Espionage and Assasination with Michael Collins' Intelligence Unit: With the Dublin Brigade (9 page)

I had been now for three weeks ‘on the run'. I changed my sleeping quarters each night, and I became anxious to secure a safe place so that I should not have to be moving continually.

It was by chance that a fellow Volunteer mentioned to me that I might like to join him and some others who slept in a dispensary on the north side of the city. This suggestion fell in very opportunely with my wishes. The relieving officer was a friend, and he allotted to us the portion of the dispensary which ordinarily would be his residence.

Dan Breen had not been captured by the enemy. He was not in the public hospital but in a private ward, and the hospital authorities had managed to conceal him from the raiders. As soon as the search was over he was removed to a place of safety.

The next day some Volunteers made a gallant though unsuccessful effort to capture an armoured car at Phibsboro'. Their plans miscarried and one of them was killed. I could never help becoming depressed over any loss of ours. We were so few in numbers that we could ill spare a single man.

On the Sunday following the death of Seán Treacy I got word that I was wanted at one of our offices in North Great George's Street. Here I found the Squad, and we set out for Grattan Bridge, which crosses the Liffey near Dublin Castle.

When we arrived on the bridge we took up our positions. We had been told that two RIC men would pass by, and we would know them from a signal to be given by one of our intelligence officers who would be waiting nearby. They were known to this man, who would take out his handkerchief when he saw them coming.

While we were waiting we were within view of the sentry posted outside the City Hall. I saw that if we came into action we would run a great risk of capture, as it was known to us that the Auxiliaries were standing-to in Dublin Castle not a hundred yards away.

When we had been in position about a quarter of an hour I noticed two men walking along the quays in our direction. One was a stout, stocky man, with a red face. The other was tall and thin. Both men were in civilian dress with caps pulled down over their eyes.

I looked towards our intelligence officer. I saw him give the signal and point in the direction of the two men.

Before I had time even to leave my position and run forward, shots rang out. The smaller man was lying on the ground and the tall one was disappearing at great speed up Capel Street.

The minute the first shot rang out, from the hazard on the bridge an old hack came to life and started to race wildly along the quays. As we moved away I could hear the astonished ‘Hike! Hike!' of the jarveys, whose interest had been diverted by something even more unexpected.

The dead man was a Sergeant Roche who had been brought up from Seán Treacy's district in Tipperary to identify him. He had gloated over the corpse of Treacy with such venom that a detective who was present was outraged and he reported the matter to our director of intelligence.

It was Saturday the 20th November. The struggle was at its height. A number of Volunteers and civilians had been shot in their beds by members of the RIC and British Secret Service who were continually raiding houses during curfew hours.

One of their victims was Mr John Aloysius Lynch of Kilmallock, a respected citizen, who, as the custodian of the subscriptions paid in his district, had come to Dublin with £23,000 for the National Loan. He had put up at the Exchange Hotel. The place was raided between 1 and 2 a.m. by a party of British officers and RIC, some in uniform and some in mufti, who demanded from the night porter the number of the room in which Mr Lynch was staying. After their departure the dead body of Lynch was found lying between the sheets. He was not a Volunteer and had never carried a weapon.

Another man, Carrol, shot by the same party, and in somewhat similar circumstances, was the father of one of the Volunteers, and both these cases seem to have been ones of mistaken identity. It is assumed that Mr Lynch was shot in error for General Liam Lynch, OC of the 3rd Southern Division, who came from the same neighbourhood.

We had been engaged for the past three weeks locating the addresses of these intelligence men. Many of them were officers of high rank. They had taken up their abode in private houses in quiet residential neighbourhoods, where they lived in great seclusion, many of them under assumed names and occupations. By one means and another we had got upon their track.

At six o'clock I called to see a Volunteer who lived over a shop in Amiens Street. I had tea there with a girl with whom I had an appointment. She was a country girl employed as a maid in a superior boarding house in one of the fashionable streets on the south side of the city.

I was very anxious to have a conversation with Rosie, but I waited until we had finished our tea. We had met her several times already, and she had been able to give us some valuable information.

When I had first met her she had let fall scraps of gossip about her boarders which had aroused my suspicions. They were ‘English gentlemen' she thought. They ‘looked like military officers', though they did not wear uniform. They never went out during the day, but ‘always at night after curfew'.

They were ‘quiet gentlemen' she said, ‘spending most of their time writing', and when Rosie had to clean out their rooms she was bothered by the overflowing contents of the wastepaper baskets which she had to dispose of.

She had, at my suggestion, brought me these waste papers, and on looking through them and piecing them together, with the supervision of Frank Thornton, a senior officer of the intelligence department, we had not been surprised to find notes relating to the movements of Volunteers and other data which were most interesting to us.

She had also managed to get hold of some photographs which were in the possession of these officers. They were of Volunteers who were being pursued by the authorities and who we had reason to suppose were on the list for summary execution.

By now we knew all we needed to know about Rosie's boarders – their names, both their assumed names and their real ones, their appearance, habits and the nature of their occupation. It had been decided that if we were to survive and our resistance to continue, the time had come to bring their activities to an end, and those of a number of other Secret Service men living secluded in the same way in other private houses in the same district.

Rosie told me that evening that life in the boarding house was just the same, but that two of her officers had moved to a flat in another street. I asked her had she heard the address. She had, and gave it to me.

Bidding her goodbye, I hurried to the office used by us as brigade headquarters and found several officers gathered there. I was aware of the arrangements made for the following morning and gave my information of the change of address of the two officers.

I did not stay long as I had another appointment to keep. I went to Harcourt Street where I met a Volunteer officer whom I had not been acquainted with hitherto. I was to accompany him and his men on the following morning. We made our arrangements about meeting.

It was now near curfew and I hurried home to the dispensary. There were several Volunteers there, all of us engaged on the operations of the morrow.

There was no furniture at the dispensary beyond two double beds and a few chairs. We had our supper of tea and hard-boiled eggs, which we ate out of our hands, having no eggcups or spoons. We sat around the fire talking well into the night. I was wrought up, thinking of what we had to do the next morning, and I could feel that the other men were the same.

We were awake and dressed by seven o'clock. We breakfasted on the same fare of tea and eggs. I noticed that the men were examining their revolvers, seeing that they were in working order.

Outwardly we were calm and collected, even jesting with each other. But inwardly I felt that the others were as I was – palpitating with anxiety.

Shortly after eight o'clock we left the house, as we had a long way to walk to the respective scenes of our operations. Crossing the city we saw but few people astir, save an occasional milkman making his rounds. It was a beautiful, clear morning.

Coming near Merrion Square we passed several groups of Volunteers with whom we exchanged glances of understanding.

At Merrion Square I parted with my companions, and I walked on alone until I came to my destination. There I met the Volunteer officer with whom I had spoken on the previous night. He had several men with him who were waiting round the corner. He looked at his watch and said it wanted five minutes of the appointed hour – nine o'clock.

We had both received our orders. I told him what mine were: ‘I am to get any papers in the house.'

Those were the longest five minutes of my life. Or were they the shortest? I cannot tell, but they were tense and dreadful.

Sharp at nine o'clock we walked up the steps of the house. Fortunately the door was open, while the caretaker was shaking the mats on the steps. One of our men held him up and warned him to keep quiet. (He was blamed for complicity, the poor fellow, and got ten years' penal servitude.)

We walked into a large hall which had two separate flights of stairs ascending from it. We divided into two parties, four in each, and as I went up one staircase with my companions I saw our other party swiftly mounting the other. The stairs were heavily carpeted and our footsteps made no sound.

On the landing were two doors which I knew led to the rooms of two of the Secret Service men. Here we divided again, and knocked simultaneously at both doors.

We identified the men we wanted. Each had a revolver at his hand, but our men were too quick for them.

Shaking, I said to the officer of my party: ‘Wait for me. I have to search for the papers.'

‘Wait be damned! Get out of here as quickly as you can.'

I was only too glad to take his advice. The noise of the shots must have been heard in the neighbourhood. We hurried down the stairs together.

In the hall three or four men were lined up against the wall, some of our officers facing them. Knowing their fate I felt great pity for them. It was plain they knew it too. As I crossed the threshold the volley was fired.

In the street I parted from my companions, they going south. I hurried along alone. The sights and sounds of that morning were to be with me for many days and nights, but for the moment my mind was absorbed with the matter of my personal safety. I could hear shots not far away and windows were thrown up and heads appeared. I was the only person in the wide, empty street.

‘What's up?' was called down to me. ‘Where is the firing?'

‘I don't know,' I replied, and hurried on.

I thought I would never get across the city. Every moment I expected to run into lorry loads of troops which I knew would soon come tearing through the streets.

At Westland Row I came upon three policemen standing in a doorway. They did not challenge me, so I started to run. I could no longer control my overpowering need to run, to fly, to leave far behind me those threatening streets.

I was making for the quays below O'Connell Bridge. We had arranged for a party of Volunteers to commandeer the ferry boats, knowing that it would be impossible to cross by any of the bridges, which would all be held by the military.

I was out of breath when I reached the quay. There were a few other stragglers there, other Volunteers who, like myself, had had a long way to come. We saw the ferry boat landing with its party on the other side of the river.

It had just made its last journey!

We waved to them, frantically. They saw our signals, and to our infinite relief we saw a boat being rowed towards us. A few minutes more and we would have been lost.

Hurriedly we got into the boat and were rowed out into the river. I expected every moment to see the Auxiliaries dashing up to the quayside and opening fire upon us. I was greatly troubled thinking that I could not swim.

The boat seemed to go terribly slowly. I thought we would never reach the other shore, where I could get into the lanes and alleyways I knew so well.

At last we landed.

I reached the dispensary. My companions were already there. They told me that there had been a fierce fight between our men and the Auxiliaries in Mount Street, with losses on both sides. I longed to hear more news, and whether we had sustained many casualties, but I knew it would be too dangerous to be about in the streets.

Then I heard a bell ringing in a nearby church. It was the Angelus. I remembered I had not been to Mass. I slipped out and, in the silence before the altar, I thought over our morning's work and offered up a prayer for the fallen.

The English took immediate reprisals for the shootings of the 21st November. On the same afternoon, while a football match was in progress in Croke Park between the Tipperary and Dublin teams, Auxiliaries and Black and Tans drove up and, surrounding the football field, they fired on the crowd. Fourteen people were killed, including a Tipperary forward, and over sixty wounded.

On the next day, Monday, I got instructions to call at the house of a friend in North Richmond Street. I was to collect some papers which had been seized on the previous morning, and to bring them to our intelligence office for examination.

When I presented myself, the woman of the house brought me down to the basement and showed me a large black deed-box which, she told me, contained the papers I wanted. I had hoped that the papers would not be so bulkily packed, as there was intensified activity of the crown forces in the streets; and parcels of any size were always bound to arouse suspicion.

Having wrapped the deed-box in brown paper I set out, and got on to a tram going through Parnell Street. I put the box on the conductor's platform, and was relieved to be separated from it even for a little while, though I took care to keep it in view from where I sat.

I was just beginning to feel safe when I saw a patrol of soldiers holding up pedestrians a few paces in front of the tramcar, which now came to a standstill. I was seized with panic, my nerves not being at their best after my experiences of the morning before.

What will I do, I thought. Will I leave the box on the tram, disowning it, and try to get away, or will I stay and hope to bluff my way through? Either decision would bring serious trouble upon me. If I were held up with the papers in my possession, a horrible end was in store for me after a ‘star chamber' interrogation, with torture, in Dublin Castle. On the other hand, if I lost the papers I would be court-martialled by my own officers.

While such thoughts were passing through my mind in the space of a few seconds, I found myself stepping off the tram with the box under my arm and gripping the pistol in my pocket.

Turning my back on the soldiers, I walked away in the opposite direction, stepping mechanically, without any hope at all that I could escape. I was like an automaton. I was, as it were, wound up to make those walking movements and would do so until I was stopped, but at the same time I knew that they were senseless and useless.

Then I found myself in a side street, and life and hope came back to me. Of my own will now, as if I were getting out of a nightmare in which I had been making movements over which I had had no control, I started to run. I was wearing a heavy overcoat, and I was soon covered with sweat, when, in a few moments, owing to the speed with which I travelled, I had reached my destination.

Curious to know the extent of my escape I speedily opened the box, to find my worst fears justified. It was filled with papers and documents belonging to some of the enemy agents who had been shot on the previous morning.