by Aubrey Flegg
The Irish civil war lasted for nearly a year. It was a bitter fight with both sides using tricks learned from the Black and Tans. Seamus’s mock execution was a mild example. In the bitterness that followed, those Irish soldiers who had fought that even more terrible war in the trenches were forgotten.
LOCAL HISTORICAL DETAILS
Many of the incidents and places described in this book are real. Most of us have heard about the shelling of the Four Courts in Dublin. The Four Courts is still standing, but we cannot travel on the railway line which Dafydd and his father took from Westland Row to Kingsbridge (now Heuston) station, as it no longer exists. My inquisitive station master is imaginary but he is typical of many Dublin people who came out to watch the fighting as if it was a fireworks display.
Katie was looking forward to an extra long summer holiday because in 1922 the schools did close from 30 June to 25 September so that teachers could take Irish lessons. And the local school roof really did leak – one unfortunate girl had to leave her desk whenever there was a shower because the water came in on top of her!
The fighting in Nenagh, which the angry officer describes to Katie, started when a number of soldiers, stationed in the town, decided to support the Republican cause and took over the post office and other buildings. The Treaty soldiers then tried to turn them out. One Treaty officer, a Captain Byrne, was killed outside the Hibernian hotel, and an unfortunate bystander, Mrs O’Meara of O’Meara’s hotel, who came out into the hotel porch to see what was happening, was also accidentally shot. There is no record of Seamus’s guns being taken but it would have been a likely action.
It is difficult now to imagine a world without radio, but for nearly a week nobody outside Nenagh knew what was happening in the town. The Republicans had cut the telegraph wires, railway lines were torn up, and every road out of the town was either blocked with felled trees or had trenches dug across it. The town ran out of flour, and supplies had to be brought by barge down the Shannon. Despite the fighting there was a lot of good humour. Local people, even if they supported the Treaty, were very tolerant of the Republicans. John really did lose his hens, and the rhyme he found pinned to his door, is as reported in the Nenagh Guardian. But passions, particularly on the Republican side, ran very high. Seamus’s outburst at dinner and Trench Coat’s denouncement of Father are not exaggerated.
Welshmen have often helped in our mines and quarries. The name Griffith Parry belongs to a Welsh quarry man from Bangor who was buried in Castletown, near Portroe, in 1839. Quarrying stopped at the outbreak of the First World War, but started again once the civil war was over and continued on into the 1950s.
The story about the goats knowing when a rock-fall was about to occur is told locally; possibly the goats could feel the tip moving, just as Katie and Dafydd did. The quarries are fascinating, but they are also very dangerous: slate-falls are frequent and many have steep sides and deep water in them. Best to observe Father’s warning: DANGER – KEEP OUT.
You will find the little harbour of Garrykennedy by turning down towards the lake at the village of Portroe. You won’t find Katie’s farm, but you will find many like it, gleaming with fresh whitewash, particularly after Easter. You can climb the steep road up from the quarries and imagine where Uncle Mal’s farm might have been, or take the road through the Gap to the ancient stones known as the Graves of the Leinstermen.
Sadly, the possibility of finding an arms cache anywhere in Ireland still exists. If you do find anything suspicious do not touch it. Report it to the Guards and it will be destroyed.
About the Author
AUBREY FLEGG was born in Dublin and spent his early childhood in County Sligo. His later schooldays were spent in England, but he returned to Dublin to study geology. After a period of research in Kenya he joined the Geological Survey of Ireland; he is now retired. Aubrey lives in Dublin with his wife, Jennifer; they have two children and three grandchildren. Katie’s War is his first book and it won the Peter Pan Award 2000 – an award created by IBbY Sweden for a children’s book, translated into Swedish, which gives information on another culture. Aubrey’s second book, The Cinnamon Tree, deals with the issue of landmines and the international arms trade, and it was listed in the White Ravens selection for 2001. Wings Over Delft is the first book in the acclaimed Louise triology, followed by The Rainbow Bridge and In the Claws of the Eagle. Wings Over Delft won the Bisto Book of the Year Award 2004 and the Reading Association of Ireland Award 2005. It was listed in the White Ravens selection for 2004. Aubrey’s books have been translated into German, Swedish, Danish, Serbian and Slovene.
Copyright
This eBook edition first published 2012 by The O’Brien Press Ltd,
12 Terenure Road East, Rathgar, Dublin 6, Ireland
Tel: +353 1 4923333; Fax: +353 1 4922777
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Website: www.obrien.ie
First published 1997
eBook ISBN: 978–1–84717–464–2
Copyright for text © Aubrey Flegg
Copyright for editing, typesetting, layout, design © The O’Brien Press Ltd.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Katie’s war: a story of the Irish Civil War
1. Ireland - history - Civil War, 1922–1923 -
juvenile fiction 2. children’s stories
I. Title
823.9’14 [J]
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