A party of six or seven G men, who rarely left the Castle, were coming out just before eight. At a certain signal we were to open the attack, but without the given sign they were to be allowed to pass and nothing must be done to arouse their suspicions. A motor-car was waiting on the quay outside a hotel. A Volunteer was at the wheel, and in the event of any casualties we were to rush our wounded to the car.
We had not waited many minutes when the chapel bell rang out for Mass.
We knew that it was now five minutes to eight and that the time for action was swiftly approaching. I noticed a look of nervous tension appear on the faces of our men, and I steeled myself for what was to come.
At such moments one notices everything – something happens in oneself which corresponds to the sudden silence in a room when one becomes aware of the ticking of the clock. As the minutes passed, I found it hard to check the restless feeling that came over me. At the same time I felt that the whole world, outside the scene in which our drama was being enacted, had come to a standstill.
Then one of our men came running down the alley. He was Tom Cullen, a tall, well-built man, wearing a white sweater. He looked like an athlete, out for some early morning training. He spoke hurriedly to our leader, and whatever he said caused us to scatter.
The job was off.
Neither my companion nor I had time to move away before the party of detectives came into view. We started to walk towards them, not to arouse their suspicions, and we passed them unchallenged.
We were greatly disappointed at the failure to carry out our operation and tried to learn the reasons for it. It appeared that one of the detectives was a friend who was useful to us, and it was his presence with the others which necessitated the calling off of the attack.
However, we were to get another opportunity on the following Sunday.
Again we took up our positions as before, and again we got word that we were to disperse. I was surprised, and I greatly wondered why the job was again called off. On my way home one of my comrades told me that it had been postponed by an order from headquarters. Terence MacSwiney was reported to be near death in Brixton Jail, and it was decided that the attack would be more effective as a reprisal.
On the following Saturday, the 30th September 1920, some of us decided to go to a céilidh (a party with Irish dances), which was being held at Banba Hall. We agreed to pass the night there, so that we could be in position early on Sunday morning.
Curfew ended at 6 a.m. At that hour I left the hall in the company of Joe Leonard, a fellow Volunteer. We had promised to call for Paddy, one of our men who was living alone, and who, having no one to wake him, was afraid of sleeping too late.
The three of us, having had some tea, set out for the city, it being now 7 o’clock.
As we walked along we met only a few stragglers hurrying to Mass. Dawn was just breaking, and in the twilight we noticed a large military lorry approaching us. It drew abreast of us and we saw about a dozen Tommies, wearing tin hats, standing in the lorry.
The car was slowing down as it passed us and it came to a standstill on the canal bridge some twenty yards away. The soldiers jumped out and took up positions on the bridge.
We got ready for action in case of necessity and turned down a road at right angles to the bridge (Ossory Road), expecting every minute to hear a command to halt. With our hands on our hidden weapons we were ready to draw them, but fortunately for us we were not challenged. It was now almost certain death to be found with a gun, and there could have been only one end for us anyway.
Having walked about a hundred yards and got out of sight of the soldiers, we crossed a wall and got down on to some railway lines. Here we held a council of war to decide on our action.
Taking Paddy’s gun from him, we sent him along unarmed to pass through the military and warn the other Volunteers waiting near the church of the military picket. Some of them, we knew, would return that way and, if not apprised, would fall on disaster.
From our hidden look-out we saw Paddy being searched on the bridge, and saw him being allowed to continue on his way.
The light now increased and we noticed another party of soldiers coming towards the spot where we were hiding. It was time to be on the move.
We started walking along the railway lines in full view of the soldiers. But the distance between us was too great for a voice to carry. If they challenged us we did not hear them and proceeded on our way.
The railway lines on which we were walking were elevated, and ran parallel with the Royal Canal at a distance of about 200 yards. The railway crossed the intersecting roadways by overhead bridges, and from each bridge as we crossed it we saw military standing about on the corresponding canal bridge.
We rightly concluded that the north side of the city was cut off by the military cordon occupying all the canal bridges. This meant that it was now impossible for us to join our comrades, who were waiting for the G men near the church.
We reached Drumcondra Bridge, having travelled about a mile and a half along the railway embankment. We stood watching the soldiers searching pedestrians on the canal bridge opposite us.
Just then a bell rang in a nearby convent and I knew that it was half-past eight.
The sound of the bell brought to me a vivid sense of the reality of the situation.
‘Joe,’ I said, ‘what will we do now? The job must be over and the fellows on their way back. Will they blame us for not turning up? They will surely walk into the
military.’
‘Can’t we do something ourselves?’ he replied. ‘Can’t we do something to make them disperse?’
‘I think we can,’ I said, turning my eye towards the soldiers on the opposite bridge. Joe’s eyes followed mine. We read each other’s thoughts.
We knelt down on the parapet and, with my Mauser in my hand, we levelled our pistols at three of four soldiers who were standing on the footpath of the bridge. Some civilians were crossing at the time.
As soon as they had passed, I said: ‘Now!’
We both pressed the triggers of our pistols and continued to do so until the magazines were empty.
Then, without waiting to see what was the effect of our fire, we ran along the railway for some hundreds of yards, until we found a spot where we could get down onto a road.
My heart was thumping with excitement and from running at such speed. Every moment I expected to hear the sound of a military lorry dashing after us.
But when we reached the road there was nobody in sight. We exchanged a look of infinite relief. Walking on to a house of a Volunteer in the neighbourhood, we gave him our guns to hide for us.
We were now close to the street in which I lived, and Joe and I called at my home, where we had breakfast, of which we were badly in need.
When we had finished, we went out again and were just in time to see the troops driving away.
We called at Mick Mac’s house, and told him why we were unable to join him and that we had taken action on our own account. He asked us for the details of what had happened, but he did not seem to attach much importance to our exploit.
That night I was going home just before curfew, which was then at midnight, when a large touring car passed me. I noticed that there were several men in it, dressed as civilians. I was amazed to see the car draw up outside my house.
Immediately I scented danger. Already a number of Volunteers had been shot in midnight raids by military officers in mufti under the leadership of a Captain X.
I at once retraced my steps and made for the home of a Volunteer who lived nearby, where I spent the night.
Chapter XIII
I did not go home the following night, and my judgment proved very advisable.
Having failed to get me the night before, the enemy decided to raid for me officially. Troops arrived late in the evening, entered and searched the house, and finding me absent they arrested my brother, Emmet. Apparently a neighbour had seen me leaving the railway track on the morning of
the scrap and had informed the authorities.
As my brother had fought in Flanders, it was not easy to keep him as a hostage for me. After a few hours’ detention he was released and came home full of his experience.
I now knew that it would not be safe for me to go home again, and from this time onwards I was ‘on the run’.
Brigadier McKee sent for me and questioned me very closely as to what was in my mind in firing on the British soldiers. I was dreading this interview as I expected to be court-martialled for acting without orders.
So I kept lying to him, saying that the troops had seen us and that we feared pursuit and capture. But it was plain that he was not convinced and that he believed we had acted with deliberation and without provocation, which was the truth.
Though he could not get me to admit the facts, he seemed very pleased with the affair. It appeared that two soldiers were killed by our fire, and their officers, supposing that they were being ambushed by a large party of our men, caused the cordon immediately to be withdrawn.
In the next issue of our Volunteer Weekly Paper, An t-Óglach (The Volunteer), which was printed and circulated secretly, I was amazed to find a paragraph quoting the incident as ‘a splendid example of initiative’.
This was the first occasion on which troops had been deliberately fired on since the Rising, though in some previous attempts to disarm them some soldiers had been killed. Hitherto we had directed our action solely against their spies, either of the RIC or the intelligence department.
But now it was realized that to allow the troops to believe that they were immune from the danger of attack was tying our hands. They were raiding and searching and were operating with those who were directly employed to put an end to the National Movement and the men taking part in it.
Chapter XIV
A few days later one of the Squad called on me and asked me to accompany him. ‘The assistant director of intelligence wants to interview you,’ he told me.
He brought me into the city and through a number of side streets to Crow Street, an alleyway off Dame Street, quite close to Dublin Castle – the stronghold of the enemy.
When we came to a small printer’s shop he beckoned me up the stairs, and on the second floor he knocked on the door. On the door a card was fixed, with the words in printed letters ‘Irish Products Coy’.
After a little delay, a door was opened and we were admitted. There were three or four other Volunteers inside, some of whom I knew slightly. I noticed there were stacks of newspapers lying around.
Sitting at the table was a tall young man, with dark hair brushed back very smoothly. He had the look of a dominant personality. I recognized him as a Volunteer whom I had seen occasionally when there was something very important on hand.
He was Liam Tobin, the assistant director of intelligence, working immediately under Michael Collins. As a lad of nineteen he had fought in the Rising under Tom Clarke and was sentenced to death, the sentence being commuted to penal servitude for life.
After we had exchanged a few commonplace remarks, he asked me if I would like to become a member of his staff. There was nothing on earth I wished for more, but I had looked upon it as an honour far above my reach, and I was hard put to it to hide from him my eagerness and the feeling of surprise which almost overwhelmed me.
So I replied, as composedly as I could, that nothing would please me better.
He seemed satisfied with me, and forthwith instructed me in my new duties. I was to report to him the next morning and he would tell me what I was to do.
When I arrived, very punctually, the following morning, I was given the daily papers to look through. I was told to cut out any paragraphs referring to the personnel of the Royal Irish Constabulary or military, such as transfers, their movements socially, attendance at wedding receptions, garden parties, etc. These I pasted on a card which were sent to the director of intelligence for his perusal and instructions. Photographs and other data which were or might be of interest were cut out and put away. We often gathered useful information of the movements of important enemy personages in this manner, whom we traced also by a study of Who’s Who, from which we learned the names of their connections and clubs. By intercepting their correspondence we were able to get a clue to their movements outside their strongholds.
I was next shown how to decode telegrams. Liam Tobin received copies of telegrams from some person he had working for him in the Central Telegraph Office. These were all in code and were addressed to district inspectors of the RIC throughout the country. We possessed the key word, so we had no difficulty in deciphering them. The key word was changed at least once a month, but in notifying the change the new key word was telegraphed in the existing code. So that having once got the key word the code was always afterwards decipherable by us.
The contexts of these messages usually referred to contemplated arrests and raids on Volunteers’ houses. By communicating copies of these messages to the areas concerned, the police were frustrated. When the raiders arrived the men they were looking for were not at home.
Other important information was gained in this manner, without which we would have been beaten very early in the fight. The odds were so powerfully against us that we had all the time to make up by our alertness and forethought for our material deficiencies.
We compiled a list of friendly persons in the public services, railways, mailboats and hotels. I was sent constantly to interview stewards, reporters, waiters and hotel porters to verify our reports of the movement of enemy agents.
After a time I became curious to know who was the occupant of the other office on our landing, as I could hear coming from it the constant sound of a typewriter. I was told that she was a Protestant and hostile lady who was a typist. ‘But do not be uneasy about her,’ they said, ‘she is quite deaf.’
Though I knew that Michael Collins was the director of intelligence, I did not see him, nor did he ever call at our office. His messenger, Joe O’Reilly, a Volunteer, came twice a day, taking letters for the D/I, and leaving letters from him for Liam Tobin. Joe came always on a bicycle and was the only medium of direct communication between the assistant director and the director of intelligence. At least, in the daytime.
I had not been engaged for more than a week on my new duties when the assistant D/I told us that he was increasing our staff. There were now about twelve men comprising the intelligence branch.
Chapter XV
Since the General Post Office was destroyed in the Rising of 1916, the sorting of letters had been carried on at the Rink in Parnell Square.
There had been seizures of the mails from time to time by the Volunteers, and the authorities took steps to ensure the safety of their official correspondence. Important letters were taken to the Rink for sorting and military escorts accompanied the vans carrying official letters to and from the sorting office.
A military guard had been placed over the Rink, but was withdrawn subsequently, and a system of alarms installed in its place. These consisted of several electric buttons which communicated with the Castle. Immediately one of them was pressed the alarm would ring out there, and military and armoured cars could be rushed to the Rink.
Since the withdrawal of the military guard, Michael Collins and his intelligence officers had been considering the possibility of effecting another coup.
The director of intelligence got into touch with a friendly postal official and got him to make a plan of the Rink, showing the positions of the alarm bells and also of the racks which contained the various government mails.
It was discovered that the mails were all sorted by eight o’clock in the morning and were collected by the military at nine. It was, therefore, possible that if the Rink could be entered shortly after eight o’clock and the officials taken by surprise so that they could not give the alarm, it would be a comparatively easy matter to seize the mails.
I was sent for one evening by the vice-commandant, Oscar Traynor. He showed me a very good plan of
the Rink and told me that he had instructions to carry out a raid there the next morning at eight-thirty. He had picked a dozen men for the job, and I was delighted to find that I was to be one of them.
He then outlined the plan. We were to enter the rear or west side of the Rink. There were platforms there onto which the bags were unloaded from the vans, and from these platforms two chutes descended into the building down which the mail bags were discharged.
He told me that three of our intelligence officers would unobtrusively enter the front or main entrance a few minutes before our party, and would take up positions by the three alarm bells and prevent them from being sounded.
I arrived at the rendezvous, a corner a hundred yards away from the Rink, precisely at 8.25.
There I saw the other men waiting. The vice-commandant spoke to me and, taking out his watch, he waited until it wanted half a minute to half-past eight.
Then he told another man and myself to go ahead, and to bear in mind the position of the chutes. The rest of the men would follow us at a little distance behind, as if the postmen, who were on the platform unloading the mails, were to see the whole of our group approaching the building together they might become alarmed.
My companion and I went forward, and on reaching the platform we had no difficulty in locating the chute, as we could see the bags being thrown down into it.
Without further delay we got onto the platform and made for the chute, to the extreme surprise of the postmen.
Bending our heads, we got in and shot forward. I was the first down, and I do not know how I kept on my feet, as the incline was about forty-five degrees and was not unlike a helter-skelter at a fair. When I reached the floor I was travelling at such speed that I had to run halfway through the building before I could come to a standstill.
Then I looked behind me. After me came my companions sliding down in most undignified fashion and tumbling on the floor when they arrived. They were quickly on their feet, and we made our way at once to the section where we knew the government mails were sorted.
Espionage and Assasination with Michael Collins' Intelligence Unit: With the Dublin Brigade Page 6
