by Meda Ryan
On 1 July Barry wrote a letter to the OC Dublin Brigade, and had it smuggled out:
About 80 of us are here including McKelvey, Rory, Mellows. We are having a tough time enough. O’Duffy’s instructions are that we be treated as common criminals and have no preferential or political statement. The boys had to be shifted in and some fainted at the treatment they received. They were also wounded boys here. They were dragged along the corridors and flung into cells. It is hell to see our fellows treated like that for the sake of satisfying Collins’ and O’Duffy’s spite. They have refused to even let us move out to the lavatory and we are to receive criminal diet, etc.
We started smashing up last night as a protest and this show is in ruins nearly. Rumour has it that the executive are to be plugged after court-martial (the usual English style) but the sooner it comes the better.
If we could get some guns in here we may have a sporting chance of shooting our way out. Have you any ideas on the matter?
I was caught very badly, but I could not help it. However, what we want now is to get out.
Best of luck.
In haste.
Tom Barry
No exercise yet – 4.55.
One of our men Hussy has just been shot by Free Staters. They fired a volley through prisoners corridors. We are getting desperate.
Tom Barry.
(Note the mention of ‘McKelvey, Rory and Mellows’; Barry’s name was linked in the prison authorities’ eyes, with these three, to be ‘plugged’) This letter was captured in Blessington. Shortly, these selected men were moved to C wing.[24]
Despite Barry’s belief that Collins was being satisfied, Neligan admitted that ‘Collins thought the world’ of Barry who was ‘a column leader of genius. By Christ he was!’[25]
One Saturday evening Tom spoke to prison officer, Ignatius O’Rourke ‘through C wing circle railings’ (over 47 years later, O’Rourke recalled the details for Tom):
You made me an offer of £5,000 if I took the chance of letting yourself and four other C wing prisoners escape. You told me you’d give me the cheque and I could cash it ... I remember how I felt at the offer and what I said to you in retort. Had I known some weeks later, when I seen the four you mentioned being executed I might have thought better, without the acceptance of £5,000 for my assistance in their release.[26]
It is ironic that it was the four men in C wing – Joe McKelvey, Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellows and Dick Barrett (best man at Tom Barry’s wedding) – who were executed on 8 December. (Barry most likely would have been executed if he was still in custody at that time.) [27]
‘Barry could not wait, and finally made a bid for freedom in a Free State army coat’ and leggings.[28]
Rory O’Connor gave Barry £5 ‘he had kept hidden somehow’. Clad in the uniform with the former owner’s pass, all covered by a ‘dust coat’ with cap under his arm Barry walked behind Rory O’Connor. Elsewhere Dick Barrett and a few lads started ‘a mock fight’ as they played football. They had been ‘preparing the stage effects for a few weeks.’ Unseen, Barry slipped out of the ‘dust coat’ crawled under the barbed wire, put on his uniform cap and stood up. He walked quickly towards the sentry. ‘Do you see that wire sentry?’ Barry said, as he pointed to the opening through which he had crawled. ‘Take my tip and report that when you go off: take a tip from an old soldier!’ Then he noticed that the sentry held ‘his rifle by the muzzle with the butt end trailing’. It was a major offence for a sentry, according to Barry. ‘Shoulder your rifle’, Barry shouted. ‘The governor and his staff are coming out – and shout at those fellows to stop fighting!’ Barry walked slowly towards the wicket-gate, knocked, ‘Open up, I’m going out for a drink,’ he called to the man who opened the window slot. The man opened the gate bolt, then immediately slammed it back, and re-opened the slot. ‘You’re not a soldier,’ he said excitedly, ‘You’re the prisoner Barry.’ Barry discreetly stole away for the main entrance and joined a queue of soldiers at the first of two iron-barred gates where their passes were being glanced over prior to being allowed through. A soldier in line invited Barry to a ‘hooly’. He ‘readily accepted’. He was third from the gate when an officer dashed out of the gatehouse, ‘Close the gate’, he shouted. ‘Nobody leave. A prisoner is loose in uniform!’ Police officer Ignatius O’Rourke ‘was walking down by the big wall’ and noticed a ‘badly dressed’ soldier; ‘nothing seemed to fit’. He recalled that Barry ‘had stooped to fix his left leggings’ as O’Rourke passed and ‘for some reason became suspicious’. He went to the main gate and waited. ‘I stopped you and asked your name.’ Barry responded, ‘Tommy O’Brien’.
Barry answered all the questions smartly and produced his pass. ‘You are Tom Barry’, said O’Rourke.
Barry pointed to the pass-out – 7 p.m. to 11.30 p.m. ‘Do you not believe this?’
O’Rourke immediately put a guard on Barry and went for the military governor who would know Tom Barry. The soldiers were lined up for inspection. Tom says, ‘we came smartly to attention’. Seán O’Connell whom Tom had met with Michael Collins the previous year, walked straight up, removed the cap, stuck it back again, and said, ‘Hard luck Tom!’[29]
The military governor rushed out, ‘Where is he, where is he?’ Tom never a man to miss a trick said, ‘He’s gone, gone twenty minutes ago!’ Instantly the governor recognised his man. He shook hands and said, ‘That was a narrow thing, Tom!’ Peadar O’Donnell and his comrades looked on in dismay. ‘He was within an ace of success.’[30]
Inside in his office O’Hegarty ‘produced £1 from his pocket and sent for a bottle of whiskey to celebrate the great capture.’ In the office joining Tom Barry in a drink were Ginger O’Connell, Joe Dolan, Bob Martin and a few others. ‘After all the excitement had died down Dermot O’Hegarty instructed me to take you down to B Basement,’ Ignatius O’Rourke recalled. ‘I’ll never forget the state of the cell you were put into.’ When O’Rourke reported the conditions, O’Hegarty said that there was no option. O’Rourke, on leave from 8 p.m. until 4 a.m. discovered that nobody had visited Tom in the cell during all this time. ‘I was disgusted and went down myself … You complained of lack of air saying you were near suffocated and asked to knock out a few panes of glass’.
‘Use your shoe’, said O’Rourke. Barry asked O’Rourke to give him his revolver. ‘I’ll break them with the butt’. O’Rourke hesitated. He knew Tom’s reputation in the IRA and recalled for Tom:
I wasn’t inclined to hand you my gun without first breaking it and extracting the six-pound. You asked me not to break it, and gave me your word of Honour that you’d hand it back to me loaded as it was. I handed you my revolver loaded and you stood on the heating pipe in the cell, and broke five little window pains. I stood over very close to you expecting anything to happen. And true to your word of honour you handed me back the revolver. What a relief I got when you did, is only known to myself. Never in my life did I feel fear until I handed you my gun. No one would believe what I am relating only those who acted the part. Had you decided to knock me out, you could have walked out a free man because I had all the keys of the respective gates on my person. We were also about the same height and age. Had you walked up to the circle and out through the circle door it’s hardly likely you’d have been questioned because the three fellows there were half asleep when I walked up. It was also me who was given the job of taking you out for recreation forenoon and afternoon during your basement confinement. And be it said to your credit not once did you pass an uncomplimentary remark to me either about myself or the state I was serving, so much so that I always think of you with the kindness of feeling… I am an honest believer in historical truth, and would like to expose the self-invested interested group, who availed of every opportunity during our unfortunate split to further their own ends.
For three weeks Barry was held in solitary confinement in this punishment cell. He didn’t know what his fate would be or how long he would be held in confinement, and during this time he say
s he kept convincing himself that he would escape. In the early hours of his twenty-first morning – shortly after 1 a.m. five or six soldiers came to his cell, threw in his boots, told him to dress at once as he was going to another prison. He dressed, but said he would not go. ‘I’ve done my time in this hell-hole!’ They threw him on the ground, caught his legs and dragged him up the iron steps. His head banged and bumped on each step up to ground level. Almost unconscious, he was pushed into an armoured car, and taken to Kilmainham Jail. The governor, Seán Ó Murthuile, whom Tom described as ‘a decent man and humane prison governor’, had waited up, though it was after 2 o’clock. When he saw Tom’s condition he was angry and immediately got him medical attention. After some days, once he was well, he was again allowed to mix with the prisoners.[31]
Here Tom made another unsuccessful attempt to escape. This time he had a full Free State uniform, but again his uniform was such a misfit, so baggy around the knees and the coat was so huge that he was halted in his bid for freedom. This time the governor, Seán Ó Muirthile had known Tom and didn’t prescribe any punishment.[32]
On the night of 23 August 1922 he was talking with some other prisoners in the corridor outside the top tier of cells when somebody came with the news that Michael Collins had been shot dead in West Cork the previous night – Tom’s first wedding anniversary. One year on, these men who were united at his wedding, were now fighting and killing one another. Word spread around quickly so that everybody knew. A questioning silence spread throughout the jail.
Tom recalled looking down shortly afterwards from the corridor above ‘on the extraordinary picture of about a thousand kneeling Republican prisoners spontaneously reciting the Rosary aloud for the repose of the soul of the dead Michael Collins, commander-in-chief of the Free State forces.’ He felt there was little logic in such an action, but it was a wonderful tribute to the part played by a man who had worked tirelessly in the struggle to gain independence for Ireland. Even through all the bitterness of Civil War ‘those Republican prisoners remembered that the dead leader, latterly their enemy, was once the driving force and the inspiration in their struggle against the British forces of occupation.’[33]
Tom was unaware at that time of the value Michael Collins had placed on his integrity. The previous week when Collins visited Maryborough prison while on his army inspection tour, he specifically asked for, and spoke to, Republican prisoner, Tomás Ó Maoileóin. He asked him if he would ‘attend a meeting of senior officers to try to put an end to this damned thing’. Collins ‘slapped one fist into a palm in characteristic fashion: That’s fine, the three Toms’ will fix it.’ The three Toms were Tom Barry, Tom Hales and Tomás Ó Maoileóin – all strong Republican activists and friends of Collins. Collins, who ‘appeared to be acting on his own’ did not mention ‘any political aspects’ but suggested they meet with some of his own senior officers ‘to arrange for a cessation of hostilities’.[34] (When Barry got out of jail, later, he ‘interviewed’ men who had participated in the ambush and spoke to the man ‘who fired the long range shot’ that killed Collins.)[35]
On the 30 August, just eight days after Collins’ death, Monsignor O’Hagan, rector of the Irish College in Rome who was in Ireland, was contacted by Seán T. O’Kelly who wrote to Richard Mulcahy requesting him to hold a meeting with Tom Barry, Liam Mellows, Rory O’Connor, Oscar Traynor – all in jail. Mulcahy agreed. O’Connor and Mellows jointly welcomed ‘any efforts promising to end this new and unnatural attack on the independence of the country.’ However, when Liam Lynch was informed he was unhappy and wondered why ‘not direct negotiations?’ Lynch himself was still free. Mulcahy sent Liam Tobin into Kilmainham, where ‘hot words on both sides’ ended in stalemate, as Tobin tried ‘to bully Barry and place obstacles in the way of the talks’, according to O’Kelly, who believed the Provisional government was only copper-fastening the continuance ‘of the war until the very last bit of ammunition of the republicans has been expended and the last of their men imprisoned or shot.’[36]
A little over a week after the Kilmainham incident, early in September, Barry was removed to Gormanstown Camp, which was still being wired up. This internment camp was intended to be secure, so that Barry and his equals would have no hope of escape. The military were determined not to let Barry from their grip.[37]
On his way in, a Free State officer remarked, ‘We have you now, Barry, and by God you won’t get away from us!’ Willing to accept any challenge Barry said, ‘I’ll bet you ten bob I’ll be out within 24 hours.’
‘I’ll take you on because, by hell, you won’t!’
Inside the compound, which wasn’t yet fully organised, officers and soldiers were busy taking in prisoners. Soon Barry noticed workmen putting up some posts and barbed wire on a fence. He walked across the enclosure, pretended he was doing some fixing, and took up a plank on his shoulder. Nobody noticed. He looked like one of the workmen. Shortly he went to the ‘blind’ side. ‘It was a chance to be taken in a flash, and Barry in such cases is lightning.’[38]
(It was almost 40 years later when he collected the bet – at a protest meeting in Cork city concerning the sale and division of the De Vesci Estate. The once ‘enemy’ officer and Barry chatted freely on that day, united in the cause of the small farmer. Barry laughed when he recalled the event. That day he showed Brendan O’Neill the ten-shilling note – collected without interest.)[39]
Tom Barry was free – lucky to be free!
He was lucky because on 7 December 1922. Dáil Deputy Seán Hales was shot dead in Dublin and his companion Pádraic Ó Maille was seriously wounded. Acting ruthlessly and swiftly the Free State government decided to execute four prisoners, one from each province – four important Republican men who had been in prison since the surrender of the Four Courts.
Dick Barrett, of Barry’s flying column, was the man chosen for Munster. (Dick, a teacher, had been imprisoned on Spike Island in 1921 and with Tom Crofts and Bill Quirke had escaped in a row boat.). Ernest Blythe, the then minister for local government, told me that if Tom Barry had still been in jail he would have been the man executed for Munster. Blythe had no hesitation in saying they would have been glad ‘to get’ Barry.[40]
It is ironic that Seán Hales, Tom Barry and Dick Barrett, who had often slept in ‘the big bed’ together in O’Mahony’s of Belrose while ‘on the run’ during the War of Independence, had their lives balanced against each other.
Notes
[1]Florence O’Donoghue, FO’D Papers, MS 31,261 (1), NLI; Michael Farrell, Irish Times, 14 December 1982.
[2]O’Malley, The Singing Flame, p. 82.
[3]Ibid.
[4]O’Donoghue, No Other Law, 245.
[5]J. Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army, 49; FO’D Papers, MS31,396, NLI.
[6]Neenan in MacEoin, Survivors, p. 243. Connie Neenan who later became a true friend of Tom Barry’s, was adj. First Southern Division, went to the US in 1926 and was appointed IRA representative in America in 1927, resigned in 1929 and became involved in Clan na Gael ; see J. McGarrity Papers, MS 17534 (3), NLI.
[7]MacBride in Survivors, p. 128.
[8]Florence O’Donoghue, Eyewitness, FO’D Papers, MS.31,396, NLI. Cathal Brugha sat in front seat; see also Ryan, The Real Chief, pp. 113–115.
[9]MacBride in MacEoin, Survivors, p. 128.
[10]Ryan, The Real Chief, pp. 114, 115; MacBride in MacEoin, Survivors, p. 128; O’Malley, The Singing Flame, pp. 82, 83; see also O’Donoghue, No Other Law, p. 246.
[11]Florence O’Donoghue, FO’D Papers, MS 31,396, NLI; Tom Barry, unpublished document, TB private papers; O’Malley, The Singing Flame, p. 83.
[12]Seán MacBride, author interview 6/2/1977; Florence O’Donoghue, MS 31, 396, FO’D Papers, NLI.
[13]Ryan, The Day Michael Collins Was Shot, p. 17.
[14]Ibid., pp. 17–21; Lloyd George to Michael Collins 22/6/1922, MP, P7/B/244 1 and 2, UCDA; Mick O’Sullivan, O’MN P17b/111, UCDA; see also Hopkinson, Green, pp. 112–114; Bowyer Bell, The Secr
et Army, pp. 49, 50; O’Donoghue, No Other Law, pp. 251, 252.
[15]Ryan, The Real Chief, pp. 107–109; Tom Barry, Military Registration Board, Dept of Defence.
[16]Ryan, The Real Chief, pp. 107–109; Tom Barry, Military Registration Board, Dept of Defence.
[17]Order: 26/6/22. A/0943/1 – 15, Military Archives, Dublin.
[18]Tom Barry, unpublished document, TB private papers.
[19]Tom Barry, author interview; Tom Barry, Military Registration Board, Dept of Defence.
[20]Dave Neligan, Curious Journey, ed. Griffith and O’Grady, p. 284.
[21]Peadar O’Donnell in MacEoin, Survivors, p. 26; Peadar O’Donnell, The Gates Flew Open, p. 13.
[22]Pádraig Ó Cronin for governor, 15/7/1922, TB private papers.
[23]O’Donnell in MacEoin, Survivors, p. 26; Gleeson in MacEoin, Survivors, p. 273.
[24]Tom Barry to OC Dublin Brigade, 1/7/’22, P7a/80 MP, UCDA; also Lot 177/N.12, Military Archives, Dublin.
[25]Dave Neligan, author interview 27/8/1974; also Neligan, Curious Journey, ed. Griffith and O’Grady, pp. 284, 285.
[26]Ignatius O’Rourke to Tom Barry, 2 October 1963 – it appears from this correspondence that Tom Barry had given his side of the story ‘after the passing of 41 years’.
