The Squad (22 page)

In the first two weeks of November some of Collins’ most trusted associates had close calls. Frank Thornton was arrested and held for ten days, but he managed to convince his captors that he had nothing to do with the IRA. On the night of 10 November they just missed Dick Mulcahy as he escaped through the skylight of Professor Michael Hayes’ house in South Circular Road around five o’clock in the morning, but they seized some crucial documents which included the names and addresses of more than 200 volunteers with notations classifying them as ‘very good shots, good shots, etc.’

Three days later they raided Vaughan’s hotel and questioned Liam Tobin and Tom Cullen, but they managed to bluff their way out of it. In a matter of three days the IRA’s chief-of-staff had had a narrow escape and the three top men of Collins’ intelligence network had been arrested and let go. The need to disrupt the British intelligence network was becoming imperative.

Dick McKee took charge of the overall planning. In early November representatives of the four battalions of the Dublin brigade and the Squad were given descriptions of the undercover agents to be eliminated and details about where they were living. These agents were suspected members of what the IRA intelligence people were calling the Cairo gang, so-called because of their tendency to frequent the Cairo Café on Grafton Street.

Liam Tobin told Charlie Dalton to meet Maudie, a maid at 28 Upper Pembroke Street, where some of the undercover agents were residing. ‘She described the routine of the residents of the flats, and it would seem from her account that they followed no regular occupation but did a lot of office work in their flats,’ Dalton noted. ‘I arranged with her to bring me the contents of the waste paper basket. When they were examined we found torn up documents, which referred to the movement of wanted Volunteers, and also photographs of wanted men.’

Although McKee was in charge of the planning, Collins suggested that the morning of Sunday, 21 November would be the best time to strike. This had been the suggestion of one of his own agents, whom he referred to as ‘Lt. G .’ Collins was not always as careful as he might have been about protecting the identity of his spies, but in this case nobody seemed to know for sure the identity of ‘Lt. G .’ Florence O’Donoghue, the intelligence officer of the Cork No. 1 brigade, thought it was Lily Mernin at army headquarters. ‘While I worked as an agent in Dublin Castle, Michael or any other member of the staff never referred to me by name,’ she explained however. ‘Michael always referred to me as the “little gentleman”.’ O’Donoghue believed she signed her notes ‘G’ and Collins could have added the ‘Lt.’ to make it more difficult for anyone to guess her identity if his notes were captured. People would naturally assume his agent was an army officer rather than a woman typist at army headquarters.

‘It was part of my normal duty to type the names and addresses of British agents who were accommodated at private addresses and living as ordinary citizens in the city,’ Mernin explained. ‘These lists were amended whenever an address was changed. I passed them on each week.’

‘There was a girl in the office who was the daughter of Superintendent Dunne of Dublin Castle,’ she continued. ‘When he resigned she moved out of Dublin Castle to an address in Mount Street. Stopping at the same address were a number of men. Every morning she would come into the office she would tell us about them; she was puzzled to know whom they were. Her brother also resided there with her and, apparently he used to mix with them, and he discussed their conversation with her. She would report this conversation to us when she would come in to the office in the morning. There was one fellow there by the name of McMahon who was very addicted to drink. While under the influence of drink he was, I believe, liable to talk a lot, and, mainly, his conversation concerned raids and arrests of wanted IRA men. Whatever tit-bits of information that I could glean from Miss Lil Dunne I immediately passed on to the intelligence section.’

One morning Lil Dunne arrived in an excited state, saying that her brother believed there was a spy in their office, because somebody had given information to the IRA about McMahon and Peel, two British agents, who were lodging in the same house as her and her brother in Mount Street.

‘Who could be a spy?’ Mernin asked. She put the blame on Lil’s brother for talking too much.

In fact it was Seán Hyde, a veterinary student living at 21 Lower Mount Street, who had informed IRA intelligence that two of those wanted in the killing of John Lynch – Paddy McMahon and Peel – were living in the same house, along with a number of medical students. ‘I was instructed to investigate and I met Hyde, who gave me all the facts,’ Charlie Dalton said. ‘Those suspects did not go out in the daytime except to an ex-serviceman’s club, known as the South Irish Horse Club, in Merrion Square. They also occasionally visited a billiards saloon at the rear of a tobacconist shop in Mount Street. This was owned by a Mr Kerr who was not sympathetic to the movement.’

The Squad was ordered to kill McMahon and Peel, if the chance presented itself. Dalton tried to find them with the help of T o m Keogh and Joe Leonard and others on different occasions. One night, one of Hyde’s friends, Conny O’Leary, told Dalton that McMahon and Peel were in Kerr’s playing billiards.

‘On this occasion I was accompanied only by Joe Leonard,’ Dalton recalled. ‘We went into the saloon, in which there was one table, and two gentlemen were playing billiards. The only description I had of McMahon, who was the principal party, was that he wore a signet ring on a finger of his left hand.’ Dalton and Leonard were waiting to see the ring before they opened fire when suddenly O’Leary rushed in to say that McMahon had already returned to the house. He had apparently only briefly gone upstairs in the billiards saloon to visit a woman. After that night plans to kill McMahon and Peel were shelved in favour of the new plan to kill a much larger selection of undercover agents at the same time.

The search for British undercover agents went on. ‘On various occasions I was requested by members of the intelligence squad to assist them in the identity of enemy agents,’ Lily Mernin recalled. ‘I remember the fist occasion on which I took part in this work was with the late Tom Cullen in 1919. Piaras Beaslaí asked me to meet a young man who would be waiting at Ó Raghallaigh’s bookshop in Dorset Street and to accompany him to Lansdowne Road. I met this man, whom I learned later was Tom Cullen, and went with him to a football match at Lansdowne Road. He asked me to point out to him and give him the names of any British military officers who frequented Dublin Castle and GHQ. I was able to point out a few military officers to him who I knew.

‘When I got to know the auxiliaries better, I accompanied Frank Saurin (known then as Mr Stanley) to various cafes, where I identified for him some of the auxiliaries whom I knew.’

‘Arrangements should now be made about the matter,’ Collins wrote to Dick McKee on 17 November. ‘Lt. G. is aware of things. He suggests the 21st. A most suitable date and day I think.’

Charlie Dalton met Maudie, the maid in 28 Upper Pembroke St, on the Saturday evening, 20 November, at their usual rendezvous and she told him that all her ‘boarders’ were at home, with the exception of Peter Ames and George Bennett. She said that they were changing their residence to 38 Upper Mount Street that night.

That same night, at the headquarters of the printer’s union at 35 Lower Gardiner Street, McKee met with Brugha, Mulcahy, Collins, Russell, Peadar Clancy and those people selected to head the assassination team to finalise arrangements for the following morning. Brugha felt there was insufficient evidence against some of those named by Collins. There was no room for doubt how ever in the cases of Ames and Bennett, the two men who knew that Tobin, Cullen and Thornton were the leading intelligence operatives of Collins, nor was there with Captain Baggallay and the two men who had shot John Lynch at the Exchange hotel – McMahon (whose real name was Lieutenant H. R. Angliss) and Peel. Brugha authorised the killing of all these and some thirty other agents the following morning.

‘It’s to be done exactly at nine,’ Collins insisted. ‘Neither before nor after. These whores, the British, have got to learn that Irishmen can turn up on time.’

McKee questioned those in charge of operations as to their reconnoitring of their positions and the arrangements they had for getting their men back to the northside of the city. He impressed on them that they were to be careful of the bridges on their way back because the crown forces were likely to cut them off and search people. The second battalion arranged to commandeer a ferryboat to take the men back across the Liffey afterwards.

The four battalions of the brigade were each responsible for a certain area. Most were operating outside their own patch because nearly all of the operations were within the third battalion’s region. Seán Russell, the quartermaster general of the IRA, selected the men for the different operations. He put Paddy Moran, a captain of one of the second battalion’s companies, in charge of the team that was targeting three secret service men staying at the Gresham hotel in Sackville Street. He insisted on appointing members of the Squad to take charge of all the other teams.

Paddy O’Daly was anxious to take part but McKee insisted that he stay in the background organising things. He remained with some first-aid people at No. 17 North Richmond Street, which was his base for the day, looking after the five operations being conducted by the second battalion under Squad leadership. ‘I did not like it,’ O’Daly said, ‘but I was told that I was not going because I had other business to do.’

‘Paddy, I’m not going either,’ McKee said. ‘Have you not full confidence in the men appointed?’

Of course, O’Daly said that he had full confidence. And that ended the matter.

The various teams met subsequently at different centres. Members of the second battalion met at Tara Hall in Gloucester Street (now Seán McDermott Street). One of the senior intelligence officers explained the nature of the operations about to be put into action. There were between twenty and thirty men present. T o m Keogh had been selected to take charge at 22 Lower Mount Street and Vinny Byrne was supposed to assist him, but a new team was put together at the last moment to kill Ames and Bennett in the new residence at 38 Upper Mount Street.

‘I had about ten men under me, which included a first-aid man,’ Byrne explained. ‘I did not like the idea of taking charge, as Tom Ennis was in my group, and I thought that he, being a senior officer of the second battalion, should be in charge. I made known my thoughts.’

‘You take charge of the men and I will carry out the operation,’ Byrne said to Ennis. But Ennis would not hear of it.

‘Very good, Tom,’ Byrne conceded.

After the meeting at 35 Lower Gardiner Street, Collins, McKee and some of the others went over to Vaughan’s hotel for a drink. Christy Harte, the porter, became suspicious of one of the hotel guests, a Mr Edwards, who had booked in three days earlier. Ed wards had made a late night telephone call and then left the hotel, a rather ominous sign as it was after curfew. Harte immediately went upstairs to where Collins and the others were gathered.

‘I think, sirs, ye ought to be going.’

Collins had come to trust Harte’s instincts and had no hesitation now. ‘Come on boys, quick,’ he said, and all promptly headed for the door.

Collins took refuge a few doors down in the top floor flat of Dr Paddy Browne of Maynooth College at 39 Parnell Square. From there he watched the raid on Vaughan’s hotel a few minutes later. By then all the guests in the hotel were legitimately registered, with the exception of ConorClune. He had come to the hotel with Peadar Clancy, and had apparently been forgotten. He was taken away for questioning. Dick Mulcahy later said that Clune had made an inane comment to Seán Kavanagh about being prepared to die for Ireland or something to that effect when questioned. Kavanagh was convinced that Clune was lifted simply because he was not registered and did not even have a toothbrush to suggest that he had planned to stay overnight. It was a mistake that would ultimately cost him his life.

During the night McKee and Clancy were also arrested but everything was already in train for the morning. The plan was to kill at least twenty selected agents at more than a dozen different locations in the city at the same time. Some used church bells, and other waited for clocks to strike before they began the operations, exactly at nine o’clock. Each team contained a member of the Squad and/or an intelligence officer, assigned to search the bodies and rooms for documents.

Most of the men had never engaged in such an operation before and were extremely nervous. While going up the stairs of the Shelbourne hotel, one of the men was startled by the sight of somebody with a gun and shot at his own reflection in a hall mirror. Hearing the shot, the man they were planning to kill apparently slipped out of his room and the operation was aborted.

Captain Crawford was in bed with his wife in their flat in Fitz-william Square when somebody knocked at the door. He assumed it was one of his men with a message.

‘Come in,’ he called out, but nobody came in. He got up and opened the door to find three men pointing pistols at him.

‘Put up your hands,’ one of them said.

‘Is this a joke?’ he asked.

‘It’s no joke! Are you Major Callaghan?’

‘There is a Mr Callaghan living upstairs but he is not in the army and has no connection with the army,’ Crawford replied.

In reply to their questions he said he was in charge of the motor repair department.

‘Why the hell do you come here? Why don’t you mind your own business in England?’ they shouted.

They then ordered him back into bed with his wife. One of the men covered the couple with his gun and the other searched the room thoroughly for documents. Finding nothing compromising they seemed satisfied and ordered him out of the bed again. He thought they were going to shoot him and he pleaded with them not to do it in front of his wife.