Rebels

by Peter De Rosa

  On the roof, a ragged twelve-year-old Dubliner appeared and regaled the marksmen with the most colourful language some of them had ever heard. He reeled it off without thinking, like a priest saying Mass. ‘Give it to the bloody shite-heads, me boyos. Plug holes in them Limey bastards.’

  When a bullet ricocheted at his feet, he looked down on the spot with infinite contempt. ‘Feck off,’ he said.

  A white-haired priest arrived in a puff and caught an earful.

  ‘Be a good lad,’ he urged, ‘and go home to your mommy.’

  ‘Bejasus,’ the lad replied, spitting, ‘ye must be daft.’

  The men’s faces were still creased with laughter as the priest gave them general absolution for their sins, ‘Ego vos absolvo a peccatis vestris.…’

  A Citizen Army man, who had been a sailor, appeared on the roof. His vile language was almost as bad as the boy’s and more malicious. The others thought that if he didn’t stop God might strike them all dead.

  ‘Go to confession,’ they told him.

  ‘I haven’t been in fifteen years.’

  He was persuaded that that made it more imperative. So he went downstairs and confessed, his pipe still in his mouth.

  He was replaced on the roof by Pearse, shadowed by his brother. The Commander-in-Chief stood loftily over his men.

  ‘The whole of Ireland is proud of you. I know you’ve had no sleep since Monday. As soon as I can relieve you I will.’

  Lieutenant Boland could stand the strain no longer.

  ‘Would you mind ducking before you get your bloody head, begging your pardon, sir, blown off.’

  Just before ten, Major Vane’s party left Portobello to place an observation post on the top of Rathmines Town Hall.

  The mood in the Barracks was very angry. That morning, the coffins of two fallen soldiers, draped with the Union Jack and flanked by armed men, had been carried in silence through the yard for burial.

  A young Irish Lieutenant in the British army, Monk Gibbon, on leave from England, had joined Vane in Portobello and the Major had taken him under his wing. During his absence, Gibbon heard talk of a prisoner who was making a damned nuisance of himself. Just after ten fifteen, he went to see for himself.

  Skeffy scrambled to his feet and bowed to the Lieutenant. His only offence was that he refused to eat breakfast because he was a vegetarian and there was animal fat in the food.

  He struck Gibbon as being a smaller version of Bernard Shaw. He wore knickerbockers and sported a tiny reddish beard. He seemed a very gentle person, an odd mixture of dignity and absurdity.

  ‘I wonder,’ Skeffy said, ‘if word might be sent to my wife. She was expecting me last night. Also, the soldiers took £8 off me. If this could be given to her it will help tide her over till I’m freed.’

  Gibbon promised to do his best. ‘Anything else?’

  Skeffy sniffed and said, ‘Yes, sir. They have taken my handkerchief away.’

  Gibbon smiled. ‘I’ll go and get it for you right away,’ he said.

  Colthurst was at that moment demanding of Lieutenants Toomey, Wilson and Dobbin that they turn the three prisoners over to him. His eyes were big black craters, as though he had been made up as a villain in a melodrama. ‘I intend,’ he said, breathing heavily, ‘to shoot the prisoners. It is the right thing to do.’

  In a panic, Dobbin sent a soldier to alert the Orderly Room as Colthurst grabbed the keys from Sergeant Aldridge and unlocked Skeffy’s cell door. ‘Out!’

  Skeffy had no idea what was going to happen. He walked stiffly across the yard, his hands still bound behind him. It was a small yard surrounded by a high wall.

  Colthurst called up seven armed privates. Without warning, he gave the order, ‘Fire!’ and they shot Skeffy in the back.

  The two terrified editors were marched out and shot down next to him.

  Dobbin, his heart thumping madly, noticed Skeffy was moving. He nudged Sergeant Aldridge, ‘That one’s not dead.’

  Aldridge went to tell Colthurst, who said coolly, ‘Finish him off.’

  Four soldiers then riddled the body with bullets.

  Gibbon came running with Skeffy’s handkerchief in his hand to find three men on stretchers, two with a ragged blanket over them. The third, a midget, had no blanket, only a bowler cupping his face. An icy hand gripped Gibbon in the stomach which he felt would stay there all his life.

  Colthurst was already on the phone to the Castle to say three prisoners had been shot trying to escape.

  The yard walls were spattered with blood. For the next two hours, prisoners heard sounds of washing and scrubbing. When Major James Rosborough appeared at 11 a.m., Colthurst repeated the story he had made up.

  The Major reported to the Adjutants at both garrison HQ and the Castle, ending with, ‘What am I to do?’

  ‘Simple,’ he was twice advised. ‘Bury the bodies and forget it.’

  Rosborough told Colthurst to write out his report. He administered no rebuke and did not relieve him of his command. Colthurst wrote that the three men had tried to escape; he had had no choice. Skeffington, he said, had on him incriminating documents which he had handed in to the Orderly Room.

  When Vane was returning from the Town Hall, he and his men were met by a hostile crowd and cries of ‘Murderers!’ Never having had that charge thrown at him before, he was very angry, but far angrier when Gibbon told him what lay behind it. He saw Rosborough, who said dismissively, ‘It’s over.’

  ‘Over, sir? Many incidents like this and we’ll have the whole of Ireland against us.’

  ‘I happen to agree with you,’ the Major said. ‘I’d be grateful if you lectured the men on how to behave during martial law.’

  Vane went to the Officers’ Mess, where he tackled Colthurst head-on.

  ‘What the hell have you been up to?’

  Colthurst observed him with cold, empty eyes. ‘Are you a Sinn Feiner?’

  Vane fought to keep his temper. ‘I happen to sympathize with all brave men who stand up for a principle.’

  ‘Exactly what I thought.’

  ‘That doesn’t make me fight them any the less but it does eliminate all the bitterness in the fighting and after.’

  ‘Who’s bitter, old man?’ Colthurst said.

  At midday, a surgeon was called to the Barracks to examine the bodies and arrange for their removal to the local morgue. Colthurst had already been through Skeffy’s pockets. He was disappointed not to find anything incriminating. He would have to remedy that. He gave a soldier Skeffy’s ‘Votes For Women’ badge as a souvenir.

  Further west along the quays, Crown troops had taken over houses around the Mendicity Institute and, from the roofs, were blazing away with rifles and machine-guns.

  Along the front of the Institute was a wall. Soldiers were creeping along the far side of it and hurling in grenades. Some hit the outside of the building, exploding harmlessly. Others went through the windows. Heuston’s men picked these up or snatched them in mid-air and threw them out. Liam Staines caught one as it exploded. Dick Balfe, next to him, was knocked over by the blast. Their blood spattered the walls and the floor.

  Heuston had to make a quick decision. There was not the slightest chance of them rejoining the 1st Battalion at the Four Courts. He had asked his men to hold out for three or four hours and they had lasted against appalling odds for two days. They had gone sleepless, with little food or drink, and their ammunition was almost spent. Now two critically injured men needed attention. He hoisted a white flag at a window. When firing ceased, he thanked his men before leading them into the yard.

  The British had seen many of their comrades cut down. As soon as the rebels surrendered, they disarmed them and roughed them up.

  Red-faced officers demanded to know why the others had not surrendered. Heuston said, ‘There are no others.’

  As his company was lining up, a single shot rang out from the direction of a brewery in Thomas Street and Peter Wilson, one of his men, dropped dead.


  The 178th North Midland Division, commanded by Colonel Maconchy, CB, CIE, DSO, had come over from Liverpool in the night. Owing to haste and lack of space aboard, their Lewis guns had been left on the dockside.

  Around midday, the Sherwood Foresters, known as the Robin Hoods, were heading an advance party of 800 along the road to Dublin. Youngsters for the most part, they soon forgot the rough crossing in the joy of being feted from the moment they left Kingstown at 10.30. Some thought they were in France. They greeted the ladies with ‘Bonjoor, Madame and Mam’selle.’ Many were astonished to find that so many French people spoke almost English.

  Once it dawned on them that they were in Ireland they refused offers of food in case it had been poisoned by Sinn Feiners. Later, seeing the natives were friendly, they accepted it gratefully. During the long march, tea and cakes helped them cope with the Mediterranean heat of the day. Officers were offered maps and binoculars.

  Captain F. C. Dietrichsen, Adjutant of the 2/7th, was surprised to hear a couple of children calling out, ‘Daddy, Daddy.’ They were his own. His wife had sent them over without telling him to escape the Zeppelin raids in England. He gave them a big hug. ‘See you later,’ he said.

  Two battalions branched off left for Kilmainham. They ran into no trouble, apart from the occasional sniper. The two battalions ordered to Trinity by the direct route – Merrion Road, Ballsbridge and across the bridge to Merrion Square – met a different fate.

  The thirteen rebels guarding the Mount Street bridge put the finishing touches to their defences and gulped down what might be their last cup of tea. Their rifles were loaded, their ammunition within easy reach. They said their prayers.

  Colonel Maconchy had remained with the column heading for Trinity. He made temporary Brigade HQ at the Royal Dublin Society where prize bullocks, pedigree cattle and farm implements were being exhibited. Having settled in, he ordered the advance.

  In charge was Lieutenant-Colonel Fane, CMG, DSO, a cavalry officer and veteran of Mons, now CO of 2/7. Maconchy told Fane, ‘According to latest intelligence, rebels have taken over a school on the right-hand side of Northumberland Road.’

  The intelligence was faulty.

  Monteith had sent Tommy McEllistrim to Tralee to ask Cahill what he intended doing, in view of the rising in Dublin. Cahill said, ‘If we do turn out, Monteith will have to lead us.’

  ‘That’s crazy,’ Monteith said heatedly. ‘I’ll willingly march with the rest of you and fight till I drop. But if I tried to make Tralee in daylight they’d pick me off like an apple on a tree.’

  There were signs that, owing to the rising, the RIC were intensifying their search for him. McEllistrim was a Volunteer. It seemed only a question of time before they searched his place.

  From the Shelbourne Hotel, a man emerged holding big brown paper bags above his head. The Countess, on the roof of the College of Surgeons, saw him through her binoculars.

  ‘Hold your fire, chaps,’ she cried.

  The sniper next to her was peeved. ‘What is it, madame?’

  ‘If you ask me,’ she said, ‘some generous soul is wanting to give grub to the bally birds.’

  She lowered the flag to show she agreed.

  From then on the Park Keeper, James Kearney, was allowed, under truce, to cross the road and enter the Green twice a day to feed the ducks.

  A stone’s throw away from the Shelbourne, Maurice Headlam was returning to his lodgings after a vacation. He was Treasury Remembrancer at the Castle; he looked after the salaries and pensions of Government employees. Aged forty-three, balding with dark eyebrows and pert nose, he was a pernickety, pipe-smoking, rather small-minded man.

  A dead Sinn Feiner was lying beside the railings and a few young men were debating whether to bury him. An old hag was screaming, ‘Let the carrion rot. Haven’t they brought shame on the fair name of Ireland?’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ Headlam muttered.

  After he had unpacked and freshened up, he hurried to the Castle along silent streets, reeking with the smell of cordite. In the Lower Yard, he found soldiers sunning themselves and smoking cigarettes, while bullets from Jacob’s flew overhead. In a couple of days, the youngsters had acquired a kind of detachment in the face of death.

  His office-keeper was less philosophical. ‘I’m glad you’ve come, sir,’ he said. ‘There’s a Sinn Feiner on the roof, shot dead, and my kids are scared out of their wits.’

  Headlam went for a word with Edgeworth-Johnstone, Head of the DMP, whose office was next to his own, but that flushed, stout gentleman with a boyish face was marooned on the telephone.

  When his office-keeper told him where the Under-Secretary was, Headlam thought it poetic justice. Nathan, at that moment, was in his stable deep in conversation with another arch critic, Norway.

  Sir Matthew was in an untypically foul mood. Firstly, he knew Norway disapproved of official policies. Secondly, with the tightening of the military cordon around the city, food was scarce. Thirdly, he was not sleeping; the sofa was lumpy and the covers did not keep him warm. This had led, fourthly, to his catching a cold made more irritating by the motes of straw in the air, and, fifthly, he had only tiny women’s handkerchiefs to deal with it. Hence the redness of his nose above the walrus-like moustache. Finally and climactically, his career, till now a series of ascending triumphs, was at an abrupt end.

  ‘What I want to know, Norway,’ he was saying, ‘is, can you restore postal deliveries to parts of Dublin.’

  ‘Which parts, sir?’

  ‘That is for you to tell me.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Norway said, with the truculence of one who knew he was dealing with a man on the way down, ‘that is for you to tell me. All I know is that anyone in uniform is immediately fired upon.’

  ‘You are exaggerating, Norway.’

  ‘Perhaps, then, sir, you will tell me the districts which you guarantee are safe.’

  Nathan disliked his tone. ‘I want your answer by 4 this afternoon,’ he said. ‘In writing.’

  As Norway left, he ran into Headlam who said, ‘Funny business, Hamilton.’

  Norway winked. ‘We knew it, didn’t we, Maurice?’

  Headlam knocked on the stable door and waited for, ‘Come in, please,’ before entering with a sneer that made Nathan bristle. ‘Anything I can do, sir?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Nathan wiped his runny nose. The wretched little hankie was a symbol of his new pinched circumstances. ‘There’ll be no salaries, sniff, dispensed for some time.’

  When he had got rid of Headlam, he phoned Estelle at his lodge.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she told him. ‘My two are fine. So is Dorothy. When the firing gets very hot, I just get out good old Conan Doyle and read them another tale of Sherlock Holmes.’

  It was 12.30 p.m. when Fane’s company passed the Royal Dublin Show, completely empty save for a few members of staff looking after the pedigree cattle. At the beginning of Northumberland Road, they were still 300 yards from Mount Street Bridge.

  Fane peered ahead down the leafy, sun-dappled avenue of middle-class suburbia. It was mellow and scented as an apple-orchard, quiet as a railway tunnel. Too quiet. It reeked of the menace of man-made silence. He sniffed. It was there, stronger-smelling than a galloped horse, some thing that would turn that street into a battle field.

  He decided to play it by the book. He waved his men on in Indian file on both footpaths with fixed bayonets, followed closely by troops four abreast.

  They were expecting the threat to be on their right, that is, to the north, where the school was supposed to be occupied and behind which was the rebel stronghold of Boland’s Mill.

  In fact, it came suddenly from their left. Malone from a bathroom window and Grace on the top floor opened up.

  Ten of Fane’s men fell, the rest scrambled for cover in front gardens and behind trees. The Colonel kept his wits about him, noting that firing had come from No 25.

  Round one to the rebels.

  Fane’s men had no experience o
f street warfare. Without machine-guns, field-guns, even grenades, against a dug-in force, numbers unknown, attacking from unexpected quarters, he knew his task was formidable.

  Even he failed to notice that some of the firing had come from the Parochial Hall to the right and that snipers were posted in a house straight ahead across the bridge. As he marshalled his men to bayonet-charge No 25, the rebels in Clanwilliam House set their sights.

  He blew his whistle, junior officers waved their swords as though they were in Flanders’ fields and, ‘Forwa-a-ard.’

  Man after man fell to sustained volleys. The British replied but though hundreds of shots were fired at Grace and Malone, neither was hit.

  Some Tommies reached the bolted front door and tried to force an entry with their rifle butts, only to be shot with revolvers at close range.

  The main force passed on towards the bridge without neutralizing No 25 or the Parochial Hall. Their officers arrogantly insisted on keeping to the direct route to Trinity across the bridge, regardless of how many men were lost. Owing to faulty intelligence, they failed to realize that this was the one bridge in all Dublin dominated by the rebels. Soon the barrels of the four Volunteers on the first floor of Clanwilliam House and the four snipers in the Parochial Hall were red-hot as the British were caught in a murderous cross-fire.

  In an attempt to outflank the rebels along the canal, Fane sent C Company left up Haddington Road to Baggot Street Bridge. The result was that the company came under fire from a new position, the railway line spanning the canal further down. Their officers, easily identified by their Sam Browne belts, were all killed or wounded.

  When the first soldier to reach the bridge fell, a young woman emerged from a nearby house, carrying a blue enamel jug. She ran on to the bridge but bullets forced her down the grassy slope to the canal bank.

  Next, a girl in a servant’s apron ran on to the bridge and lifted both hands high in the air until the firing stopped. The first girl came up from the bank and joined her. They picked the soldier up and carried him to, where a crowd was sheltering, including Red Cross personnel. They cheered the girls and took the wounded man to Patrick Dun’s Hospital nearby.