by Jana Petken
Nodding his head but at the same time wondering what that fight could possibly entail, Danny felt the first tear slip down his cheek. “You have my word. You can count on me,” he said shakily. After one more look at the sandbags and windows that had been so diligently defended, he then ran out behind the others.
After getting out of the General Post Office the same way he’d gotten in that morning, Danny made a run for it with a sortie of men led by Michael O’Rahily. Shots were being fired from every angle, so he couldn’t gauge where the next bullet would come from. Along the way, O’Rahily was shot but he stumbled on. Danny ran, weeping and screaming as men fell like flies. He didn’t know how many were dead, but at least twenty or twenty-five had been hit by fire from the ever-closer British barricades. He was going to die running towards the devil’s army, he kept thinking.
When they got to Henry Street, O’Rahily let out a painful moan and then collapsed on the ground. Lying face up with his eyes and mouth wide open, he looked terrified in death. For a brief second Danny stared in disbelief at his fallen leader. Then his eyes flicked from one spot in the street to another. As far as he could tell, no British machine-gun posts were present, but above them mortars and gunfire shot over the tops of the houses from the adjacent streets.
“Keep moving, men!” he heard someone behind him shout.
Staying in groups of twenty, they managed to get into Moore Lane but had to halt abruptly when they spotted the British with a machine gun trained on the entire lane, from top to bottom.
“We’ll make a stand here!” one of the men shouted. Everyone agreed, and minutes later four of the men broke into O’Brien’s Mineral Water Works, dragged a cart out, and placed it in the middle of the narrow road, making a barricade. Danny, crouching behind the cart, took in the scene. Breathless with exertion and fear, even now he was unwilling to accept the possibility of capture or death.
A few minutes later, four more rebels arrived, carrying James Connolly on a stretcher. The men placed it on the ground. Connolly, struggling to sit up, called for quiet and then issued orders.
Danny crawled towards him, hoping the great man had come across a miracle or had been hit by a revelation on his way from the post office. Only an act of God would get them out of this mess, he thought. Looking up, he glimpsed the shadowy figure of Mr Pearse, arriving with yet more men. But by this time, it was obvious to even the most optimistic fighter there that they were trapped. Danny crawled closer still to Connelly and Pearce, blocking out everything going on around him except for his leaders’ urgent discussions.
“Well, if we can’t walk out of this bloody place, we’ll burrow our way through it,” Connolly eventually stated, making it the final decision.
Danny thought the plan was ludicrous, but it was also daring. In small groups, the men crossed the lane under the cart’s meagre cover. Entering the closest house on the other side, they began to break down doors and weak walls, and burrowed their way through to adjacent houses. Finally, all the survivors of the post office garrison broke into a sixteen-house terrace, making it one long bastion. This was where they would make their last stand against the British. They had nowhere else to run to, except into direct fire.
Danny took a tentative look outside through a chink in a window’s curtain. A woman running up the street screamed to the soldiers manning the British barricade. A volley of shots rang out. She halted abruptly and fell to the ground, riddled with bullets.
“Right, that’s enough!” Danny heard Pearse shout behind him. Turning, he saw that a few others had also witnessed the woman’s death, including Mr Pearse, whose skin had turned as red as a tomato.
“Enough, boys,” he said again.
Pearse wrote a terse note, gave it to a nurse who had tended to Connolly and told her to deliver it to the British commander, General Lowe. The room was silent.
“To prevent further slaughter of the civilian population and in the hope of saving our followers, I have stated that I wish to surrender,” Pearse told all those present. “We are hopelessly surrounded and outnumbered.”
Once again, Danny felt his eyes welling up. Tears gushed down his cheeks like a rapidly leaking tap. Through misty eyes, he could see that some of the younger volunteers felt just as he did. Shouts then erupted, with men begging Pearse to let them attack the British position. Willing to contribute his own blood sacrifice, Danny joined in.
“We’ll assault the troops en masse,” one man suggested.
Connolly shook his head. “We’re not going to fight until the last man falls.”
Sean Mc Dermott, another leader, put up his hand to silence the men. “We did all that could be expected of us. Only the council leaders will be executed. It’s all over.”
Kneeling on the ground in a tightly knit group, Danny found his eyes wandering to the houses and shops opposite. People peeking out from behind curtains gazed back with neither sympathy nor sadness, and somehow, amidst the myriad of thoughts tumbling through his mind, he found that most troubling. In a daze, he watched Connolly and Pearse hand over their rifles to an arresting British officer. They were surrendering in a cordial manner, Danny thought, straining to hear Pearse’s quiet words.
Sandwiched between the other men, Danny was marched out into Moore Street, and once there his eyes met a sight he would never forget. Hundreds of men and women were lined up and flanked by the British Army. Armoured trucks, ambulances, and heavy weapons stretched along the street for as far as his eyes could see. Joining the other prisoners standing in motionless lines, he wondered how many of his fellow captives were entirely innocent of any involvement in the rising – a lot of them, he deduced. They were probably just nosy parkers out to see what was going on so they could take some juicy gossip home to their families.
An hour or so later, he sighed with relief. They were finally on the move. His feet were numb after being planted in one spot for so long. He looked at the faces of the other prisoners. They were all as quiet as the grave. Some looked scared, even the men with hardened faces. Others appeared angry. A few women were weeping, and a couple of elderly men, who were probably about the same age as his granny, looked as though they were in desperate need of their beds. He searched the crowd again. There was Mr Clarke and some of the other leaders. The lot of them had been caught.
Marching at a good pace in lines of four, the procession headed towards Sackville Street. It felt like another parade, Danny found himself thinking, but not the victorious procession he’d had in mind. At the Sackville Street entrance, they formed two lines on each side of the street. A few prisoners were still carrying pistols. The guards marched them up to the front of the lines and then told them to leave their arms and ammunition in a pile on the ground. Danny had a gun in his jacket pocket, and he gave it up reluctantly after being pushed forward by an Irishman from the Royal Irish Regiment. Then back in his original place in the line, he once again stood still and waited for what was to come next.
Before long, officers with notebooks arrived. Stopping at each person in the front line, they spoke and then wrote something down. Danny glanced at the lad standing to his left. “I’m Danny,” he whispered.
“Martin,” the boy replied.
An officer stood inches from Martin’s face. He said nothing and asked no questions, but he did write something down. Then grunting loudly, he sidestepped to Danny.
“Name?” he asked angrily.
“Danny Carmody.”
After the officer had moved a good distance away, Danny looked again at Martin. “How come he didn’t ask you anything? Does that officer know you?”
Nodding, Martin said, “He does indeed. He’s my big brother, Tommy.”
After the formalities were over, the prisoners marched into an oval patch of green in front of the Rotunda Hospital. Looking about him, Danny noticed that all but a few women had disappeared. He surmised that being of the fairer sex; most of them had been allowed to go home.
“Lie down, the lot of you!” a soldier
shouted.
During the night, a British officer amused himself by ordering some of the rising’s leaders to stand up and walk to the front of the lines. Without moving his head, Danny managed to lift his eyes to look. Tom Clarke from the council of seven was stripped down to the buff and ridiculed by the British troops in full sight of nurses hanging out of the Rotunda Hospital’s windows.
“This old bastard has been at it before!” the officer shouted to his men. “He has a shop across the street there. He’s an old Fenian.”
The guards dragged the republican leaders to the front, one after the other, and humiliated them in every way possible. Danny’s eyes bore into the officer. One day I’ll kill you, he thought.
The temperatures dropped. It was freezing. At some point, the British garrison from the Four Courts arrived and ordered the prisoners to lie on top of each other. Danny felt a heavy boot kick him on the back of his shin, an arm thump the back of his head, and his chest being crushed. Two men lay on top of him. He could hardly breathe. It was a desperate situation, but he felt a lot warmer being covered by bodies. It was like being weighed down by heavy blankets in wintertime.
Anybody who put a foot out of line got a whack of a rifle butt. No one was allowed to move a muscle. Danny felt warm pee soak his trousers. Sure, he’d not be the only one to wet himself, he thought, trying to ease his conscience. No man could be expected to hold it in all bloody night.
When dawn broke, the prisoners lined up into formation and then marched down Sackville Street, past the GPO. Danny’s mouth gaped open. It was gutted, its stout walls black, a shell from top to bottom, but still flying the tricolour from its flagpole. Along the way, a crowd of people had gathered. It seemed to Danny that the entire population had come out to watch this humiliating debacle. The reception was hostile. As the prisoners marched, crowds stood on the kerbs, hooting and jeering at them.
“Shoot the traitors! Bayonet the bastards!” Danny heard repeatedly.
In one of the poorer quarters, the shawlies pelted them with rotten vegetables, and the more enthusiastic disgorged the contents of their chamber pots over the beaten yet somehow undefeated men. Once again, Danny admitted that there hadn’t been general support for the rising. He blinked away his tears. How misguided and treasonous the eejits were. May God forgive them, he thought.
Eventually, the prisoners arrived at the Richmond Barracks. Inside its gymnasium, detectives of the political division stood armed with files and notepads. First they picked out all the leaders and anyone they knew to have been previously involved in meetings or demonstrations. Danny, previously unknown to the authorities, marched with others in his situation into the barrack rooms. Lying down on his back, he felt as though he were in the softest of beds. Exhausted, he fell asleep within minutes.
Stirring, he felt the soles of his feet being kicked. “Leave off, will you?” he said groggily. Then he remembered where he was. Looking up, his eyes found a British staff officer standing over him. Danny’s eyes were drawn to the gold on his cap. Sitting up, he asked cheekily, “What can I do for you, sir?”
“What age are you?” the officer asked.
“I’m seventeen and a bit.” He was going to celebrate his eighteenth birthday in a few days but the officer didn’t need to know when his birthday was.
“Well, that’s lucky for you. Right, get out of here. Get yourself home and don’t show your face again until all this calms down. You’ll be treated like an adult combatant if you lift a gun again. Do you understand?”
“I do,” Danny said, silently thanking God he was being released.
On his way out, he caught a glimpse of John Grant, his sister’s fiancé. How the hell had he missed seeing him? Danny wondered. Sidling over to him, he asked, “Where have you been all week?”
John grinned. “Here and there, kicking as many British arses as I could find, much the same as you, I suppose.”
“Does my Jenny know you’re here?”
“Are you daft, man? She’ll kill me if she finds out what I’ve been up to.”
“I’m going home,” Danny told him.
“How did you manage that?”
“Must be my good looks and charm,” Danny said.
John looked pensive, and a little fearful. “Don’t tell your Jenny that you’ve seen me. Give me your word, Danny. I might get out of here too, and I don’t want to have to explain myself to her or to your father.”
“What about your father?” Danny asked.
“My dad? Sure, he’s over there getting processed. We were defending the Four Courts together.”
Chapter Four
Crying with relief, Danny halted, paused for breath, and looked down the length of Victoria Street. At some stage on the walk home, his bravado had disintegrated. Now he was a quivering mess, weeping like a baby and feeling so tired. It felt as though a ten-ton block of cement was attached to his legs.
Ah, there it was – home. Was there ever a more fortunate man than I? he thought. In the four days since shutting the front door behind him, he’d shed his boyish skin, and in doing so, he had revealed the real man underneath, one with a vision and purpose, a soldier, a patriot wanting to dedicate his life to freeing Ireland from an unlawful occupation. He was a killer, although he couldn’t swear on the Bible that he’d actually shot and hit anyone. He’d been called a traitor and an enemy of Britain, yet he felt no guilt and no regrets – none.
His homecoming was not going to be a bed of roses, he then thought, still trying to pull himself together. There was also a strong possibility of a tongue-lashing from his mam and a thick clip around the ear from his dad the minute he walked indoors. He was ready, though. He owed his parents an apology for staying away for over four days without a word. He would take a beating. That was the least he could do. And he wasn’t going to fight with Patrick or give him any cheek. His older brother was not a hard man, but he was protective of his siblings. No, he’d accept the punishment, whatever it was, and keep his mouth shut, for he was in the wrong for lying to his family about where he was going.
Finally, he felt his body relax … somewhat. Still reluctant to face the music at home, he leaned against a damp hedge and stared at the row of detached houses in Victoria Street. This area always seemed to impress visitors, and so it should. It was a grand neighbourhood with overstated affluence and a uniformity of wealth oozing from each property. The three-storey brownstones had walled-in gardens and sleek green lawns with a scattering of leafy trees surrounding them. His dad’s house was fit for entertaining the best of society when a good party was called for, and there had been plenty over the years.
For the first time in a week, he thought about his sister, Jenny. Her fancy engagement party to John had only taken place one month previously. As usual, Dad had ploughed in with his money, making it look and feel more like a grand wedding reception than just a stupid announcement of betrothal. Jenny liked the high life and attention she got from folk. She’d be hysterical when she heard about John. She would find it all very distasteful and embarrassing.
Still thinking about Jenny’s upcoming humiliation, he looked again at the affluent street. A surgeon of some note, his dad was not the only well-to-do professional to live in this area. Lawyers, bankers, and wealthy businessmen also called Victoria Street home. Half of the houses were owned by Englishmen and Scotsmen who only seemed to live in them for part of the year, just like his dad. Danny couldn’t say hand on heart, that he’d had any problems with his neighbours from across the water when he was growing up. He still didn’t. In his eyes, ordinary people like him were not the enemy. No, the hatred that had built up inside him over the past couple of years was reserved for the king and his British government.
He’d woken up at that first Irish republican volunteer meeting. It had caused him to see an entirely different perspective. He’d come to demonise the British. He freely admitted that. There, at the gathering of the council members, he’d heard about all the trickery, theft, and unfair treatment
of the Irish at the hands of Westminster. The imperialists took the best jobs, got privileges rightfully belonging to the Irish, took profits back to England instead of investing in the country where the money was generated, and lied through their teeth. They hated Catholics and punished them with unfair measures that saw many of them unemployed and forced to join the army. Everyone in Ireland knew that Protestants were favoured.
For three decades, the British had dangled the promise of home rule in front of Irish noses, and never had they delivered on any of their pledges. Sure, he’d heard enough at those meetings to jolt him out of the ignorant stupor he’d been living in. Hating the British had come easy to him, like putting on a second skin that fit him to perfection. Grunting with disgust, he thought about the leaders of the rising, now in British custody. They’d all be dead soon. They’d be gone forever, but their names would never be forgotten. He’d make sure of that.
He might live in a grand house with a housekeeper, cook, butler, and a skivvy maid, but not one member of his family was a free or self-determining person. Why couldn’t they see the truth? In this street, he’d been born entitled and surrounded by comforts. He’d played in it as a child, kicking up dirt, running races around the block, kissing a girl behind high walls, and getting caught stealing apples from Mrs Boyle’s gnarled apple tree, which, no matter how ugly, twisted, or old it was, always managed to produce juicy red apples year after year. Yet only recently had he opened his eyes to the injustices plaguing his country and to the possibilities that existed to fix them, through brave men gambling with their lives. Why didn’t his family feel the same way?
