In the wet dawn, as soon as the machine-gunners overlooking the Green could pick out a target, they opened up.
The Countess was rudely awakened by bullets ripping into the roof of her car. ‘Steady on, old chaps,’ she said, as she hastily jumped out and took cover. She glanced at her watch. ‘Thanks for waking me, I must’ve overslept.’
A Citizen Army man fell dead. Another, with narrow shoulders, was wounded at the Shelbourne gate; a bullet pierced Mallin’s hat, an inch above the band, as he crawled to bring him in. There was no weight to Jimmy Fox.
The lad’s war was brief. He had spent a cold, sodden night in the open, listening to the faint quack of ducks, then pigeons grumbling and threshing. On his cheeks, as yellow as laburnum blossom, tears were indistinguishable from rain. His chattering teeth were saying Da-Da-Da-Da-Da. Minutes later, on his blue lips a bubble trembled, the flimsy iridescent home of his last breath. It popped and he was dead.
Mallin looked with reverence at his face, bloodied and innocent as a newborn’s. Then, clasping him to his breast, his lips pressed to his head, he prayed for his departing soul and his all-alone father and for his own sons, especially little Joseph, that they would not have to die like this.
Tommy Keanan pointed to Jimmy. ‘Whatsamarrer wiv ’im?’
For answer, Mallin clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Go home and tell your parents what you’re up to.’ He suddenly yelled, ‘That’s an order.’
With a last glum look at Jimmy Fox, Tommy legged it over the fence on the western side of the Green and ran home.
From trenches and behind trees that seemed to spin like tops in the mists, the rebels returned fire. Most of the sixty-two windows in the Shelbourne were hit, the bullets passing through cleanly without shattering the glass.
On the corner of Merrion Row and the Green, a horse went down whinnying, its flank gushing blood. Someone crawled out of a nearby house and, in pity, cut its throat. It gurgled, throbbed briefly and, open-eyed, lay still.
Another wounded rebel huddled up, clothes steaming, his hands moving now and again for help but several snipers had their sights on him, waiting for a comrade to come to his aid. He was to remain there a long while, a shapeless mass of pain and misery under a steady fall of rain.
At 7 a.m., Mallin gave the order to withdraw to the College of Surgeons. From the roof, Michael Docherty was giving them covering fire when he was hit. He slumped over the parapet, his blood mixed with rain broadly staining the wall pink.
Through a hail of bullets, carrying supplies and their dead and injured, Mallin’s squad scrambled over the railings and across the cobbles and tramlines to safety.
Inside, they barricaded windows with huge medical tomes, blocked up the main entrance with benches and heavy walnut bookcases. From the roof, the Countess, with a pang of envy, could just see the gentry taking a leisurely breakfast in the Shelbourne’s dining-room.
Below, the Republicans tended their wounded, including Michael Docherty who, with fifteen bullets in him, refused to die. From the Anatomy Room they brought slabs used for dissecting bodies and placed their own dead on them. From the Examination Hall they moved benches that had come from the Irish House of Lords.
The women built fires and cooked breakfast. Others explored draughty lecture rooms that contained big glass cases filled with human remains preserved in formaldehyde.
The Countess came down from the roof into the Boardroom where she stood gazing at a life-size portrait in oil of Queen Victoria. Her mind went back to the old Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 1887, the year of her own coming-out. She was nineteen years old. She had received lessons at Lissadel on how to curtsey before Her Majesty and how to retire backwards without stepping on her three-yard train. She managed it on 17 March, St Patrick’s Day, when she was presented by the Countess of Errol, lady-in-waiting to the Queen.
So painful were these memories now, she suggested to her comrades that while they were pledged not to damage College property, they ought to make an exception of this.
The painting was ripped from its frame and sliced up for gaiters.
Norway and his wife, Mary Louisa, turned their hotel suite into a post office and, during the day, never left the phone.
Norway’s Superintending Engineer, Gomersall, worked tirelessly to get external telegraph and telephone services back to normal. He and his men drove round Dublin picking up the ends of cables and leading them into Amiens Street Station through private circuits which they commandeered. The loss of the Telegraph Office in the GPO, therefore, hardly mattered. Telephone messages from Crown Alley were passed on to Amiens Street and relayed from there as telegrams.
In the GPO, a Volunteer hesitantly approached James Connolly. ‘Pardon me, sir, but I have to get to my work.’
‘God Almighty!’ bellowed Connolly. ‘Don’t you know, man, we’re in the middle of a revolution!’
‘Yes, sir,’ the Volunteer said, ‘but y’see I have the key to the warehouse.’
‘So?’
‘Well, if I don’t open up, the rest of the men will lose a day’s pay.’
Connolly relaxed. It was an argument he understood only too well. ‘Right, lad,’ he said, with a grin. ‘But when you get home and have a cup of cha, don’t you forget the revolution is still on.’
Pearse was meanwhile writing a bulletin to cheer up the troops. Like much of his life, it was flavoured with fantasy.
‘The Republican forces everywhere are fighting with splendid gallantry. The populace of Dublin are plainly with the Republic.’
The Republican sheet, the Irish War News, printed at Liberty Hall and priced one penny, carried the bulletin. It added, ‘The whole centre of the city is in the hands of the Republic, whose flag flies from the GPO.’
Sean McDermott’s friend, Jim Ryan, arrived in the GPO after relaying MacNeill’s cancellation to the Cork Brigade. To his amazement, the rising was on, after all.
He reported to Connolly, hoping to be handed a rifle, but he said, ‘I hear, Ryan, you are only two months from your medical finals. You can be far more use to us as a doctor.’
Ryan immediately sent out Joe Cripps who had worked in a pharmacy to raid all the chemists’ shops in the vicinity. He then commandeered two back rooms as a first-aid centre and a dormitory for casualties.
Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington came in for a word with Connolly. Women were carrying bags of bread, Oxo and potatoes to their strongholds. Connolly was giving them unobtrusive armed guard which Hanna thought unnecessary.
Just then Hanna caught sight of her eighty-year-old priest-uncle, Father Eugene Sheehy. Eamon de Valera had often served his Mass when he was little in the village of Bruree in County Limerick and sat on the alter step while Father Sheehy preached in honour of God and a free Ireland.
‘My God, Hanna,’ he cried, tottering towards her, ‘what are you doing here?’
‘Uncle Eugene, what are you doing here?’
‘I have come to give spiritual consolation.’
‘And I am bringing physical sustenance.’
Father Sheehy said, ‘I hear that man of yours is doing a grand job trying to stop the looting.’
MacDonagh’s wife came in to see Joe Plunkett.
‘Muriel,’ he said, lifting himself slightly off the floor and smiling. ‘Will you do something for me?’ She nodded. ‘Tell Grace I’m so sorry her groom didn’t turn up on Sunday.’
‘She understands, Joe.’
‘Tell her, I aim to marry her as soon as possible.’
Muriel, her eyes full of tears, promised.
Casement returned from Brixton Prison to Scotland Yard at 10 a.m. in the custody of Superintendent Sandercock.
‘I do hope you had a good night’s sleep,’ the Superintendent said pleasantly.
Casement had still not had a change of clothes but he had slept a little the night before, convinced that the rising was off.
This time, Thomson tried shock-tactics. ‘There has been a rising in Dublin.’
‘Oh, no-
o!’ It came out of Casement as an agonized groan.
‘It began yesterday. It cannot succeed, no one knows that better than you. A mere skirmish. Troops have been rushed there from all points of the compass.’
Casement put his hands over his stubbly face. Thomson, pressing home his advantage, pushed a secret buzzer. As arranged, Superintendent Patrick Quinn put his head round the door.
‘The trunks from Sir Roger’s lodgings in Ebury Street have just arrived, sir.’
They had, in fact, been at the Yard for over a year, ever since Casement was known to be in Berlin.
‘Sir Roger, you wouldn’t have the keys, I suppose?’ He shook his head. ‘Then,’ Thomson added apologetically, ‘would you mind us breaking into them?’ Again, Casement shook his head in a daze. ‘Thank you so much.’
Thomson turned to Quinn. ‘You have Sir Roger’s permission.’
‘One thing you could do for us, old boy,’ Thomson said. ‘Not just for us but for your friends in Ireland, too. Is there likely to be a second consignment of German arms?’
Casement’s head was reeling.
‘Only if I signalled to them. I was the only one who had the code. Half of it I kept but the other half went into the sea. So the answer is no.’
‘We have your word,’ Hall began. ‘But of course, we are all … yes, gentlemen.’
Minutes later, after a strained silence, Quinn returned with three notebooks and a ledger. Thomson and Hall handled them as if they had never seen them before.
Finally, Thomson said, ‘How very interesting. Would you care, Sir Roger, to tell us something about—’
‘My personal diaries,’ Casement said uncomfortably.
Gill’s pencil was racing over the paper.
‘I see here,’ Hall said, ‘lists, very long lists of mostly small payments.’ His voice turned razor-sharp. ‘For what? Payments for what?’
Casement’s horror was two-fold. His secret was out at last and known to his worst enemies. But what worried him more was the fact that brave Irishmen had taken on, against all odds, the might of the British Empire.
‘What for, Sir Roger?’
‘What for?’ he mumbled. ‘I cannot remember.’
Mid-morning found the looters, many from far afield, back in O’Connell Street. Rain, the policeman’s best friend, was falling but there were no policemen in sight.
Chief attraction for the children was Lawrences’ photographic and toy shop in Upper O’Connell Street. From the top floors, they were dropping picture frames, films and cameras to their friends below.
Many of the youngsters, still in glossy top hats and munching toffee, were letting off fireworks. Hundreds of them exploded like cannons. Rockets shot into the air. Roman candles oozed orange flames. Bangers made stragglers in the boulevard jump and run for cover.
Snipers on the Post Office roof noticed that opposite them the Cable Boot Shop was beginning to smoulder. Soon it was ablaze. One of them said, ‘Christ, them fireworks do more damage than our bloody bombs.’
The Fire Brigade was called. Meanwhile, a crowd gathered, many of them cheering.
One of the first on the scene was William Redmond-Howard, nephew of John Redmond. He was quick to spot the fact that the rooms over the shop were residential.
A man on the top floor poked his head out of the window. ‘What’s up with yous?’
He was told the whole place would soon be on fire. Some in the crowd tried to force an entry to alert the other residents. In minutes, everyone was out of the building, except for a woman who appeared at a top-floor window.
Someone screamed, ‘Look, that one’s expecting.’
The pregnant woman, in a panic, refused to budge.
By the time the Fire Brigade arrived the main staircase was burning. Two officers climbed it and returned carrying her, kicking and screaming, all the way down.
The firemen unrolled the hoses and played the jets on the flames, only to find the shoe shop next door was also ablaze. They managed to put both fires out but, owing to sniper-fire, were not able to complete the job. Anyone in uniform was likely to get a bullet. After they left in a hurry, the buildings were still smouldering, waiting only for a fresh gust of wind to flare up again.
Looters broke into a public house in Henry Street. At a side door to the GPO, a drunken woman offered the rebels a drink. When one of them put a bottle to his lips, an officer dashed it to the ground.
‘From now on,’ he said, ‘anyone seen taking the brown out of a bottle will be shot without warning.’
Connolly detailed a squad to break into the printing stores in Lower Abbey Street. They returned rolling huge bales of newsprint which it took three men to stand upright. These strengthened their defences.
Connolly also had barbed wire stretched from the GPO across the street to keep crowds from walking across their line of vision.
In the Commissary, Fitzgerald was eking out the food. Not that the men complained. It was so bad, they said, who would want to eat it, anyway?
Connolly gathered that the rest of the country had not risen. Sean T. O’Kelly reported back with the news that the firing they had heard earlier was Crown forces taking the City Hall. The enemy could not possibly be overstretched. Their inactivity around the GPO was all the more puzzling. What were the British up to?
Apart from isolated pockets of resistance around the Castle, since 3 that afternoon, the British had bisected the rebel forces, gained control of the entire west-east corridor and virtually cut off the rebel HQ from contact with their strongholds south of the Liffey.
Colonel Portal replaced the OTC in Trinity with regular troops of the Leinsters. He also posted machine-guns there, only a few hundred yards south of the Post Office.
In the early afternoon, the cordon around the GPO was extended to the north without any trouble.
Next came news that four 18-pounder quick-firing guns were on the way from Athlone. The railway line was up from Blanchardstown but they were coming on by road. Two would reach Trinity by the evening.
As the artillery approached Dublin, they blasted everything in their path. At 3.30, they blew to bits the barricade at the North Circular Road Bridge, enabling the Royal Dublin Fusiliers to capture Broadstone Station from Daly’s men.
They pressed on, tightening the noose around the GPO.
At Inchicore, just west of Kilmainham Hospital, the British were developing a secret weapon. The inventor was Colonel Allatt, a small plump man with white hair and white droopy moustache. His high complexion was due to a dicky heart.
The Railway Workshops were adapting locomotive boilers. They bored sniper holes in the sides and painted false holes on them to confuse rebel marksmen. When ready after only eight hours, they were lowered on to lorries supplied by Guinness’s Brewery. A cross between a submarine and a baker’s van, they would be able to transport twenty marksmen or a ton of supplies in safety anywhere in the city.
The Colonel kept hoisting himself up on the lorries to see if the work was going according to plan. More than once he nearly passed out with the strain.
*
That Tuesday afternoon, in the House of Commons, a Conservative, Mr Pemberton Billing, demanded an assurance of the Prime Minister that ‘this traitor, Casement, will be shot forthwith.’
In spite of the cheers, the Government had not yet decided whether he should be tried for treason or face a court martial.
To placate Parliament, while the Cabinet was making up its mind, he was moved from Brixton to the Tower of London.
At around 4 p.m., in Grafton Street, Dublin, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington met her husband for tea in Bewley’s. He told her he had enlisted some men, including a few priests, in his Peace Patrol but talking to looters and putting up posters was having no effect.
‘That’s why I’ve called a meeting this evening to organize a civic police force.’
Hanna begged him to avoid streets where firing was taking place and went home to look after their seven-year-old son.
Just before 5.30 p.m., news reached the GPO from Fergus O’Kelly in the wireless school: ‘Transmitter ready.’
Connolly composed a message, telling the outside world that an Irish Republic had been declared in Dublin and that a Republican army, authorized by a Republican government, was controlling the capital. It was picked up by Americans in time for the next day’s papers.
Minutes later, Connolly greeted some of his men who had been compelled to withdraw from north Dublin. They brought with them five prisoners. One of them was Captain George Mahoney, a Cork man in the British army.
‘I see,’ Connolly said to him, ‘that you are in the Medical Corps.’
The Captain nodded. He was, in fact, a doctor on convalescent leave from India where he had been injured in a fall in the Himalayas.
‘You could come in useful,’ Connolly said.
Just how useful, he did not know then.
Some time after 7 p.m., Skeffy, his meeting over, was walking home to Rathmines. Swinging his walking-stick, he kept to the middle of the road to show he was a harmless civilian. He was passing the Portobello Bridge when Lieutenant Morris arrested him and a few others and took them to the Barracks.
Skeffy had a reputation both as a campaigner against conscription and as a hunger-striker. It did not endear him to the military. His wife, a militant suffragette, was no better. All in all, a treacherous pair.
Skeffy was questioned. The only thing found on him was a circular advertizing a meeting of citizens against looting. The Adjutant, Lieutenant Morgan, reported the arrests to HQ. He was told to release all but Skeffington.
‘There’s no charge on the sheet,’ the Adjutant said.
‘Never mind, he supports Sinn Fein, doesn’t he?’
‘I believe he’s a pacifist, sir.’
Rebels Page 37
