The Real Chief - Liam Lynch

by Meda Ryan

  Many deserters from the British army started to come to local officers saying they wanted to join the IRA. Some of them were genuine deserters but others were engaged in spying. Where it was found, following a court marital, that men were not genuine deserters, some were executed and pseudo-deserters stopped ap­proaching the IRA.

  Regular exchange of information took place between the three Cork brigades, all of whom liaised with Michael Collins, director of intelligence. Valuable material was sent to Collins in Dublin from brigades throughout the country but particularly from County Cork. According to Florence O’Donoghue, ‘There were cases in which communications issued by Major General Strick­land did not reach his brigade commanders more than a day before they were in the hands of the IRA brigade com­man­ders opposing them.’3

  1 Order No 6, issued 4, June 1920.

  2 Details in Siobhán Creedon Langford, The Hope and the Sadness, pp. 155,156.

  3 Florence O’Donoghue, No Other Law, Chapter on ‘Intelligence and Counter Intelligence’, pp. 113–127.

  11. Spies

  On 12 January 1921 a proclamation was issued which prohibited the use of motor cars, motor cycles or pedal cycles between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. A copy of the military governor’s proclamation was torn down in Fermoy on Liam Lynch’s instructions. The town was subsequently fined £100. As the fine remained unpaid, crown forces collected it in kind from four traders in the form of wines and spirits. The Daily Express on 4 January commented: ‘This is, of course, Martial Law. It is legal and disciplined. It is, we must believe, necessary. But it is horrible’.

  A member of the volunteer forces, carrying arms when cap­tured, could now be tried by drumhead court-martials and exe­cuted forthwith. Under this martial law the first official execu­tion which took place was that of an officer of Liam Lynch’s bri­gade – Cornelius Murphy, one of the founder members of Mill­street battalion column. On 4 January, he went home to visit his parents in Kerry and was captured. He was taken to Cork mili­tary barracks, court-martialled on a charge of being in pos­session of a loaded revolver, and sentenced to death. He was shot on 1 February 1921.

  Towards the end of January 1921 Lynch accompanied by some volunteers lay in wait for the Auxiliaries west of Newmarket. ‘Four lorries passed, but we had to let them go,’ said Paddy O’Brien, ‘be­cause they had civilian hostages – this was part of the tactics which they used to foil our efforts.’

  Next day the men waited from 6 a.m. until well after dark beside a dugout. ‘There was a thick wet fog, and the cold was pene­trating.’ The following morning they again took up posi­tions at 6 a.m. ‘This was a cold dry day. It was going to be a fight to the finish, Liam told us. It had to be because we were in a difficult ambush position, without any hope of retreat. Liam emphasised, it was we who were taking them on, and we had the advantage like Tom Barry at Kilmichael,’ Paddy O’Brien recalls. (Paddy O’Brien, Liscarroll was Tom Barry’s first cousin.)

  About midday two cars were sighted ap­proaching from the west. The first car skid­ded to a halt when the driver saw the trench. The second pulled up behind it. The ambush party opened fire. The occu­pants of the cars took shelter behind a fence. After some fighting, Lynch blew the whistle and called upon the mili­tary to surrender. Their reply was a further volley of fire, so the fight resumed until two of their party had been killed, and prac­tically every one of them was wounded. Then they sur­ren­dered. The arms captured were all col­lect­ed, loaded into one of the cars and driven away. Lynch had taken the pre­caution of having volun­teers detailed to fell some par­tially sawn trees so that the road could be blocked. As a decoy the volunteers had also felled trees on other routes. Consequently the search party which scoured the area after the ambush were frustrated in their efforts.

  The Millstreet battalion under C. J. Meaney had been study­ing the possibility of launching an attack on British troops using a train passing through the area. From mid-January various plans were tried but somehow never achieved fruition. Lynch decided to move into the area for further investigation. Trains tra­velling east and west were both potential targets and a posi­tion near Dris­hanebeg was selected. One evening, on 11 Feb­ruary at 6.30 p.m. as darkness approached, the column went into position. Plans had been made to bring this train to a halt. A volunteer was de­tailed to travel on the train, inspect it and signal at a point in Rathcoole where two armed men were waiting. At the signal the volunteers boarded the train as it was leaving the station and ap­proached the driver compelling him to stop. In the darkness, a lighted bicycle lamp placed on the track indicated the exact position at which the engine should halt. At this spot the whistle was blown and the military in the train were called on to sur­render; they answered with a rifle shot. Fire was opened upon the carriages containing the military party and continued for about fifteen minutes. The British party then surrendered; one had been killed and practically all were wounded. The column col­lected fif­­teen rifles and 700 rounds of ammunition. They had no casu­alties.

  Lynch’s brigade suffered a reverse at Mourne Abbey on 15 February 1921. From information received, British officers were to hold a conference in the martial law area of Cork. On Sunday, 13 February Lynch assembled his men to occupy positions on the Fermoy/Cork road and the Mallow/Cork road with the intention of attacking a convoy going or returning from the conference. The usual signalling scouts and protective elements were posted and preparations were completed in the early hours of the morn­ing of 15 February.

  That morning, Siobhán Creedon, the intelligence agent, while cycling to Mallow, met two lorries of troops and police. When she reached Mallow she reported what she had seen to Daniel Mc­Donnell of the Mallow company. McDonnell immediately cycled along the main road to Mourne Abbey and located Tadgh Byrne near the southern end of the ambush posi­tion. He gave him the information and together they crossed a stream flowing parallel to the road where Jack Cunningham and the riflemen were hidden. Then they heard the sound of gunfire. The pro­tec­tive section had been engaged. The shooting had started not on the main road but north-east of the ambuscade. The column sud­denly found itself in the role of ambushed rather than am­busher. The British forces were equipped with machine-guns and ade­quate transport; therefore, those who could, withdrew. Three volun­teers were killed and one who was badly wounded, subsequently died. Eight IRA men were captured, two of whom were later executed in Cork after trial by court-martial. It was the first time that one of Lynch’s columns was caught unaware and it ap­peared as if an informer had been at work. The volunteers be­came very uneasy.

  Up to now Lynch had had no great problem of this nature within his brigade but it did appear, on this occasion, that accu­rate in­formation had been passed on to the enemy. They not only knew the time, but the place and plan of the ambush. He imme­diately put his intelligence men to work; it took nearly a month (when a similar less disastrous event occurred) to discover how the infor­mation was being passed to the enemy. One of the pseudo-de­serters, whom the volunteers had trusted, was found to be the cul­prit. He was dealt with accordingly.

  All through the months of January, February and March 1921 there were several sniping attacks throughout the Second Cork brigade area and British forces were unable to stop them. The IRA battalions continued to harass wherever possible and during that period lost only a few men and no arms.

  An extremely long and arduous ambush took place under Lynch’s command at Clonbainin between Kanturk and Mill­street on 3 March 1921, where Seán Moylan of Newmarket join­ed with Kerry No. 2 brigade under Commandant Tom McEllis­trim, and a detachment from Charleville under Paddy O’Brien. At approximately 10 a.m. three military lorries passed unat­tacked because the mine failed to explode. Shortly after 2 p.m. three more lorries came into view. Fire was opened on the lead­ing lorry. The ambush continued for some hours. In this engage­ment they collected quite an amount of ammunition and suf­fered no casu­al­ties. British casualties were thirteen killed and fif­teen wounded. Because
of British activity in Lombardstown, Lynch was forced to move brigade headquarters further west to Nadd.

  On a raw, foggy March morning under driving rain, the Bri­tish forces staged one of their elaborate and well-planned efforts to annihilate the brigade staff and the columns in the Cork No. 2 area. Forces were drawn from Cork, Ballincollig, Buttevant, Fer­­­moy and Kanturk. Before midnight on 9 March the British forces in armoured vehicles had been moving out and were armed with rifles, machine-guns, mortars and grenades. They had intended to make a swoop and to converge on the IRA. It was a well-plan­ned and efficiently carried-out operation but its success was limited because of Lynch’s prompt action on an intelligence report re­ceived earlier.

  Earlier in the day on 9 March 1921 Judy O’Riordan of Butte­vant passed on information of large-scale raiding in the Banteer direc­tion. Lynch ordered the Charleville battalion out on a road-block­ing task at certain specified points. This saved the Nadd column, which was in training, from a major disaster. Lynch had also sent dispatches to the Buttevant, Mallow and various other com­panies requesting them to engage in road-trenching, which com­pletely upset the British forces. Several cars skidded and the Bri­tish opera­tion was unsuccessful.

  Lynch, with Power and a number of men, went that same morn­ing to Nadd Cross with the intention of attacking some pass­ing lorries. The British detachment which came to Nadd Cross turned west, evidently with the intention of approaching their ob­jective from the south. Units of the column in the scat­tered farmhouses were alerted. They, and the brigade officers, began to move westwards across the mountain. At one point un­observed British troops infiltrated the position and reached David Her­lihy’s house where some men were sleeping. They rushed into the house, hustled the half-dressed occupants out, shouting, ‘We’ll give you some of your own stuff now!’ They lined the men up in a field and the officer said, ‘When I say run ... run!’ Morgan and Moloney made a dash for liberty and, though wounded, managed to get away. Three other men, Waters, Kiely and Herlihy were shot and then bayoneted to death.

  The British forces, who had now been combing the entire area, were closing in on the volunteers. Fire was exchanged be­tween some detachments and groups of volunteers. That evening Liam was informed that four were dead, including an unarmed civilian who was fired on and mortally wounded. Due to this and other circumstances it seemed to Liam that again his enemies were in possession of accurate information as to the volunteers’ movements. There was a striking similarity between what had hap­­­pened at Mourne Abbey and what had now taken place at Nadd. The mystery was finally cleared up. A member of the Kan­turk column who had aroused his companions’ suspicions was absent from Nadd during the attack. (He had served in the Bri­tish army and had been with the column about two months.) En­quiries revealed that this man had known of the proposed am­bush at Mourne Abbey several days before it was due to take place, likewise the Nadd raid. Two days before the Nadd raid he had said that he wanted to go to Kanturk to draw his British ex-ser­vice pension. Reflecting on the ambushes, which had taken place, the men realised that he had absented himself on each occasion that the military appeared to have been forewarned. In­telligence officer, Michael Moore warned the local men to watch this man’s movements.

  One night after drinking he was seen entering the British barracks where he remained for quite a while. Moore sent the in­formation by dispatch to Liam, but for some reason, which is un­clear, Liam never received this message. However, the man’s guilt was confirmed when he was identified amongst the raiding group at Nadd dressed in the uniform of a Black and Tan. He was not seen again.1

  1 Hundreds of men with British Army service loyally served in the IRA. His was an isolated case.

  12. Formation of First Southern Division

  Liam Lynch continued to move with zeal through the seven bat­talion areas encouraging his men and perfecting the special skills which served the needs of the fighting column. He con­stantly replaced men who had been either arrested or killed. Move­ment through areas was extremely difficult as no house was entirely safe because of the sudden raids; no road was immune from cycle patrols or other army vehicles. Yet in the face of that situation Liam and his staff continued to move about in every part of the brigade area, if not freely, at least without any dis­ruption of their duties. During all this time, since September 1919, he had never gone unarmed except on trips to Dublin or Cork. All his officers were permanently armed. They were also under orders to resist capture and avoid risks since August 1920.

  Before billeting in any house Liam would inspect the layout, check any security arrangements and what action should be taken in the event of an attack, always detailing scouts to guard the house. During the early days he travelled by bicycle but later found it necessary to travel by pony and trap accompanied by at least one officer. The terrain of his brigade area posed difficulties as it was cut in two from west to east by the Blackwater, often re­stricting movement and causing delays. Coupled with this was the additional danger they had of crossing bridges. To overcome this difficulty boats were used mainly under cover of darkness. When the British forces discovered this method of transport they destroyed many boats.

  On numerous occasions Liam escaped death or capture by the narrowest of margins, despite all precautions. Indeed, were he faced with capture, it probably would have been death, as he frequently stated, ‘if I’m taken I’ll never be taken alive.’ Paddy O’Brien gives an example of one such occasion, which was on 18 March 1921 when George Power, Michael O’Connell, Maurice Walshe, Liam and O’Brien were moving on foot in daylight. They were going up the mountain when they realised that the entire area was swarming with British troops who were engaged in a large scale combing operation. Liam and O’Brien were craw­ling ahead when Walshe caught up with them. ‘The three of us sheltered under the merest cover near the top. It was the closest I’ve ever been to looking up the barrel of a gun. God! I can still feel that moment,’ Paddy O’Brien recalls. The men re­mained motion­­less and were unobserved.

  Liam’s life was by this time an endless labour of planning and movement. Taking an overview of the inactive brigades he felt they should no longer remain dormant, because the British forces concentrated on the areas which were most active, and in fact at that time they had started to shift the weight of the occupation forces into Munster, and especially into the three Cork brigade areas. Liam felt that if this trend continued it could mean that the few active brigades might become more pressurised which in turn could have serious consequences for the entire movement. Though he realised that it was the responsibility of GHQ he nevertheless, by the end of 1920, consulted officers of the bri­gades directly adjoining his own. He wanted the flying columns to be organised into a type of army spirit and decided that this would necessitate co-ordination of the activities of the fighting forces in the south. The organisation, which had originally been quite small, was rapidly growing. A new situation was developing in the south and only in the south. The day of attacks on bar­racks was over. The struggle was developing into larger actions that re­quired new tactics.

  Because there were now greater dangers, new machinery was required. Liam’s most frequent contacts were with Cork No. 1 and Tipperary No. 3 brigades, which bordered his own area. Dan Breen, Seán Treacy and Denis Lacey visited him a number of times. A visit by Dan Breen towards the end of 1920, resulted in an informal conference. This informal meeting to discuss the general situation was held near Bweening, eight miles from Mal­low. Seán O’Hegarty and a member of the Cork No. 1 brigade, Liam Deasy from Cork No. 3, and Liam himself with George Power from Cork No. 2 brigade attended. This resulted in the first for­mal conference of officers of the southern brigade which met at William Barry’s, Glanworth, on 6 January 1921. Visiting officers from outside brigades were the guests of Liam Lynch’s brigade. Though entirely loyal to HQ they realised that Dublin was far removed from the struggle in the south. They sent their recommendations and a summary of their decision to GHQ
.1

  In discussions which lasted two days and which were pre­sided over by Séamus Robinson of Tipperary, with Con Moloney acting as adjutant, all the eleven officers present reviewed the fac­tors influencing the struggle in their area. The consensus was that the war could be maintained and extended, coupled with a broad general agreement on the line of action to be undertaken. Seven of the fifteen companies of the Auxiliary division, each about a hundred strong, were stationed in the martial law area; British forces had been reinforced with armoured cars, which made movement very difficult for the volunteers. They had no heavy weapons for effective attacks and it was now almost im­possible to raid any barracks as these were very heavily for­tified. However, the morale of the IRA was high and, often be­cause of the brutality meted out to civilians by the British forces, the people had become more supportive through a common bond.

  At the conference, it was recommended that GHQ should openly state that the Republican army was on active service; that a proclamation should be issued to the effect that, where hos­tages were carried by the enemy, their forces armed or unarmed would be shot on sight; that in view of the British proclamation announcing that IRA men taken prisoners under arms would be shot forthwith, similar action would be taken by the IRA. The services of full-time medical officers would be sought and these should be paid for by headquarters. The most important recommendations suggested: