot him twice, in the head and through the heart.

‘The documents found on him were incriminating,’ said Dolan. When Liam Tobin and Tom Cullen saw Byrne being taken away by Paddy [O’]Daly they searched his room in the Granville hotel and took all his effects away, which were said to be very incriminating also.

‘All the facts so far disclosed and the probabilities point to the conclusion that the deceased was a secret service official, acting under the direct authority of the Secret Service Department in London,’ the press reported after the body was found. Walter Long, the first lord of the admiralty, told the British cabinet in May that Byrne was actually ‘the best Secret Service man we had’.

On the morning after the killing of Byrne many of the part-time Squad took part in the seizure of the mail from Dublin Castle as it was being transferred to the main sorting office. The sorting office was now in the Rotunda Rink since the destruction of the GPO during the Easter Rebellion. Those engaged in the seizure on 3 March 1920 included Jim Slattery, Paddy Kennedy, Joe Dolan, Charlie Dalton, Tom Keogh and Vinny Byrne. Pat McCrae was driving the van they had stolen in the raid on Bow Lane stores three weeks earlier. The mail was being transferred in a two-wheel, horse-drawn van, in the charge of a driver and a postman. The van left the main sorting office at the Rotunda Rink for Dublin Castle shortly after 8 a.m. It left via a back entrance into Rutland (now Parnell) Square and then moved into Parnell Street. As it approached the corner of Dominick Street, Slattery stepped off the footpath and grabbed the horse by the head and the reins. Byrne ordered the driver and postman to get down, and Slattery drove the van into Dominick Street where McCrae was waiting with the motor van. The mail was transferred, and McCrae then drove the van to the dump in Mountjoy Court, off Charles Street.

When Byrne and Keogh arrived at the dump they found the intelligence staff sifting through the mail. They joined Liam Tobin, Tom Cullen, Frank Thornton, Frank Saurin and Joe Dolan in opening the letters. Every so often they would hear the sound of a crisp note as someone found money in a letter. There were many applications for passports with postal orders attached for seven shillings and sixpence. When the intelligence staff finished their work, they left Slattery, Keogh and Byrne to destroy the evidence.

Byrne got a brainwave and collected all the postal orders that had been left blank.

‘Leave it to you, Vincie!’ Slattery exclaimed. ‘You would think of something like that.’

‘Let’s have a shot at it,’ Keogh interjected.

‘So we waded through the letters flung all over the floor and picked out all the postal orders that were blank. We divided the number among us and then burned all the letters and any papers lying around and left.’ They agreed to meet that night and pool the money they had collected and share it evenly. Byrne called at post offices in Parnell Street, Westmoreland Street and Duke Street, before going home for his dinner. Afterwards he cashed further postal orders at Aungier Street, Camden Street, Harcourt Place and Merrion Row, often cashing two postal orders at a time. He got all the money in half-crowns. He ended up with about £4 in half-crowns. They pooled the money and divided it that night.

While the Squad members were cashing the postal orders, the intelligence people were analysing some of the correspondence they had seized. One letter would soon take on a particularly sinister significance as part of the counter-murder scheme first advocated back in December. Captain F. Harper Stove had written to Captain Hardy at Dublin Castle on 2 March. ‘Have duly reported and found things in a fearful mess, but think will be able to make a good show,’ he wrote. ‘Have been given a free hand to carry on, and everyone has been very charming.
Re
our little stunt, I see no prospects, until I have got things on a firmer basis, but still hope and believe there are possibilities.’

It was around this time that the two elements of the Squad were joined into one whole time unit. There is no specific date for when the amalgamation took place, but Vinny Byrne put it at early March 1920 because he and Jim Slattery quit their jobs together on 9 March in order to go full time with the Squad. The IRA had been almost exclusively part time, so they had to have time off work for any operations during working hours. As a result most of their activities had been at night or on weekends. As the British began to reorganise their intelligence service in Ireland, they were free to operate in relative safety during the day when their opponents were busy at work. Hence it was decided to put the whole Squad on a full time basis. It began with twelve men, and they were irreverently dubbed the twelve apostles. They were: Mick McDonnell, T o m Keogh, Jimmy Slattery, Paddy O’Daly, Joe Leonard, Ben Barrett, Vinny Byrne, Seán Doyle, Paddy Griffin, Eddie Byrne, Mick Reilly and Jimmy Conroy.

They reported directly to Collins as director of intelligence, or to his deputy, Liam Tobin. They met daily at 100 Seville Place, where they waited for the call to duty in what was a private house. They passed their time reading, playing cards or just chatting at what was a particularly secluded site. From there they conducted operations on orders from GHQ intelligence. Many operations consisted of searching the city for individuals or small enemy units. Pat McCrea acted as a driver for them.

Later they moved to a school house in Oriel Street, which was deep in the docklands, but it took so long to get from there to a central place that the Squad moved its headquarters to a builders’ yard off Abbey Street. Paddy [O’]Daly and Vinny Byrne were both carpenters, so they set up a cabinet-making business as a front. They acquired carpentry tools and equipped a small office with a rough desk, some calendars and building literature. ‘I painted on the gates in large white letters on a brown ground: Geo. Moreland, Cabinet-Maker,’ Bill Stapleton recalled. ‘There we came together daily dressed in our white aprons – under which we were fully armed – and engaged in amateur carpentry under Vinny’s expert instruction. Vinny met prospective customers and discussed their requirements in detail, took notes, promised to submit an estimate but pointed out, rather sadly that, due to pressure of work he could not promise when the job could be started. On hearing this the customer invariably said, “thank you!” and left.’

On 10 March 1920 in Cork, District Inspector McDonagh was shot. Having supervised the transportation of ballots to the count centre following municipal elections, he was walking to the Black rock police barracks with a head constable when they were am bushed by some men standing at the corner of Sawmill Street. McDonagh was hit on the left side and his injuries were described in hospital as very serious. Members of the Cork No. 1 brigade of the IRA carried out the ambush. They were under the command of Tomás MacCurtain, who also happened to be the lord mayor of Cork. On 16 March he received a threatening letter on dáil note-paper: ‘Thomas MacCurtain, prepare for death’, it read. ‘You are doomed.’

Constable Joseph Murtagh, a twenty-three-year-old veteran of the RIC from County Meath, was shot and killed on Pope’s Quay near the Dominican church in Cork at about 10.40 p.m on 19 March. He was not on duty at the time and was in civilian clothes, returning from the Palace theatre. Residents of the area said that they heard two shots followed by a pause and then a burst of shots in quick success. Constable Murtagh was dead on arrival at the North Infirmary. Like District Inspector McDonagh before him, Constable Murtagh was shot by men who were nominally under MacCurtain’s command, though in this case they acted without his authority. A few hours later MacCurtain would pay with his life.

Shortly after one o’clock in the morning some men raided his home above the flour and meal business that he ran at 40 Thomas Davis Street. Armed men with blackened faces demanded entry when MacCurtain’s wife answered the knocking and kicking at the front door. Some eight men entered the premises. ‘Come out, Curtain’, one of them shouted.

‘All right!’ MacCurtain said as he came to his bedroom door. Two revolver shots rang out, as Tomás MacCurtain stepped out of his bedroom in his pants and nightshirt; he fell back into the room, mortally wounded. His five children, whose ages ranged from ten years to ten months, were in the house, and they began screaming.

MacCurtain’s brother-in-law, James Walsh, who lived there also, was on the stairs with a candle when the shooting started, and he promptly extinguished the candle and went to a room where the children were screaming. He called out the window for assistance but the men below shot at the window. He then went into another room where his younger sister and two nieces were sleeping and told them to lie on the floor as he shouted, ‘Help, Tomás is shot!’

MacCurtain was moaning, so Walsh went to him and struck a match. ‘The children, Jim,’ MacCurtain said.

‘You are only wounded, boy,’ Walsh said.

‘I am done for,’ MacCurtain insisted

After the killing the threatening letter was used to suggest that there was an internal feud among the republicans, but it was given no credence in Cork, where people believed that the police were behind the killing. ‘Certainly British propaganda is at work, but like everything else British the Free People have begun to know it and it is, therefore, not so powerful or dangerous a weapon as it was formerly,’ Collins wrote to Donal Hales in Italy on 26 March. ‘Their agents here, whether military, police or civil, are doing all they can to goad the people into premature actions.’ He added that everybody was gloomy over the murder of MacCurtain and ‘all the circumstances of the ghastly affair’, but that it was not the full story. ‘Revelations are yet to come,’ he continued, ‘revelations which will show that it was planned and executed by agents of the British government.