Espionage and Assasination with Michael Collins' Intelligence Unit: With the Dublin Brigade (8 page)

I did not go home the following night, and my judgment proved very advisable.

Having failed to get me the night before, the enemy decided to raid for me officially. Troops arrived late in the evening, entered and searched the house, and finding me absent they arrested my brother, Emmet. Apparently a neighbour had seen me leaving the railway track on the morning of the scrap and had informed the authorities.

As my brother had fought in Flanders, it was not easy to keep him as a hostage for me. After a few hours' detention he was released and came home full of his experience.

I now knew that it would not be safe for me to go home again, and from this time onwards I was ‘on the run'.

Brigadier McKee sent for me and questioned me very closely as to what was in my mind in firing on the British soldiers. I was dreading this interview as I expected to be court-martialled for acting without orders.

So I kept lying to him, saying that the troops had seen us and that we feared pursuit and capture. But it was plain that he was not convinced and that he believed we had acted with deliberation and without provocation, which was the truth.

Though he could not get me to admit the facts, he seemed very pleased with the affair. It appeared that two soldiers were killed by our fire, and their officers, supposing that they were being ambushed by a large party of our men, caused the cordon immediately to be withdrawn.

In the next issue of our Volunteer Weekly Paper,
An t-Óglach
(The Volunteer), which was printed and circulated secretly, I was amazed to find a paragraph quoting the incident as ‘a splendid example of initiative'.

This was the first occasion on which troops had been deliberately fired on since the Rising, though in some previous attempts to disarm them some soldiers had been killed. Hitherto we had directed our action solely against their spies, either of the RIC or the intelligence department.

But now it was realized that to allow the troops to believe that they were immune from the danger of attack was tying our hands. They were raiding and searching and were operating with those who were directly employed to put an end to the National Movement and the men taking part in it.

A few days later one of the Squad called on me and asked me to accompany him. ‘The assistant director of intelligence wants to interview you,' he told me.

He brought me into the city and through a number of side streets to Crow Street, an alleyway off Dame Street, quite close to Dublin Castle – the stronghold of the enemy.

When we came to a small printer's shop he beckoned me up the stairs, and on the second floor he knocked on the door. On the door a card was fixed, with the words in printed letters ‘Irish Products Coy'.

After a little delay, a door was opened and we were admitted. There were three or four other Volunteers inside, some of whom I knew slightly. I noticed there were stacks of newspapers lying around.

Sitting at the table was a tall young man, with dark hair brushed back very smoothly. He had the look of a dominant personality. I recognized him as a Volunteer whom I had seen occasionally when there was something very important on hand.

He was Liam Tobin, the assistant director of intelligence, working immediately under Michael Collins. As a lad of nineteen he had fought in the Rising under Tom Clarke and was sentenced to death, the sentence being commuted to penal servitude for life.

After we had exchanged a few commonplace remarks, he asked me if I would like to become a member of his staff. There was nothing on earth I wished for more, but I had looked upon it as an honour far above my reach, and I was hard put to it to hide from him my eagerness and the feeling of surprise which almost overwhelmed me.

So I replied, as composedly as I could, that nothing would please me better.

He seemed satisfied with me, and forthwith instructed me in my new duties. I was to report to him the next morning and he would tell me what I was to do.

When I arrived, very punctually, the following morning, I was given the daily papers to look through. I was told to cut out any paragraphs referring to the personnel of the Royal Irish Constabulary or military, such as transfers, their movements socially, attendance at wedding receptions, garden parties, etc. These I pasted on a card which were sent to the director of intelligence for his perusal and instructions. Photographs and other data which were or might be of interest were cut out and put away. We often gathered useful information of the movements of important enemy personages in this manner, whom we traced also by a study of
Who's Who
, from which we learned the names of their connections and clubs. By intercepting their correspondence we were able to get a clue to their movements outside their strongholds.

I was next shown how to decode telegrams. Liam Tobin received copies of telegrams from some person he had working for him in the Central Telegraph Office. These were all in code and were addressed to district inspectors of the RIC throughout the country. We possessed the key word, so we had no difficulty in deciphering them. The key word was changed at least once a month, but in notifying the change the new key word was telegraphed in the existing code. So that having once got the key word the code was always afterwards decipherable by us.

The contexts of these messages usually referred to contemplated arrests and raids on Volunteers' houses. By communicating copies of these messages to the areas concerned, the police were frustrated. When the raiders arrived the men they were looking for were not at home.

Other important information was gained in this manner, without which we would have been beaten very early in the fight. The odds were so powerfully against us that we had all the time to make up by our alertness and forethought for our material deficiencies.

We compiled a list of friendly persons in the public services, railways, mailboats and hotels. I was sent constantly to interview stewards, reporters, waiters and hotel porters to verify our reports of the movement of enemy agents.

After a time I became curious to know who was the occupant of the other office on our landing, as I could hear coming from it the constant sound of a typewriter. I was told that she was a Protestant and hostile lady who was a typist. ‘But do not be uneasy about her,' they said, ‘she is quite deaf.'

Though I knew that Michael Collins was the director of intelligence, I did not see him, nor did he ever call at our office. His messenger, Joe O'Reilly, a Volunteer, came twice a day, taking letters for the D/I, and leaving letters from him for Liam Tobin. Joe came always on a bicycle and was the only medium of direct communication between the assistant director and the director of intelligence. At least, in the daytime.

I had not been engaged for more than a week on my new duties when the assistant D/I told us that he was increasing our staff. There were now about twelve men comprising the intelligence branch.

Since the General Post Office was destroyed in the Rising of 1916, the sorting of letters had been carried on at the Rink in Parnell Square.

There had been seizures of the mails from time to time by the Volunteers, and the authorities took steps to ensure the safety of their official correspondence. Important letters were taken to the Rink for sorting and military escorts accompanied the vans carrying official letters to and from the sorting office.

A military guard had been placed over the Rink, but was withdrawn subsequently, and a system of alarms installed in its place. These consisted of several electric buttons which communicated with the Castle. Immediately one of them was pressed the alarm would ring out there, and military and armoured cars could be rushed to the Rink.

Since the withdrawal of the military guard, Michael Collins and his intelligence officers had been considering the possibility of effecting another coup.

The director of intelligence got into touch with a friendly postal official and got him to make a plan of the Rink, showing the positions of the alarm bells and also of the racks which contained the various government mails.

It was discovered that the mails were all sorted by eight o'clock in the morning and were collected by the military at nine. It was, therefore, possible that if the Rink could be entered shortly after eight o'clock and the officials taken by surprise so that they could not give the alarm, it would be a comparatively easy matter to seize the mails.

I was sent for one evening by the vice-commandant, Oscar Traynor. He showed me a very good plan of the Rink and told me that he had instructions to carry out a raid there the next morning at eight-thirty. He had picked a dozen men for the job, and I was delighted to find that I was to be one of them.

He then outlined the plan. We were to enter the rear or west side of the Rink. There were platforms there onto which the bags were unloaded from the vans, and from these platforms two chutes descended into the building down which the mail bags were discharged.

He told me that three of our intelligence officers would unobtrusively enter the front or main entrance a few minutes before our party, and would take up positions by the three alarm bells and prevent them from being sounded.

I arrived at the rendezvous, a corner a hundred yards away from the Rink, precisely at 8.25.

There I saw the other men waiting. The vice-commandant spoke to me and, taking out his watch, he waited until it wanted half a minute to half-past eight.

Then he told another man and myself to go ahead, and to bear in mind the position of the chutes. The rest of the men would follow us at a little distance behind, as if the postmen, who were on the platform unloading the mails, were to see the whole of our group approaching the building together they might become alarmed.

My companion and I went forward, and on reaching the platform we had no difficulty in locating the chute, as we could see the bags being thrown down into it.

Without further delay we got onto the platform and made for the chute, to the extreme surprise of the postmen.

Bending our heads, we got in and shot forward. I was the first down, and I do not know how I kept on my feet, as the incline was about forty-five degrees and was not unlike a helter-skelter at a fair. When I reached the floor I was travelling at such speed that I had to run halfway through the building before I could come to a standstill.

Then I looked behind me. After me came my companions sliding down in most undignified fashion and tumbling on the floor when they arrived. They were quickly on their feet, and we made our way at once to the section where we knew the government mails were sorted.

The officials were taken completely by surprise. We had them covered and with their hands up before they had time to realize what was happening.

The bags for the military, RIC, the under-secretary and other important offices were quickly collected, and we brought them to the chutes. We had a troublesome job getting them onto the platform. But we did it, and then quickly threw them into a waiting motor van which had been driven up for the purpose. We saw it vanishing round a side street as we made off on foot in a different direction.

When, later in the day, I called at our office, I learned to my surprise from the three intelligence officers who had entered the front of the Rink, that they were in the building and had had the staff held up for fully three minutes, suffering great anxiety, before they saw our inelegant arrival down the chute. The vice-commandant's watch apparently had been a couple of minutes slow.

The war had been intensified, and the British were making a determined and ruthless effort to bring our resistance to an end.

They could no longer get recruits in Ireland for the RIC, and drafts of ‘Auxiliaries' and ‘Black and Tans' were sent over from England to fill up the gaps we were making in that branch of their armed forces.

The Auxiliaries were recruited from ex-officers who had fought in the Great War. The Black and Tans were a mixed crowd of ex-soldiers and rough customers who were mainly attracted by the high pay which was offered for their services in ‘stamping out rebellion' in Ireland.

They were given a pretty free hand in their methods of doing it. They were addressed from time to time upon their duties, and occasionally some extracts from these lectures were made public in spite of the rigorous censorship of the press. One superior officer, advising his men, said: ‘The more you shoot the better I'll like you,' and Lord French, the Lord Lieutenant, expressed the opinion that the Irish should be crushed ‘as you would stamp on a poisonous insect'.

It was necessary for us, therefore, to be prepared for the new offensive and to intensify our campaign also.

One morning I was sent to Ballsbridge Post Office to verify a report the D/I had received that a tender-full of Auxiliaries called there each morning and collected the mailbag consigned to the Auxiliary Division, stationed at the adjacent Beggars Bush Barracks.

I confirmed this fact, and reported that the number of Auxiliaries never exceeded five, that the tender arrived at the Post Office punctually at 9 o'clock and that I considered that the mailbag could be captured with comparative safety.

The director of intelligence, acting on my report, caused instructions to be issued to the local Volunteers to seize the bag, which they succeeded in doing after having made several abortive attempts, and without suffering any loss.

We went diligently through the captured letters, after making careful notes from them of the names of Auxiliary Cadets and their home addresses in Great Britain. This and other information we gathered in this manner was transferred to an alphabetical card index for future reference. Indeed, at a later date, this proved of much value in enabling reprisal burnings of Auxiliaries' houses in Great Britain to be carried out. These reprisals were taken only in the cases of those who had taken part in the sacking and burning of Irish towns and villages.

On the afternoon of the 13th October, while we were engaged in dealing with these captured letters, a knock came to the door of our office. There were three or four of us in the room at the time and, as we were wont to do, we got our guns ready while one of us opened the door.

It was the adjutant-general, Gearóid O'Sullivan. He was greatly agitated.

‘For God's sake, lads,' he cried, ‘take your guns and rush up to the Mater Hospital. The Auxies are raiding it, and Dan Breen is there. Quick! Hurry! And look out for Dick McKee who will be there waiting for you.'

Without further words we were on our way. It was only two days before that Dan and Seán Treacy had made their valiant escape from the Carolans' house in Drumcondra. In the middle of the night the house was raided by a party of Auxiliaries. After a fierce encounter, our men had managed to make their escape through the window of their bedroom. During the fight two officers of the raiding party were killed, when the raiders, in revenge, shot the man of the house, Professor Carolan, who had given shelter to our men without being aware of their identity.

Dan Breen, who had been injured in dropping through the conservatory beneath the window from which he had escaped, was lying wounded in the hospital, and his capture would mean his certain death.

Walking as fast as we could without appearing to be running, my thoughts raced ahead of me in a thousand speculations. Would we be in time? Would he be dead? If so, would we be in time to avenge him? When I despaired, I found myself picturing the grins of triumph upon the faces of his enemies as they took toll of him for the loss of their comrades whose bodies were not yet buried.

Our thoughts feeding our anxiety, we had no heart to exchange a word. We covered the ground with great speed, but the way seemed interminable.

Passing by Nelson's Pillar we heard shots ringing out close by in Talbot Street. What could be happening there? I wanted to know, but our mission was of greater urgency, and my thoughts went back again to that question which was dinning itself in my mind. ‘Shall we be in time?'

We had gone only a few yards beyond the Pillar when I saw a young man emerge from the Turkish Baths of the Hamman Hotel and approach a touring car by the pavement. Just as we drew up beside him he had the engine running and was making himself comfortable at the wheel.

I turned to my companions. ‘Get in here,' I said, in feverish impatience. ‘Here's a lift,' and I stepped in beside my new acquaintance in the front seat. Surprised at our intrusion he was about to make some remark when I interjected: ‘Drive straight ahead, and go like hell.'

This startled him, but still he hesitated, till I showed him the handle of my pistol.

He was very unhappy. We had not travelled more than a hundred yards, when he showed signs of slowing down.

‘Listen,' he said, ‘for God's sake take the car and drive yourselves.'

The only answer he got was: ‘Keep her going, or ––––!'

In fact, none of us could have driven the car even if we had wished to.

On reaching a spot convenient to our destination we jumped out and, dismissing our driver, we threatened him with dire penalties if he mentioned us or our journey to anyone.

We hurried to the corner of Eccles Street. Looking up the street towards the hospital we could see that the crown forces had surrounded the building and that the search was still in progress. There were two armoured cars patrolling the entire block.

At the corner were a few Volunteers to whom we spoke. They advised that we should wait, all together, until the brigadier arrived. There was a public house at the corner and we went in for a drink. My throat was parched after our hurried journey. From the window we could see the armoured cars rushing by and our hopes sank.

In a few minutes we saw Dick McKee. Joining him, we stood at the corner and watched the activities up the street. He seemed greatly depressed. I asked him was there any chance of our doing anything.

‘I am afraid we can do nothing now,' he said. ‘I cannot allow the men to throw away their lives. But we will wait here, and if only the armoured cars will go away we will get a chance.'

He then told me the sad news that Seán Treacy had just been killed in Talbot Street, and of his own miraculous escape.

‘
I am only after leaving Peadar Clancy's shop,' he said. ‘There were a few of us there – Peadar, Seán,' and he mentioned some other names which I have forgotten. ‘Suddenly someone rushed in and said the Auxies were coming down the street. Seán was killed. He put up a great fight. There were others hit, also – passers-by. I don't know how I got away.'

Someone came up and called Dick aside.

The few sentences he had spoken to me filled me with horror. Seán Treacy was dead! That was the firing we had heard when we were passing Nelson's Pillar. Now it seemed certain that Dan Breen would follow him and we would have lost two of our greatest soldiers.

Hearing this news the Volunteers gathered round and pressed the brigadier to allow us to take action. Nothing seemed to matter now. ‘We are being defeated,' I thought, ‘but we must make a last stand.'

Dick was deaf to our entreaties and commanded us to desist.

Just then we saw the Auxiliaries leaving the hospital and entering the waiting tenders.

They were leaving and we had heard no shots fired! We could see no prisoners! I strained my eyes to search the moving figures in the distance. Could it be true? Had Dan escaped? We did not speak, not daring to give words to our hope for fear it would perish. We kept our gaze fixed on the enemy. They were driving away. Then sighs of relief escaped us at last. There
was
hope.

We had suffered a great reverse, I thought, but if they had missed Dan their victory was incomplete.

And Dick McKee was alive and with us! That thought gave me great comfort. I wanted to surround him with an invisible wall of steel so that nothing could hurt him. If we were deprived of his inspiring presence, then all would be at an end.

My thoughts were interrupted by Dick's voice, which had the power to draw me out of myself with one word. He was sending us away. There was nothing to be done.

The men started off in groups of two and three. Dick walked along alone. I was terribly anxious for his safety and could not bear to leave him. He had only escaped death by a miracle half an hour before. And here he was walking openly in the streets! I begged him to allow me to accompany him, making an excuse that I was going in his direction.

We walked along in silence. I could see that he was in great grief over Seán Treacy's death and was, in his heart, mourning for him.

When we reached Lower Gardiner Street he told me that he was going to his office. It was in a building occupied by the Typographical Society, and I knew that this was the brigade office, and I asked him if there was anything I could do for him, trying to linger with him, unable to tear myself away. He replied that there was not and promptly dismissed me.

It was now nearly six o'clock. Around the corner in Talbot Street I saw crowds gathered to look at the ghastly signs of the fight which had taken place there earlier in the day.

I bought a paper and read the official version of their victory.

Feeling very sad I turned my footsteps homeward, till I remembered I had now no home I dared to go to.

I must find somewhere to spend the night.