British Voices (26 page)

Interviewer
: Do you think that that was true?

RG
: Oh, yes, I'm positive.

Interviewer
: What makes you so positive?

RG
: Well, because it's the sort of thing that they would do there. For instance, they opened up fire at a football match in Dublin once after one of the chaps had been shot – on the crowd.

Interviewer
: How did you hear about that?

RG
: Well, it was common knowledge in the papers.

Interviewer:
How did you know that the civilian population were hostile to the Black and Tans? How did it show itself?

RG
: In many ways. You see if a soldier went into a pub he wasn't exactly welcomed with open arms but he was given a drink and they'd talk to him, the publican would, but if the Black and Tans went into a pub there was dead silence.

Interviewer
: Would he be served a drink if he asked for one?

RG
: Oh, yes. Well, if he wasn't served with a drink he'd jolly well get it.

Interviewer
: Get it himself you mean?

RG
: Yes. You see they seemed to be a law unto themselves.

Details

This is taken from a recording (Accession Number 006059/03) held in the Imperial War Museum's Dept of Sound Archives. In it Major Stone gives an account on of his service as a junior officer in the Devonshire Regiment during the War of Independence. He was based in Wexford. He later served in Hong Kong and Shanghai in the 1920s.

Interviewer
: How did your posting to Ireland come about?

GS
: The battalion had gone out there in June 1920, I was at the depot at Exeter at the time, and when I completed my tour of duty at the depot in March '21 I was posted to the battalion. I was a month with the battalion headquarters at Waterford.Then I was posted to Enniscorthy in command of the platoon there having taken over from a real fire-eater who ruled the place with a rod of iron and was unofficially known as the uncrowned king of Enniscorthy.

Interviewer
: Who was he known that by?

GS
: Well, I think it was by the battalion. One didn't have much contact
with many of the outside people, we just had about half a dozen personal friends in Enniscorthy.

Interviewer
: Before you went to Ireland did you know very much about the political situation there?

GS:
Yes. We knew from what we heard from the battalion, that is, one or two officers at the depot had had letters from officers out there and learnt what it was like and so we gathered from them that was what the situation was?

Interviewer
: What did you understand the situation to be?

GS
: That you had the IRA, that's who one was up against, and there were ambushes chiefly. There was no gelignite or anything that way. And that's what I understood before going out. After I got out and had experience of it the IRA used to try and prevent our getting along in our Crossley cars which we always moved three cars at a time, 150 yards between each, so that if any were ambushed only one, at the outside two, would be in the ambush. And you had them blocking the roads in three different ways. One, they would cut a trench nearly across the road just leaving room for a jaunty car to go round – that's the little Irish horse-drawn vehicle. To compete with that we used to carry planks so that we'd put these down across the trench, then they'd cut trees down across the road and they were too difficult to deal with and you would look for a gate one side of the tree leading to a field and then a gate the far side to see if you could get round the tree that way. If you couldn't then you would probably have to take another road.

And the third way they used to try and ... this was to destroy the back axle of the Crossley to break it ... they used to put potholes for about 100 yards all down the road so the Crossley coming along at speed would go bump, bump, bump, and the back axle which was a weak part of those Crossleys would possibly break.

Another nasty thing they used to do, about dusk they would put a piece of wire, or barbed wire, across the road neck high to catch people sitting in front in the neck there. And that being the case if when we had an armoured Crossley we used to put that in front to break the wire that night so that nobody was injured.

A friend of mine I knew could only speak like this [whispers] ... for the rest of their life because they were caught in the wire.

Interviewer
: Was he the only casualty you knew of that kind?

GS
: There were casualties in ambushes and one always had – when the road was blocked – to see that there was no ambush. [That was] the first thing one did before dealing with crossing the trench or getting round the tree. I wasn't quite sure what your ...

Interviewer
: I meant that did you ...

GS
: That was the only one I heard had been caught in the net, yes. I wasn't sure whether you meant that.

Interviewer
: That's what I meant.

GS
: Yes.

Interviewer
: Did you know of any Crossley tenders which had had their back axles broken by their methods?

GS
: No, I didn't, and none in the battalion did and I didn't hear of any outsiders – being only a subaltern I probably wouldn't.

Interviewer
: Did you actually experience any ambushes yourself?

GS
: No, I didn't, no. If we went out we'd go out one way and come back another road so that they wouldn't be lying up for us on the road we'd gone out by.

Interviewer
: Did you go on a large number of patrols?

GS
: Quite a few. Usually when one of the police barracks in my area were shot up – or had just a few shots fired at it which was a trick of the IRA to get the Army out and ambush them on the way out. But I never had any experience of ambushes. But if you'd like me to go on about a friend of mine?

Interviewer
: Yes, please.

GS
: He was stationed at Waterford and the Tramore Police Barracks had shots fired at it, and he was in mufti but the subaltern in charge of the party to go out was just new from Sandhurst and so he thought he'd better go with the party. And so off they went and they were ambushed on the way and it was the young subaltern's Crossley that was ambushed.

But this officer in mufti found out where the firing was coming from. It was coming from a hedge overlooking the road. His vehicle wasn't ambushed. And he went along that hedge – using his revolver as a humane killer – and killed about a dozen of them. They were so busy firing on to the road they didn't realise what was happening.

And the IRA put up a memorial to the twelve who were killed in the Tramore ambush at the spot where the ambush took place.And this happened in 1921 and a private soldier in the battalion went across to Waterford in 1939 – that is eighteen years later – and in a pub he just mentioned that he was out there with the Devons in 1921 and a chap from the far end of the bar came along, ‘You were in the Devons were you?' and produced a photo of this particular officer who was in mufti, and, ‘Well, do you know this officer?'. And so the chap, ‘Oh, no, I don't know him' – of course he did really. And he said, ‘Well, if you see him tell him we're still after him'.

That officer was ordered by the colonel to leave Ireland next day and he was seconded to West Africa because he said to this officer, ‘Your life will not be worth a minute's purchase if you remain here any longer. They'll get you'.

Interviewer
: Can you remember what his name was?

GS
: As he's dead now I will. His name was Valentine.

Interviewer
: What was the morale like of your unit in Ireland?

GS
: It was very high. We knew we were getting the better of the IRA. In my platoon detachment there were no trees cut down for trenches or any sign of activity within three miles of Enniscorthy itself.

Interviewer:
Was Enniscorthy a village or a town?

GS
: It was a little market town. And those on the run used to come in for, I suppose, a bath, a change of clothes, and we used to go out to visit places that we knew these chaps were, their home was, about twice a week. And it was always the old mother who used to answer the door and the look of relief on her face when she saw it was us and not the IRA because she was so frightened that the IRA had come along to take off the next son who was coming up to manhood. And I suppose it wouldn't have been if the chap had been in the house. Now I could tell a story about that type of thing if you'd like to hear.

Interviewer
: Please.

GS: Just before war broke out I was garrison adjutant, Devizes, and the
first night I was there I was called to the telephone and there was obviously a Southern Irishman (as) the telephone orderly. And after I'd finished the call I said to him ‘You're from Southern Ireland aren't you?'. ‘Yes, sir'. ‘What's your name?'. ‘O'Connor, sir', then I asked him where he came from, he said, ‘Enniscorthy, sir'. I said, ‘Any relation to Ginger O'Connor?'. A look of surprise in his face. ‘That's my brother, sir'. I said, ‘Well, I'm going to put you in the picture. We were after your brother, he was on the run and one night we nearly got him, his bed was warm.' I always used to send the first party round the back of the house, the second party in front and the third party I used to go in and Ginger O'Connor had just got over the wall at the back before my chaps got there. The telephone orderly said, ‘Well, sir, you hadn't got much chance really as I was a small boy of eight and we small boys were posted round Enniscorthy and any movement of you from the courthouse' – which was our billets – ‘noise was spread abroad that you were out and everybody on the run skedaddled straight away'.

Interviewer
: How did the Army treat the civilians in these searches?

GS
: On the whole very well. There was an instance where a watch was stolen. When the woman came out saying her watch was stolen I immediately ordered the chaps to put their hats on the ground, turn out their pockets, keeping their pockets open and put everything in their hats, and there was no sign of the watch. But in a pawnbrokers later the watch appeared and the name of the chap appeared and we got him for theft on that evidence.

Interviewer
: So he was one of your unit, was he?

GS
: He was, yes. But that was the only trouble I had with them.

Interviewer
: Was he punished for the theft?

GS
: Yes, definitely.

Interviewer
: What punishment did he get?

GS
: Oh, I've forgotten these days – my memory's not like it was – in my old age.

Interviewer:
Did the Army do any damage in these searches?

GS
: No, we were very careful not to. And in these houses we found hens in wardrobes nesting and we always picked up fleas. And I used to average about three fleas after each search that we took. That's after the truce, the late summer of 1921, instead of having a rat week I had a flea week where we all, and the dogs, got Keatinged and scrubbed and ...

Interviewer
: The dogs got what?

GS
: Scrubbed and Keating's Powder, you know, for fleas.

Interviewer
: Did you have any Black and Tan Unit in your area?

GS:
Yes. We were on a round-up exercise, we knew that the IRA were on the mountains, and we formed a block in one particular village. And the Black and Tans came along to the village when I was out on patrol and they nearly shot my sentry. The Black and Tans were a darned nuisance, they were a lot of ex-officers out of a job after the First War, and where we tried to make friends with the local Irish they just antagonised them completely.