Tipperary (63 page)

By the spring of 1921, every city, town, and village in Ireland had been caught up in the first “Troubles.” Due to lack of arms, the campaign could not be timed to coincide with the Great War, “England's difficulty.” But the Irish republicans, including Collins and de Valera, believed—somewhat correctly—that they had nonetheless struck at a time when Britain was still emotionally as well as militarily depleted.

And once again, the British government became a valuable ally. If the executions of the 1916 leaders had swung public opinion behind the Rising, now the atrocities of the Black and Tans became a countrywide outrage. The men of the Flying Columns became folk heroes.

They proved impossible to fight. Any English regiment that came to Ireland had officers who understood artillery, and cavalry, and strategy, and the movement of supplies. How could they fight an enemy who might lurk behind the next hedge? Or who might not? Who might descend on them in a mountain pass or on a main road? Or who might not?

And how could they fight an enemy who, in some cases, was their employee? Michael Collins gained access to almost as many military secrets as he wished, because his supporters were the filing clerks and the secretaries and the errand boys of the men who drafted the British strategies.

The Flying Column volunteers passed into legend even while they were on the run. Ballads were made, poems were written, artists portrayed them. Most active in the south and the west—that is, in the best guerrilla terrain—they and their daring created problem after problem for the authorities, who had no experience of fighting like this.

Furthermore, the quality of the clashes when the IRA took on the army created a natural David-and-Goliath atmosphere. Twice in March 1921, the Irish public read of results that the army would rather not have released. In Millstreet, on the border of Cork and Kerry, the Flying Columns laid land mines that killed more than a dozen troops—and the Irish admitted to no casualties. Two weeks later, at Crossbarry, in Cork, over a thousand soldiers surrounded a Flying Column—and not only failed to capture them but lost over twenty soldiers.

Something new, and often disastrous, happened every day. Thus, the psychological war, too, was lost by the British. They first began to lose it themselves, when their policy of executions created Irish martyrs. Then each guerrilla incident became public, despite the official efforts at censorship.

To read the newspapers of the time, especially from an Irish point of view, is to ride a seesaw of brilliance and disaster. For every IRA victory in the fields, local villagers were almost certain to pay with their houses or their lives.

Nor did every one of Collins's units have unmitigated success. Joe Harney's archives contain a vivid account of an operation in which he was involved early in June 1921. Although it doesn't say so, it was to have a significant bearing on the life of Charles O'Brien, even though he was not involved. And on my own life.

We were told by one of our people in Dublin that a Very Important Personage would be on the train from Portarlington to Mallow on the first Tuesday in June. He was a general, a big prize. The orders were to capture him and hold on to him—a bargaining chip. I was given the job. We were told to keep him fiercely secure—and I thought, “The cellars.”

A good decision, I felt; we meant to treat him like a prisoner-of-war— a lot more than our men were getting. I said so to Charles, and he was kind of amused: “A general? We're coming up in the world.”

Dermot was away somewhere. I think that talks about a truce were beginning, and he was a very good negotiator. Since I can't separate out any of the things that I was thrown into at this time, I also have to tell you that he was getting married that same month to April Somerville, the Englishwoman who owned Tipperary Castle.

Dermot pulled all kinds of strings. Mrs. Somerville, she was taking instruction to convert to Catholicism—from what faith, I don't know, because I never heard that she had any religion. And the problem was— he was on the run, so where could they get married? It had to be in a church; I'll come to all that.

We set out in the morning to get the general, and everything went wrong. We knew the time of the train—but it was hours late. And they had taken a security precaution that none of us anticipated: they'd put on a long train that day and the general sat up in the front of it, so that when the train came in, his carriage always went beyond the station platform. That was to make it harder for anyone to get on board easily. And in the station we chose, Dundrum, his compartment was halfway into the woods before we could get near him.

There were eight of us, though we'd been promised some more Volunteers. We were to take the general down onto the tracks, through the engine sheds, and out the other side, where a car would be waiting. By the time the train came in, we were very nervous. No other men showed up, and there was no sign of a car. A few minutes before the train came in, the stationmaster tipped us the wink about the length of the carriages, and where the general would be sitting.

I told four of my men to get on the train at the platform, not to draw guns but to head for the front of the train. I took the remaining three Volunteers and we ran forward, crouched down below the windows so the soldiers couldn't see us. Although there didn't seem to be that many soldiers around.

When I figured which was the general's carriage, I sent two of my men in the door at the back of it, and the remaining two of us ran up ahead, and got on the train.

Straightaway, I saw him. He was sitting there not in uniform, and with two or three other men around who were also in plain clothes. There were two soldiers in uniform at each door.

When dangerous things happen fast, you see them slowly. I saw one of my men die—he had come in at the back door of the carriage, gun in hand, and one of the sentries shot him. That was the first gunfire. I still had no gun out—but I drew it then. I got the first sentry, but I only wounded him and he got off two shots before I plugged him. But the man with me got shot.

At the same time, my second man at the back of the carriage got the sentries there, and he also plugged one of the plain-clothes men who had drawn a gun. I got a second plain-clothes fellow—and the third one almost got me. He let off one shot that missed—and I reached him and shoved my gun in his neck.

Somehow I guessed that the general wouldn't be armed. But—you never saw a calmer man.

“Don't shoot,” he said, very levelly. “That's my son-in-law”—and indeed it was, although I didn't find that out for certain until much later.

“Tell him to put down his gun,” I said.

“David—you heard the gentleman.”

The gun hit me on the foot when it dropped. My second man picked it up, and got the son-in-law out of the way.

“General Hogarth, I'm Commandant of the Third Tipperary Brigade, and you have to come with me.”

He stood up. “I rather thought that's what you had in mind, Commandant,” he said.

My other four men—they couldn't get through. The train had been locked behind the general's carriage. So there we were, on a train that might take off at any moment, two of us with a top-ranking British general and nowhere to go.

The other four boys were clever enough to get off the train, run ahead, and square off the driver, threatening him if he attempted to get the train moving again. I couldn't get the general safely down onto the tracks and cover him at the same time—so three of my fellows grabbed him and helped him down.

Now—from the rear of the train we heard shots. I looked down the platform and saw a bunch of soldiers running toward us. They had been firing into the air, and I stood beside the general and held my gun to his head.

We walked him—remember, we were down on the tracks and our pursuers up on the platform—we walked him around the front of the engine, across the railway line, and into the engine sheds. The troops came after us and I kept saying to my boys, “No firing, no shooting.”

And the general said, “Well, you seem to know what you're doing.”

We got to the engine sheds—which were empty. It was a kind of strange procession. I was in front, quick-marching the general as best we could on uneven ground—he understood it straightaway and fell into step with me. Behind me, almost walking backward, came five of my fellows—I had not time yet to think of the two fallen comrades. And behind them about fifteen or twenty soldiers with guns aimed at us. On we went, across the floor of this huge shed, and a railway man ahead of us, one of our sympathizers, unlocked a side door.

I said to him, “Where's the car?”

He said, “She's over in the trees—she'll see you.”

Sure enough, there was the car—and there was Mrs. Burke-Somerville, as her name still was, driving it. I discovered long afterward that she had prevailed upon Dermot Noonan to let her take part in some action. This was perfect for her. She wouldn't be stopped; if she was, she had an English accent and we were going to her castle. And she and the general would understand each other. What is it about some women that makes them want to be freedom fighters?

The car had a high seat on the back, outside—I think it was called a “dickey” seat. I was to sit up there, with a gun under the rug aimed at the general's head, in case we were stopped. That was the plan—but it never fell out that way.

We got to the car. The general tipped his hat to April; she had the engine running. The soldiers being kept at bay by my fellows couldn't see the car—which was round the bend on a wooded road. I stood back to let the general get into the car, but he stood with his hands by his sides, waiting for me to open the door.

Like a fool, I fell for it. I think I was seduced by his rank—I remember thinking, Yes, he's used to people opening doors for him. So I reached for the handle on the door and he elbowed me, elbowed my gun hand out of the way, and legged it. He ran surprisingly fast and he ran back the way we came. My fellows never saw him, I didn't shout, and I didn't fire—we were told to take him prisoner, and I started running after him.

Of course you can guess what happened. The minute his own men saw him they opened fire on my boys. But they hit their own general, and down he went.

There's always a hollow in a crisis—a space when you stand there and see everything that's happening. Or at least that's what I've found. And there was a moment that day when I saw everything. Six of us, a dead general, fifteen, maybe twenty soldiers facing us over his body. I shouted to April to drive away, because I didn't want her seen by the soldiers— there were about four other motor-cars in the whole county and none of them a Dunhill.

She razzed up the car. I was the farthest back; I got two of them. But they got all five of my boys. We only had revolvers and one rifle that jammed. And now there were six bodies—and more—on the road that goes into the woods. I ran; I saw the car in the distance and before it went around a bend and out of sight, I saw the windshield breaking—a bullet had hit it. My better thought was that the soldiers hadn't had a chance to see the car, which wobbled a bit, then straightened out and drove on. I thought, She's safe.

Dermot Noonan did all the planning for that Dundrum operation, and it was perfect. There isn't a square inch of those woods that he doesn't know; he was born there. Now his knowledge came to my aid, and I was able to escape and hide. The lateness of the train helped too, because it was soon dark. Once it was safe to start moving again, I left my hidingplace—a culvert up by the sawmill—and I got out of the woods far from the scene of the gunfight.

By midnight I was back at the castle—and that was my next shock. When I came out of the woods I took one of the bicycles that were always left for us at various places. The road home was quiet, I went by all the back ways, and when I cycled up the avenue of the castle, there was the car parked there, in the dark, blocking the avenue, leaning a bit to one side.

My first thought was that it had failed mechanically—and then I saw the driver's seat was all stained dark, and I knew it was blood. Never did I travel up that avenue faster. I got to the kitchens and Charles was there, pacing the place. He looked at me, said nothing, and pointed to the ceiling. Upstairs, there were Helen and Dr. Costigan attending to April, and the sheets were covered in blood.

What happened was this: When the windscreen shattered, a piece of the glass hit April on the neck and she thought she'd been shot. She also thought, from the huge gunfire, that I was dead. On the way home, in all the distress, she started to lose the child. And on the avenue, she hit a stone and couldn't get the car to move.

When she saw me, April grabbed me so hard she bruised my hand, and she kept saying, “I was already too old.” I tried to console her and she said, “Now I'll never have children” and she'd look at the doctor, hoping that he'd say no, that of course she still wasn't too old to have a child. But he said nothing; why would he say anything?

That was one of the two worst nights of my life. I went back downstairs and I said to Charles, “You should be up there.”

Said he, “She won't let me; she says this is all my fault.”