It was curfew hour and pitch dark. There were no lights in the houses or on the bumpy country lanes. The Captain rode in front, the Lieutenant behind.
Monteith’s saddle was too high and, with his bad hand and aching foot, it was hard going. Several times he nearly had his eye poked out by branches overhanging the lane. Once, he rode into a pile of stones and hit the ground with a thud. A mile further on, he went headlong into a muddy pool from which cattle fed. It was one more in a line of cold dowsings.
Finally, on a steep downhill, his brakes did not work and he had no idea where the road was. When he picked himself out of a thorn hedge, he said, ‘I intend walking the rest of the way, even if it takes all night.’
A couple of miles further on, they came to the home of a Mr Lenihan. The gnarled old farmer took Monteith by the hand. ‘Mr Murray,’ he said, ‘I don’t know you or why you’re in your present predicament, but I do know your cause. Anything I have in this house, sir, is at your disposal.’
In No 10, the Prime Minister asked his Minister of War to send someone to Ireland to sort things out, as a matter of urgency.
Kitchener took it for granted it had to be a soldier. Politicians had made an incredible mess of things. The most famous finger in the Empire ran down a list of possibles and came to rest against the name of ‘Maxwell, General Sir John.’
‘Good,’ Kitchener muttered, ‘just the man.’
He knew Maxwell from the past since both of them had specialized in Arabia. Good pedigree, Scottish parentage. Well thought of at Sandhurst. 42nd Highlanders, damn good crowd. He was cheerful, had good horse sense, was witty without wounding, never seemed to hurry but got things done.
Kitchener enquired of an aide if Maxwell had a clean bill of health. It seemed so. He had emerged only six days before from a ten-day check-up in a nursing home. Suspicion of the stone, but it proved negative. The Egyptians were sad to see him go. A political move, must have been. He had been adored in Cairo. His hand was unsparing in meting out right and redressing wrong.
Absolutely the right man for the job, Kitchener thought. Not much difference between Cairo and Dublin, apart from the climate.
Though this was a political appointment, he checked with Sir John French by telephone because of its military implications. French also knew Maxwell well and called him at once.
‘Maxwell, my dear chap, would you mind popping over to see me first thing in the morning, say, 10.30?’
Within the hour, French received official notice from Kitchener’s secretary of Maxwell’s appointment as GOC in Ireland from the 27th of the month.
‘His Majesty’s government desire that in this capacity Sir John Maxwell will take all such measures as may in his opinion be necessary for the prompt suppression of insurrection in Ireland, and be accorded a free hand in regard to the movement of all troops now in Ireland or which may be placed under his command hereafter, and also in regard to such measures as may seem to him advisable under the proclamation dated 26 April issued under the Defence of the Realm Act.’
When Asquith asked Kitchener about Maxwell, he said, ‘He has impeccable judgement, Prime Minister.’
In the Green, Mallin was persuaded to allow a young girl from Scotland, Margaret Skinnider, to go with William Partridge and seventeen-year-old Fred Ryan to try and set fire to buildings next to the Shelbourne Hotel.
They were all set to toss bombs with eight-second fuses through a window when an alert sniper shot Ryan dead and hit Margaret, too. Partridge carried her back to base.
The Countess held her hand as Madeleine ffrench-Mullen dug out the bullets from her right arm, right side and back. She did not utter a sound but the tender-hearted Mallin, who stood over her, was saying, ‘I’ll never forgive myself for this as long as I live.’
The Countess slipped out of the College and when she returned a few minutes later, she said, ‘Don’t worry, Margaret, me dear, I got the wretched blighter for you.’
In Boland’s Mill, de Valera was worried by the scarcity of food. The neighing of hungry horses was also getting on his nerves. He let them out, and, with their heavy clatter intensified by the stillness of night, they went along the streets in search of fodder. It was a poor district without front gardens. But there were a few hedges and they would find grass further along on the banks of the canal near where his men had performed so bravely that day.
When de Valera heard that no one was feeding the cats and dogs in the pound, he ordered them to be released, too.
Large numbers of domestic animals now roamed the city, scavenging sometimes on corpses in the streets.
Over in the west, Daly’s men had set fire to the old Linenhall Barracks. Soon they wished they hadn’t.
The fire threatened the entire area and they were forced to fight the blaze with the British sniping at them as they were etched against the light.
A drunk rolled past the GPO singing, ‘Two lovely black eyes,’ and calling for ‘Three cheers for John Redmond.’
Connolly, woken by a boy who had crept in to tell him his family were starving, found the men all expecting a bayonet assault. To encourage them, he began roaring a verse from the Soldier’s Song which they all took up:
We’ll sing a song, a soldier’s song,
With cheering rousing chorus,
As round our blazing fires we throng,
The starry heavens o’er us.
Impatient for the coming fight,
And as we wait the morning light,
Here in the silence of the night
We’ll sing a soldier’s song.
Pearse and his former pupil, Desmond Ryan, did not join in. They were seated on upturned barrels, chatting like old friends around a fire. Pearse was proud that they had held out for longer than any other rising since 1789. He surprised Ryan by saying, ‘It was the right thing to do, was it not?’
‘Yes!’ returned Ryan at once.
Pearse spoke as one who had turned the problem over in his head hundreds of times without resolving it. ‘If we fail, it means the end of the Volunteers, Ireland – everything.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘When we are all wiped out, people will blame us for everything. But without this protest, the war would have ended and nothing done. In a few years they will understand.’
Ryan remembered how, at school, he had taught them about the young boy Cuchulain who had donned armour for the first time. A Druid warned him that whoever took up arms that day would have a short life but a glorious one. Pearse had put Cuchulain’s response in old Irish on the wall: ‘I care not if my life have only the span of a night and a day if my deeds be spoken of by the men of Ireland.’
In his eyes, that pagan hero was baptized in the persons of his pupils. Why had he founded St Enda’s and fostered the good in them except to give Cuchulains to Ireland? His students, now on the roof of the GPO, were his only memorials; and no teacher, Ryan felt, had better ones.
Pearse rose and walked up and down a few times, as if wanting to believe with his whole heart but not quite managing it.
‘Dublin’s name will be glorious for ever.’ He spoke with deep feeling. ‘Men will speak of her as one of the splendid cities, as they now speak of Paris.’
Not far away, Tom Clarke was telling the young medic, Jim Ryan, about the lead-up to the rising and what their aims and motives were. Ryan was Red Cross; unlike the signatories of the Proclamation, he might emerge alive. If so, he would be the witness of what they had tried to do for Ireland.
Clarke was in the middle of his exposition when, in Portobello Barracks, Skeffy’s body was being stuffed into a sack. The sack was sewn up and buried in quicklime in the Barracks yard.
THURSDAY
At dawn on a golden Thursday, all hell seemed to break loose.
The GPO was fired on from all directions. Rebels at the windows and on the roof returned it with relish.
The noise was unabated when the British destroyer Dove tied up at the Custom House Wharf at 6 a.m. Aboard was th
e Chief Secretary. A bad sailor, Birrell had not slept a wink. On deck, in a black top coat and top hat, he did not know that his replacement had already been named.
Cocking his ear, he heard firing on either side of the Liffey. High above, he detected nests of machine-guns on almost every building round about. Liberty Hall was pocked with shells. And the smell.…
He was whipped away to the Viceregal Lodge through deserted streets, past shuttered shops and buildings with all the clocks stopped. Ironically, the only sign of life was a hearse followed, as the authorities had decreed, by a single mourner. Many had buried their dead in back gardens. One night, in the Castle, seventy had been interred.
At the lodge, he shook hands with Wimborne and General Friend. The food situation, he was told, was desperate and leading to violence. Some of Wimborne’s aides had joined in the looting. They had gone in civvies into the city and stolen a wheelbarrow which they piled high with potatoes, cauliflowers and tinned fruit. Without it, there would have been nothing for the worthies to eat.
Once His Excellency had realized on Tuesday that he was in no danger, he displayed a theatrical talent that would have earned him many an encore at the Abbey. Hour after hour, he had dictated minutes to his secretary and given orders down the phone, ‘It is His Excellency’s command’, disregarding the inconvenient fact that they were impossible to carry out.
Was he not the one blameless man in the entire country, the only one who had got things right? He marched up and down in front of Blackwood and, in between prodigious face-flushing gulps of brandy, shouted, ‘I shall hang MacNeill! – I’ll let the others off, but I shall hang MacNeill.’
Then came a telegram. A General Maxwell was coming over to take charge. At once he had changed his tune.
Hitherto, Ireland was fraught with danger but Britain could sleep in peace at nights because Wimborne was in control. Now, the situation had miraculously righted itself; there was no need of outside interference.
He had sent the irreplaceable Basil, who really thought Wimborne had acted all week like the Emperor of Asses, to London to tell the Prime Minister that, fortunately, His Excellency’s judgement had been flawless all along and he was even now on the point of forcing the rebels to surrender.
Birrell was upset to learn on arriving at the lodge that he had been superseded. What he did not know was that Sir Henry Wilson of the Imperial General Staff, an opponent of Liberal policy in Ireland, was even then urging Maxwell to have him arrested, tried and shot.
Friend was able to tell him that the Army had the GPO in a vice. ‘Troops are moving down all the surrounding streets and the whole of Sackville (O’Connell) Street is covered by machine-gun fire. We have nests on top of the Gresham and most buildings down to the Liffey. Soon, artillery will be in place.’
Birrell shuddered at the thought of artillery being used in a city of which he was very fond.
In his lodgings, Birrell’s critic, the fastidious Maurice Headlam, could no longer stand the sight and smell of that horse mouldering practically on his doorstep.
He had a brainwave. He telephoned the Zoo.
‘Headlam here, Treasury Remembrancer, ringing from the Green. I was wondering how you are managing with the animals.’
‘Not well, sir,’ the Head of the Zoo replied. ‘Unless we can get food for the lions, they’re likely to go on the rampage.’
‘Exactly what I thought. There’s a dead horse, shot, you understand, still beautifully fresh, right outside my place.’
‘What’s it like there?’
Headlam put his lips right up to the mouthpiece to muffle the sounds of gun-fire. ‘Very quiet, really.’
‘That’s grand. I’ll have a truck pick it up right away.’
At ten, a shell landed on the Irish Times printing office setting the big rolls of paper alight.
Half an hour later, Tom Clarke asked young Lesley Price to go to the Pro-Cathedral and bring back a priest. She was terrified but agreed to go.
Leaving by the side door, she hugged the walls until she reached Marlborough Street. From behind railings, people were screaming at her, ‘Go back, you stupid girl, you’ll get yourself killed.’ They pointed to the Education Office. ‘The British. In there.’
Taking no notice, she went up the stone steps and knocked on the red presbytery door. There was no reply. Shivering with fright, she took a shoe off and banged the door even harder with the heel till the paint cracked.
At last, an elderly priest edged the door open. It had been kept shut for two days.
‘Come in, girl,’ he hissed, ‘we’re in the cellars.’
When she told him why she had come, he said, ‘Don’t you realize they’re a bunch of Communists in the GPO? Isn’t Connolly there? Sure to God none of his crowd wants to see a priest.’
Fr O’Flanagan overheard. He decided that if a young lady had risked her life, he couldn’t very well say no. He gathered up his priestly gear and put on his stove-pipe hat for identification.
‘Not by the front door,’ he said. ‘Safer out the back.’
In Moore Street, the priest was greeting an old friend when the man fell shot. Fr O’Flanagan knelt to anoint him but it was plain he was done for. Some brave lads took him in a handcart to Jervis Street Hospital.
Lesley led the priest into a shop in Henry Street, then through gaps in the walls into the GPO. The rebels gave him a rousing welcome. He had expected to be ministering to the dying and was annoyed at first. But soon he was glad he had come; he had never seen a more cheerful crowd in his life.
They told him they were an army and wasn’t an army entitled to a chaplain?
In the College of Surgeons, the Countess finally came across the OTC’s armoury. It consisted of 89 rifles as well as 24,000 rounds of .303 and .22 ammunition.
William Partridge grabbed a new rifle and went up on to the roof to try it out. The trap door fell on his head and he had to be treated for cuts and concussion.
Chris Caffrey, a pretty young woman, was carrying messages between the College and the GPO. Mallin gave her a despatch for Connolly, telling him about the arms find.
Chris, like many couriers, was dressed as a war widow. She wore a black dress, a wedding-ring on her finger and a badge of red, white and blue. It enabled her to pass through the streets without hindrance. On her journeys, she picked up quite a bit of information from elderly women who had carried chairs on to the pavement to have a knit and a natter.
About 11 a.m., she slipped out of the side door in York Street. She left just as a group of men with lifting tackle were hoisting a dead horse on to a lorry marked ‘Dublin Zoo’. She was seen leaving by a local busy-body who followed her down Grafton Street into Dame Street. There her shadow called out to soldiers on guard at Trinity College, ‘This hussy’s a spy.’
When she explained how she knew, Chris was ushered into Trinity. She stuffed Mallin’s message into her mouth.
‘What’s that?’ an NCO asked.
‘A sweet,’ Chris said, swallowing painfully. She held out a paper bag. ‘Want one?’
She was taken into a room. Two officers entered and locked the door.
One said, ‘We’re holding you on suspicion of being a spy.’
‘A spy,’ said Chris, ‘when my husband gave his life for King and country in the retreat from Mons, died in the thick mud, he did, gasping his love for me and England.’
‘Strip, please,’ an officer said, with a smirk.
‘What?’
‘Either you strip or we’ll do it for you.’
Chris said, ‘I want a woman with me.’
‘Sorry, girl. Off with those clothes. Everything.’
‘My husband gave his life for the Empire,’ Chris wailed.
‘Is that so, then your sacrifice will be as great as his, won’t it?’
She spat in their faces before beginning to unbutton her blouse.
The rebels in Boland’s and on the railway were already under continuous fire from houses in Mount Street when th
e British opened up from the roof of Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital.
De Valera summoned the young British army cadet who was his prisoner, G. F. Mackay.
‘I’m sending a message,’ he said, ‘to the British CO in this area. If his snipers don’t stop using the hospital to fire on my men, I will execute you.’ He gripped the lad’s shoulder. ‘I want you to know without any shadow of doubt that, whatever happens, you will be safe here with us.’
De Valera had given orders to stop all food entering the city. A request came for an exception to be made to allow milkmen to deliver to the hospitals.
‘This is wartime,’ he spluttered. ‘Regardless of our feelings, it’s our solemn duty to see the milk gets through.’
Without sleep for days, he was looking gaunt and his behaviour was becoming erratic, sometimes manic. He hit on a bright idea to engage the enemy, and when his men were keyed up and ready to go, he decided it was not practicable after all.
Father O’Flanagan was hearing confessions at midday when there was a new sound: the thud of an 18-pounder opening up from the Parnell Monument fifty yards away. The first of many shells fell next door on the Metropole.
‘Jasus,’ the kneeling penitent yelped, ‘them bastards, begging your pardon, Fairther, have started bombarding us.’
He rejoined his hands and continued his confession.
‘I jest cursed and swore, Fairther.’
*
The shelling began on Boland’s a few minutes later. A 1-pounder gun had been detached from the Helga and transported by lorry to the corner of Percy Lane. The Helga joined in from the Liffey.
The rebels felt threatened, especially as the Bakery roof was mainly of glass; but de Valera had a plan.
Nearby was a distillery with a tall tower. A group commanded by Captain Cullen went up the steel ladder on the outside. With brick-splinters spattering them, they managed to fix on the top a pike, adorned with a green flag with a gold harp in the middle. This, they hoped, would draw fire away from the Bakery.
Rebels Page 41
