Rebels

by Peter De Rosa

  When the firing resumed, several more soldiers fell on the bridge. Once more the girl in the apron ran out and stopped the firing. Eight men she helped in this way. The last of them was badly wounded in the back and thigh. She took off her apron and stuffed it down his trousers to try and staunch the blood. Drenched in blood herself, she was crying all the time.

  The fighting had developed into a battle of wills; it went on for an hour, then another hour.

  Six machine-guns had been playing for some time on Kelly’s, a shop that sold fishing tackle, a rebel outpost at the corner of Bachelor’s Walk. At 2.30 p.m., an 18-pounder, just north of Trinity College, joined in.

  With the first round from the big gun, windows in all the nearby houses shattered and the College quaked. The wham of the shell into Kelly’s could be heard across the city. The three sharp-shooters on the parapet held on for dear life as the building rocked like a ship in a storm.

  Crowds sat on the Liffey wall like spectators in a theatre. After a couple of days of glorious looting, they were now treated to this fireworks display.

  Splinters of red brick flew and dust clouds rose in the air. Machine-guns joined in, and their fire, till now venomous, seemed strangely muted in comparison with the artillery.

  The shells were incendiaries. Kelly’s caught fire as petrol burst into flame and spread.

  ‘They’re all dead,’ the spectators agreed, flinging their caps in the air. The inside of Kelly’s collapsed, as had Liberty Hall in the morning, leaving it as empty as a dog kennel.

  But the snipers survived. They had prepared their get-away by tunnelling into adjoining houses. They made it to the Metropole Hotel where Pearse sent them a commendation for bravery.

  As for Connolly, he was ecstatic. ‘I never knew they’d knock down buildings. They’re really rattled. It proves, doesn’t it, that our reinforcements are on the way?’

  From the Parnell Monument, a drunk was seen zigzagging in the centre of O’Connell Street towards the Liffey. A respectable drunk, too, in bowler hat, striped trousers and with rolled umbrella. Machine-gun bullets splintered the pavings before and after him. His unstable gait was his salvation. He travelled the whole length of the street before he fell into the arms of cheering spectators and threw up.

  At four in the afternoon, Norway also braved bullets to hand in his report to the Castle.

  After Nathan had asked him to restart postal services, he had received the same request from Wimborne and the Irish Office in London. They were wanting to assure Parliament that all was well in Dublin when it was in a mess. He had contacted a mail contractor who had said the chances of mail deliveries were zero.

  Nathan read Norway’s report and was furious. ‘You refuse to open up the postal districts.’

  ‘I don’t refuse, sir. It is just not possible.’

  ‘You are being obstructive, Norway.’

  ‘I am thinking of my men, sir, and not my reputation.’

  After two hours of bloody and fruitless battle, Colonel Fane asked Maconchy at the Royal Dublin Society for gun-cotton and grenades. When they arrived from a nearby bombing school, he was finally in a position to blast the door off No 25.

  Malone and Grace, knowing they had little time left, had made a pact: when the final assault came, they would come together and fight it out on the stairhead. But Fane’s men, having blasted the house with grenades, unexpectedly entered by the middle floor, roaring and screaming.

  Malone was upstairs and Grace in the unlit kitchen below, dowsing his hot rifle barrel in water. Between them were a dozen Tommies. Malone yelled, ‘I’m coming down, Seamus,’ just as he fell, shaking epileptically, riddled with bullets.

  Grace remained absolutely still in the kitchen, hiding behind a gas cooker.

  The Tommies searched every room except the kitchen, though they fired several shots into it and tossed a couple of grenades through a bomb-hole in the floor.

  Grace assumed no one dared to venture into a dark place where rebels might be lurking who had proved they seldom missed.

  The soldiers left, and Grace waited and waited. His sweaty hand gripped a revolver with only four cartridges left. When at last the house went quiet, he dismantled the barricade to the kitchen door, crept out and hid in the garden shed amid spades and mowers. Troops were still nosing around. He heard a soldier say, ‘No one could have survived in there.’

  Meanwhile, Fane’s men were bellying along the gutters, then across the bridge, past dead and dying comrades. Some of them, goggle-eyed, spluttering, legs jerking, tongues stiffening, slithered in agony in all directions like hooked fishes on a bank. Shot down at close range by marksmen in Clanwilliam House and the Parochial Hall, one was squeezing his leg to stop himself bleeding to death from a torn artery, one was spouting blood from both sides of his neck through which a bullet had passed. Some had their entrails hanging out, giving off a bluish vapour like burning brandy, others’ brains were exposed. Flies sizzled in thick dark gore in the burning heat. The blood of one mingled with that of another and the stench of it was overwhelming.

  On came another wave.

  More dead, more wounded, signing themselves, crying for their mothers. Between the crack and whine of bullets, the injured croaked for water like birds on a refuse tip or tried to put their bottles to their lips.

  A solitary gull dipped down and soared aloft with bloodied beak. In a grotesque imitation of the soldiers, sleek brown rats edged up from the banks of the stagnant canal.

  A couple of white-coated doctors, their hands held high, moved forward, with nurses and a priest in close attendance. In Clanwilliam House, Reynolds ordered his men to cease firing and yelled to the relief workers, ‘Go ahead.’ A pattern was established: fighting was followed by a pause to allow Red Cross workers to remove the casualties.

  Colonel Fane was himself hit badly in the left arm. He had it bandaged and put in a sling and rejoined his men.

  Reinforcements from other companies were sent in an encircling movement, B to the left, A to the right. They too were stopped by heavy fire, as were D Company.

  British snipers ascended the belfry of Haddington Road church and fired from the parapet. It did no good.

  Fane lost still more men outside the school opposite the end of Percy Lane, which he still mistakenly thought was occupied, and in the approaches to the bridge.

  The GPO had no radio or telephone link-up even with its outposts across the street.

  Captain Brennan Whitmore on the east side threw a ball of twine across the boulevard. A can was fixed on the twine to carry messages. It was on its third journey across when a volunteer Aussie marksman in Trinity scored a direct hit on it.

  From then on, the rebels simply sent over pieces of paper, some of which arrived with perforations.

  Mr Coade, father of the lad whom Colthurst had killed outside Rathmines church, went that Wednesday afternoon to the mortuary. He was heart-broken to see his son’s fractured jaw and what the bullet, fired at close range, had done to his head.

  He saw other corpses as well, including that of Skeffy. A priest with him also identified Skeffy’s corpse.

  In the billiard room of Portobello Barracks, Major Vane was lecturing the men on their duties under martial law.

  ‘I want to make one thing plain. No one, repeat, no one is entitled to shoot a person down in cold blood. If I hear any of you doing that I’ll see to it personally you are prosecuted under the common law. Is that understood?’

  Colthurst was, meanwhile, on the rampage.

  Just north of the Barracks in Camden Street, his squad was flushing out rebels from the outposts of Jacob’s Factory. From one house a man emerged into the yard with his hands above his head. He was a labour leader, Councillor Richard O’Carroll.

  Colthurst stood over him. ‘Are you a Sinn Feiner?’

  ‘From the backbone out!’ the Councillor replied.

  Without another word, Colthurst shot him in the chest, piercing his lung.

  A worried soldie
r said, ‘Are you sure he’s dead, sir?’

  ‘Never you mind,’ Colthurst barked, ‘he’ll die when he’s ready. Just drag him into the street.’

  It was hours before O’Carroll was picked up by a bread van and taken to Portobello Barracks.

  Soon after the shooting, Colthurst fastened on to a lad he accused of being a Sinn Feiner.

  ‘Tell me, sonny, where are the Sinn Fein snipers?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘What a pity,’ Colthurst tutted. ‘Kneel down there.’

  When the boy knelt, instinctively signing himself, Colthurst shot him in the back of the head.

  Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, having heard rumours, left home to look for her husband but found no trace of him. This was most unusual. Skeffy was so voluble, so distinctive in every way, even children used to point, saying, ‘He went that way, missis.’

  It was as if he had disappeared off the face of the earth.

  About 5 p.m., the gunning of Kelly’s ceased. The artillery switched to firing at Hopkins & Hopkins, the jewellers on the quay to the east of O’Connell Street. Rebel activity within had long since ceased, so they did not waste their shells.

  Not far away, the improvised armoured lorries made their first appearance. Already exposed on its northern flank, the GPO was now threatened from the west where these lorries cut communication with Daly’s Battalion in the Four Courts area. The British had also installed a machine-gun nest on top of Jervis Street Hospital which raked the roof of the GPO.

  It dawned on Connolly that they might have to move their HQ. He made his men work harder at tunnelling into adjoining buildings. Still convinced the British would try to finish them off with a bayonet charge, he also strengthened the barricades inside the foyer.

  General Lowe, in fact, never for one moment considered a frontal assault. His problem was that neither from north or south could he get a direct line of fire on the GPO with his 18-pounders.

  Otherwise, he would have flattened it in minutes.

  At 5.30 p.m., as the light was fading, General Maconchy telephoned Lowe from the Royal Dublin Society. ‘My men are having some difficulty reaching Trinity by the direct route.’

  Lowe was in no need of immediate relief. In any case, those troops could have crossed the canal by one of several bridges and still reached Trinity within half an hour. For some reason, he repeated, ‘The advance to Trinity is to continue at all costs.’

  The costs were soaring. Captain Dietrichsen never did meet up with his children again, for he died in 26 Northumberland Road.

  From their vantage point in Clanwilliam House, the rebels made almost every shot count. Dead and dying were heaped on the canal bridge.

  Any spare moment he had, Reynolds put his arm in a sling to ease the pain of blood poisoning. It seemed not to affect his aim, even though bullets from rifles and machine-guns rattled against the walls and grenades came through the windows, bursting with a roar.

  The delicate ornamentation on the outside of the building was shot to bits. Inside, ceilings collapsed, pipes were pierced, causing water to cascade on to the floors below. Some bullets set furnishings alight so that poisonous fumes swept through the house.

  Spluttering, their eyes red and raw, the rebels went on firing.

  In the GPO, Connolly called his son to him. ‘Listen, Roddy, I want you to take this suitcase for me to Bill O’Brien. It contains important papers.’

  ‘I don’t know where he lives, Dad.’

  ‘At 43 Belvedere Place.’ Connolly called to a Volunteer. ‘Here, Paddy, I want you to show my boy where Bill O’Brien lives. He’s on an important mission.’

  As Connolly took his son by the shoulder to say goodbye, Roddy saw tears in his eyes.

  ‘It’s all right, Dad,’ he said in his piping voice, ‘I’ll be all right. Back soon.’

  ‘No, lad,’ Connolly said sharply. ‘Bill is doing important Union work while we’re in here. You can help him.’

  It was only when Roddy reached Belvedere Place that he realized fully that the Volunteer could have brought the suitcase, there was no need for the two of them to go. His father was sending his only son away for his own safety.

  Tears suddenly raced down Roddy’s cheeks and he had a premonition that he had seen his father for the last time.

  In the GPO, against a background of heavy gunfire, Pearse wrote his mother a letter.

  ‘We are all safe here up to the present. The St Enda’s boys have been on duty on the roof ever since we came in. They are all in good spirits, though very sleepy. We have plenty of food, all our meals being as good as if served in a hotel.’

  Willie added a postscript: ‘Don’t worry. I saw a priest again (confession) and was talking to Fr Bowden also.’

  As London’s gas-lamps were being lit, John Redmond called on Sir John French and tried to explain the difference between the four armed paramilitary bodies in Ireland. The General admitted to finding it somewhat confusing.

  ‘It is, indeed, General,’ Redmond said, ‘for anyone who is not Irish. I simply want to assure you that all the Volunteers are loyal except for the Sinn Feiners, the leave-us-aloners.’

  ‘And what sort of support would they expect to have?’

  ‘Almost none. Most decent Irish folk are against them.’

  ‘Good,’ French said, dubiously.

  ‘May I suggest that the military authorities exercise caution. If many innocent bystanders get hurt, it might turn the popular feeling in favour of the rebels, you see.’

  ‘I see,’ French said, in an exasperated tone, as if he were expected to hit the rebels with bubbles instead of bullets.

  At 6 o’clock, Maconchy ordered Colonel Oates and the 2/8th Battalion to reinforce the 2/7th.

  By then, the Tommies had commandeered houses opposite the two rebel strongholds and were sniping continuously from windows and roofs.

  In Clanwilliam House, a tailor’s dummy, dressed in tunic and cap, kept rocking back and forth as bullets pounded into it, and an open piano gave out a tuneless sound each time it was hit. The carpets were burning and water stored in containers was needed to damp them down.

  At about 7 p.m., the men in the Hall realized it was time to fall back. Leaving by the back way through an alley they ran smack into the enemy.

  Joe Clarke was seized and put up against the door of a house and searched. A soldier found a revolver in his pocket and fired it at him, the bullet going through the door just as it was opened by a doctor in a white coat. He cursed him roundly. From the yard behind him came the moans of wounded soldiers whom he was treating.

  The Tommies apologized, tied Clarke’s hands with a rifle pull-through and led him away.

  For the first time, a squad of soldiers managed to cross the canal and take cover behind an advertizing hoarding. They got close enough to lob grenades into Clanwilliam House, which burst into flames around 8 o’clock.

  Inside, Jim Doyle’s rifle was shot out of his hand.

  Dick Murphy was at a window on the middle floor, leaning on a chair to get a steadier aim, when he was shot dead.

  A sofa caught fire. Someone grabbed a soda syphon to try and put it out and a bullet shattered it in his hand.

  At another window, Patrick Doyle was one second firing and yelling encouragement, absolutely silent the next. The Walsh brothers shook him and he fell to the floor, dead.

  By now the dust-filled house reeked of cordite and the acrid smell of burning furniture. The roof caught fire and there was a stupendous roar as the blaze ate up everything in its path. Still the rebels fired away, the boom of the Mauser in counterpoint with the sharp retort of the Martinis.

  A British soldier advanced, his hand raised to throw a grenade, when Tom Walsh shot him and saw him explode in a flash of light.

  The time came when the surviving rebels went for their ammunition and found it was almost spent. Reynolds went from one to another, handing the last ten rounds apiece.

  ‘There’ll be reinforcements along soon,
’ he promised.

  They did not believe him. De Valera, though only a hundred yards away, had made no move to contact them in two days and was unlikely to do so now.

  Reynolds, returning to his post, took a last proud look at the bridge. It proved fatal. When the lads fired the last of their rounds and descended the stairs, his body blocked the landing.

  They had no time to spend mourning him; the stairs were giving way and dense fumes were everywhere. They rushed down to the basement. Once there, they remembered that the back door was blockaded from the outside. They had planned an emergency exit through the roof but it was blazing out of control.

  In the street, they could hear soldiers cheering wildly as they advanced for the kill. A captain tried to toss a bomb through a window; it hit a sill and dropped on top of him, nearly blowing his head off.

  Covering their mouths against poisonous fumes, the rebels dashed into a back room and, smashing the small barred window, crawled through it into the garden. They jumped over the end wall, then over wall after wall until they found refuge in the grounds of a convent school. Hidden in the shrubbery, they heard girls’ piping voices singing, ‘Hail, Glorious St Patrick.’

  Three died and four survived from Clanwilliam House, one died in 25 Northumberland Road.

  Colonel Maconchy, informed that the battle was over at last, rode his horse down Northumberland Road. Though Clanwilliam House was now ablaze and crowds cheered him on either side of the bridge, he was furious. Two hundred and thirty of all ranks had been killed or wounded. In the light of such senseless slaughter, he did not send his men on to Trinity. Instead he billeted them around the area where so many had fallen and where local people were keen to show their gratitude.

  That night, as if in mourning, the bombardment in the city ceased.

  The silence was the loudest sound of battle so far.

  Tralee was also quiet. The Captain and Lieutenant of the Volunteers came to Monteith with an extra bicycle. They wanted to transfer him to the home of a man who was not a Volunteer but a sympathizer.