until the house was surrounded, and that if even a whisper of what was
in the air got abroad all chances of capturing Joyce were gone. Tired of
seeing operations ruined by well-advertised Crossleys, bristling with
rifles, tearing along the main roads, he determined to try and catch his
man by cunning.
Directly he received the news that Joyce was at Bunrattey, he left
Ballybor Barracks with four Crossleys, two of R.I.C., and two of
Auxiliaries, in the opposite direction to which Bunrattey lay, until
they came to a small village about ten miles to the north, where there
was a large flour-mill. Surrounding the mill, the police carried out a
perfunctory search and left just before dark, taking with them two of
the miller’s lorries, one empty, and the other loaded with flour sacks
and two large tarpaulins, cutting the wires as soon as they were clear
of the village.
Making their way eastwards until they reached a long stretch of desolate
bog-road, they halted with one tender about a quarter of a mile behind
and another the same distance ahead. They then proceeded to transfer
half the flour sacks to the empty lorry, built them up with a hollow in
the middle so that both lorries appeared to be fully loaded, filled the
hollows with police, and then threw a tarpaulin over each.
The two lorries then set off to make a large detour in order to approach
Bunrattey from the south (the opposite direction to Ballybor), and Blake
made out that they ought to arrive there about midnight. The four
Crossleys waited and followed at a time which should bring them to
Bunrattey a quarter of an hour after the arrival of the lorries.
Joyce’s sister’s house stood back from the main road about eighty yards,
was one-storied, very strongly built, and had a tremendous thatch of
straw; to the front there were four small windows, heavily shuttered,
and a stout oak door, and at the back only a door of the same kind. At a
distance of about thirty yards from the house a low stone wall ran round
the sides and back, enclosing a small cabbage garden and the haggard,
which gave excellent cover for the police.
The lorries stopped within 400 yards of the house, and the police
quickly and silently surrounded it without raising the alarm. They then
waited for the arrival of the Crossleys, when the Auxiliaries and the
remainder of the police formed a second cordon outside the first one.
The leading lorry was now brought into the lane which led up to the
house, and left there with the acetylene lamps shining full on the front
door and windows, and at the same time the lamps of the second lorry
were taken to the back of the house and mounted on the wall, so that any
one attempting to leave the house by the doors or windows would be in
the full glare of the powerful lamps.
Approaching the house from a gable-end, Blake crawled along the front
until he reached the door, on which he hammered with the butt of his
revolver, and called on the inmates to surrender, telling them that they
were surrounded and that resistance only meant death. Receiving no
answer, he called out that if they did not come out at once with their
hands up, he would open fire on the house, and for reply there came a
volley of bullets through the lower part of the door. He then crawled
back to cover, and ordered his men to open fire on the front door with a
machine-gun.
The concentrated fire of a machine-gun will cut a hole through a
nine-inch brick wall in a very short time, and in a few minutes the oak
door was in splinters. While the machine-gun kept up a continuous fire
at the height of a man’s chest, four policemen endeavoured to get into
the house by crawling up to the door, but when a few feet away two were
shot, and the remaining two only escaped by rolling to one side.
All that the police had to do now, provided that Joyce was in the
house—and the resistance offered made this a certainty—was to wait until
daylight, when the certain capture of the gunmen would only be a
question of time. But by now Blake was excited, and remembering how
O’Hara had slipped through his hands, he determined to burn the rats out
and finish the show. After getting a tin of petrol from one of the cars,
he again crawled up to the gable-end, set a light to the tin, and flung
it on to the thatch, which at once took fire, burning fiercely.
Only a few days previously this part of the thatch had been renewed, and
as the weather had been fine it was bone-dry. But after a few minutes
the fire reached the old and wet thatch, and as there was a gentle
breeze blowing from the front, very soon the back of the house was
completely hidden by a cloud of smoke.
Realising the mistake he had made, Blake ordered his men to keep up a
continuous fire on the back door, and at the same time rushed the
machine-gun round to that side; but so blinding was the smoke by now
that it was impossible to know where the back door was.
Hearing shouts from the front, on going there he found a young woman
standing in the doorway with her hands up, who told him that all the men
in the house were wounded and unable to move. On entering they found
three of Joyce’s bodyguard and his brother-in-law lying in pools of
blood on the kitchen floor, but not a sign of Joyce or the fourth man.
There was still a chance that the missing two might be found wounded
outside the back door, which was ajar, but the smoke was still so dense
that no one could approach. After a time the smoke abated, and they
found the fourth man dead a few yards from the house, but not a sign of
Joyce.
Again working on the theory that the gunman would make for his home in
the Ballyrick mountains, which lay to the westward at the back of the
house, Blake divided his forces into two, sending each out on a flank in
order to get well ahead of the fugitive, and then form a fan-shaped net
and beat backwards towards the house. Four miles away to the west was
the Owenmore river, which ran northwards through Ballybor, and across
the river were two bridges, each about four miles from where they were.
The two forces crossed by different bridges, each dropping three men at
the bridges, then went on about three miles, and at daybreak started to
beat the country back to the bridges. Here they arrived, worn out, at 10
A.M., and not a sign had any one seen or heard of Joyce.
Sure that Joyce had crossed the river, the police started to beat back
again over the ground they had just covered; but by 4 P.M. the men were
done in, and Blake had to call them off and return to Ballybor.
That night he got out a large-scale Ordnance map of the Bunrattey
district, put himself in Joyce’s place, and tried to think out his line
of escape, presuming that the fugitive had avoided the bridges and swum
the river at the nearest point from his sister’s house. On crossing the
river he would soon come to a thick wood on the slope of a hill, through
which the railway line to Ballybor ran, and here he decided that Joyce
must be hiding.
Early the next morning Blake set out with a strong force, and
approaching Derryallen Wood from all four sides at once, spent the rest
of the day beating the wood through and through, but without any result,
and they came to the conclusion that by now Joyce must have got clear.
A week afterwards, when Blake was returning in the dusk from Grouse
Lodge Barracks, a man stopped the car on an open stretch of road about a
mile outside Ballybor. The man turned out to be the loyal guard of the
goods train, and he told Blake that for several days past he had seen
the engine-driver drop a parcel as the train passed through Derryallen
Wood, and always at the same place, into a patch of briers on the side
of the line.
Blake’s interest in Joyce awoke afresh, but he felt sure that no living
being had escaped them on the day when they searched the wood, and they
had not been able to find any trace of a hiding-place. However, it would
be interesting to know what the engine-driver dropped when passing
through the wood, and by whom it was picked up.
The main road from Ballybor to Castleport ran parallel with the railway,
skirting the east side of Derryallen; and here, on a pitch-dark winter’s
night, in torrents of rain, two Crossleys stopped for a couple of
minutes while Blake and a party of R.I.C. and Cadets dropped out, and
then drove on again.
With great difficulty the party found their way in the dark to the
railway line, where they remained hidden in some laurels until it began
to grow light, when they were able to conceal themselves within easy
reach of the patch of briers.
After hours of weary waiting the goods train passed down, and the
engine-driver dropped the parcel into the briers. At once the police
forgot hunger and cold in their eagerness to see who would pick up the
parcel, but again they were doomed to hours of weary waiting.
At last, when the men had nearly reached the limit of their endurance
and light was almost gone, they saw a most miserable-looking wild-eyed
man crawling painfully towards the patch of briers. When he was within
five yards of the parcel Blake called on him to surrender, and every man
covered him with his rifle.
Game to the end, though unable to stand on account of a bullet-wound in
one leg, Joyce drew his pistol and glared defiance at the police; but as
he raised himself to fire, a fifteen-stone Cadet, who had crept up
silently behind him, flung himself on the famous gunman’s back, and the
long chase was over.
Joyce refused to show Blake his hiding-place, but afterwards they learnt
from the owner of the wood that there was a cave in the middle of the
wood which had been used by robbers over a hundred years ago, the
entrance of which was completely covered by thick heather.
VII.
THE STRANGER WITHIN THE GATES.
After the loss of the American arms the district of Ballybor remained
quiet for some considerable time, so that the hard-working farmers in
the country and respectable shopkeepers in the town began to hope at
last that the trouble was over, and that they might be free to carry on
their work in peace. Unfortunately, a quiet and peaceful district is
anathema to the Sinn Fein G.H.Q., and before long a Volunteer flying
column received orders to operate in the Ballybor district, with a view
to stirring up trouble and bringing the county into line with the south.
By this time the large moderate element of Sinn Fein, in other words,
practically every man who had a stake in the country—substantial farmers
with haggards to burn, and prosperous shopkeepers with shops to
burn—realised that they had backed a losing horse, and were prepared to
do any mortal thing for peace, except help the police. Unfortunately,
the farmers’ sons and shop-boys, who, in the usual course of events, but
for the war, would have been in the States by now, took quite a
different view. £20 in the £ rates, burnt haggards, and ruined
businesses meant nothing to boys who paid no rates nor owned shops or
farms.
Up to the winter of 1919 the rebels moved about the country in motors,
how, when, and where they liked. Even during the time when every gallon
of petrol was being kept for the armies in France, and the Loyalists
were only allowed six gallons a month (on paper), De Valera and his
staff burnt petrol as freely as a Connaught peasant will drink poteen.
In connection with this, it would be interesting to know into whose
petrol tanks the many thousands of gallons of petrol which was washed up
on the western shores of Ireland from torpedoed vessels passed, and the
system of collection and distribution.
After this winter, when the use of cars for illegal purposes became more
and more restricted as the car-permit regulations became stricter and
more rigidly enforced, the Volunteers began to make great use of
bicycles, and their flying columns consisted of cyclists only. Orders
were issued from G.H.Q. that every Volunteer must be able to ride a
bicycle, and local commandants were instructed to see that every man in
their command had one.
During the Mons retreat the cyclists were invaluable, both for fighting
small rearguard actions and also for keeping in contact with the enemy.
During the present war in Ireland, the explanation of the mysteries of
how men can shoot policemen from behind a wall and then disappear into
thin air, and of how a column of gunmen can shoot up a train in Kerry on
Monday and ambush a police lorry in Clare on Tuesday, is to be found in
the intelligent use of the humble push-bike. And until the authorities
round up every push-bike in Ireland, these mysteries will continue.
As soon as G.H.Q. determined that the Ballybor district must be brought
into line with the south, a small party of gunmen, operating at the time
many miles to the south, received their orders, and late that night a
silent and ghostly party of cyclists rode into the Ballybor district. At
a certain cross-roads they were met by guides, and long before daybreak
the gunmen were billeted in ones and twos throughout the townland of
Cloonalla.
The following night a meeting of the local Volunteers was held in the
National School, and the leader of the gunmen insisted that a police
ambush or an attack on the Grouse Lodge Barracks should take place
within the next few nights. The general opinion being against an attack
on the barracks—the field of fire was too good, and the Black and Tans
too handy with their rifles—it was settled (by the gunmen) that the
police should be ambushed at a favourable spot where the main road from
Ballybor to Castleport passed through a wooded demesne.
The next morning Father Tom, the parish priest, was besieged by the
young Volunteers’ fathers, men who had homes and haggards to burn, one
and all imploring his reverence to prevent an ambush in the parish, and
to save them from the wrath of the Auxiliaries. Some of them, when
asked, confessed that the gunmen were staying in their houses, but that
their sons had brought them there without leave, and that they were
powerless to get rid of them.
From the beginning of the movement Father Tom, who was young for a
parish priest and an ardent Sinn Feiner in theory, had been one of the
leaders in the district, and even when burning houses and haggards began
to follow murderous ambuscades in far-away Co. Cork as surely as day
follows night, he still felt a thrill of pride for his countrymen who
were giving their all for freedom, and became a fiercer Sinn Feiner than
ever; but an ambush (and the sequel) in his own beloved parish was a
very different thing, and a calamity to be avoided at all costs (his
house stood high, and would give a splendid view at night of burning
houses and haggards), and there was obviously no time to lose.
The next day was Sunday, and at mass Father Tom, who was a fine
preacher, thundered forth from the altar. A vivid imagination stimulated
his eloquence to such a pitch that he reduced most of the older members
of his flock to tears.
He told them that it had come to his ears that certain men in the parish
were harbouring strangers within their gates, and that these strangers
had been trying to incite young and innocent boys to murder policemen.
He then described the result of an ambush—how houses were burnt to the
ground and women and little children were turned out on the road on a
winter’s night (he did not mention the men, knowing that by then they
would be up in the mountains), and how innocent men were shot in their
beds before the eyes of their wives; but he said nothing about the
widows and orphans of the murdered policemen. Finally, he warned his
flock against the strangers, who would fade away before the wrath of the
soldiers and Auxiliaries fell on the parish, and commanded that they
should be instantly turned out under the direst penalties. And with a
last curse on the strangers he left the chapel.
If Father Tom had thundered from the altar against ambushes many, many
months before, instead of openly encouraging the Volunteers, the result
might have been very different; but a leader of men who gives an order
to-day and a counter-order to-morrow is rarely obeyed. That night it was
learnt that a party of military would proceed from Castleport to
Ballybor on Wednesday night, and it was settled to ambush them at the
spot chosen in the demesne, the gunmen promising that a carload of arms
and bombs would arrive in time for the ambush, and also a doctor.
In the Cloonalla district there lived, nowadays a _rara avis_ in the
west of Ireland, a Protestant farmer of the old yeoman type so well
known in England, and a staunch Loyalist. To his house there came on
that Sunday night two of the leading farmers, who told him the whole
story of the proposed ambush, and begged him to warn the police.
The chapel of Cloonalla stands in the centre of the parish, close to a
cross-roads, and on that Wednesday morning the inhabitants woke up to
find a kilted sentry on guard at the cross-roads, and before most of
them could get out of bed, two companies of Highlanders, guided by
Blake, were hard at work searching every house for strangers.
Blake had brought with him two old regular R.I.C. sergeants, men who had
been stationed in the district for years, and who knew every man, young
and old; but the gunmen had been in trouble before, and were not to be
caught so easily.
They were all young men and clean shaved, and before the police and
Highlanders entered any of their billets, one and all were dressed as
women with shawls over their heads; and in one house, where two of them
had been billeted, the Highlanders found a young woman sitting on a
stool by the fire, nursing a baby under her shawl, while another pretty
shawled girl was preparing breakfast for the young mother. A big
Highlander could not resist giving her a glad eye, little knowing that
“she” was a notorious gunman, and wanted to the tune of a thousand
pounds for the brutal murder of a D.I. as he was leaving church.
The only result of the raid was the finding of an old shot-gun in the
bed of the local blacksmith, a man who had always defied the local
Volunteers, and kept a gun for poaching only, and who was taken off to
Ballybor Barracks amidst the jeers of everybody. However, in a few days
they realised how useful and necessary a person a smith is in a country
district, and before the week was out the whole townland was clamouring
for the smith’s release.
However, the raid had good results; the Volunteers refused point-blank
to carry out the ambush on Wednesday night, though the gunmen stayed
until that day, making every endeavour to bring it off. Finding it was
useless, they disappeared that night as silently as they had come,
promising to return shortly in greater numbers.
The whole district heaved a sigh of relief when it was known that there
were no longer any strangers within the gates, and settled down to farm
and lead the life God meant them to live, and hoped against hope that
they might never see a cursed stranger again, be he gunman or Auxiliary.
Blake let it be known that it was a case of no ambush, no Auxiliaries,
and every farmer in the district was quite content to keep his side of
the bargain.
But peace was not yet to be the portion of Cloonalla. Within three weeks
of the first gunman leaving, a party of twenty arrived on a wild
winter’s night, and, as on the former occasion, as silently dispersed to
their allotted billets. This time the leader of the gunmen did not ask
the local Volunteers to help, but ordered them to carry out the ambush
in the wooded demesne on the main road from Castleport to Ballybor, as
previously arranged.
The gunmen did not appear during the day-time at all, and had been
nearly a week in the district before Father Tom heard of their arrival.
Unfortunately, the priest was very ill with influenza at the time, and
before he could take any action the damage was done.
As usual, the scene of the ambush was laid with great cleverness.
Between the two entrance-gates of the demesne on the main road there was
a sharp rise in the form of an S bend, with a thick thorn hedge on each
side of the middle of this bend. Where the rise was steepest, there was
a lane leading to the keeper’s house, about fifty yards from the road,
and at the entrance of this lane the gunmen laid a mine in the main road
to be fired by an electric wire running towards the keeper’s house.
After laying the mine they forced the road contractor of that part of
the road to cart broken stones and lay them right across the road over
the mine, so that all traces of the mine were hidden.
The day after the mine had been laid word came to Cloonalla that the
police had arrested three men in Ballybor during the previous night, and
that it was thought that the prisoners would be sent to Castleport that
night in a Crossley under a strong police escort. As soon as it was
dark, the gunmen, after parking their bicycles in a wood of the demesne,
collected all the Volunteers they could induce or force to accompany
them, and made their way across country to the scene of the ambush.
The night was unusually fine with a full moon, and two hours after the
Volunteers and gunmen had taken up their positions, the peculiar note of
a Crossley engine could be distinctly heard approaching at a great pace
from the Ballybor direction. The gunman who had laid the mine was a
first-class electrician, and as the car tore past the lane there was a
blinding flash, followed by a terrific roar, and the car seemed to jump
clean off the road and then collapse in a burning heap on the road.
With the roar of the mine the ambushers opened a heavy fire on the car,
but receiving no reply they quickly ceased fire, waiting to see what
would happen next. But the mine had done its work only too well, and the
only sounds which could be heard were the groans of dying men amid the
burning ruins of the car. After some minutes two policemen rolled out of
the end of the car and lay on the highroad, one man with both his legs
paralysed, crying piteously for water, and the second with part of his
head blown away by a flat-nosed bullet, crying for a priest.
Up to this point the leader of the gunmen had taken charge of all the
proceedings, and when the Volunteers were collected on the road like a
flock of sheep they still waited for orders. However, after five
minutes, as no order was given, they began to look for their leader,
suddenly to realise that every gunman had faded away.
At once every Volunteer started to make his way home as fast as he
could, and within two minutes the only occupants of the road were the
two dying policemen, lying like two black logs in the white moonlight.
Presently a terror-stricken keeper crept out of his house, and as soon
as his scattered wits could take in the situation, he got out his
bicycle and rode into Ballybor for help.
Long before day broke columns of soldiers, R.I.C., and Auxiliaries
concentrated on and met at that horrible scene on the road between the
two demesne gates, and shortly afterwards broke like a tornado on the
townland of Cloonalla, and Father Tom, from his bedroom window, saw his
worst fears realised. When daylight came the parish was at last clear of
all strangers and avengers, but at a terrible price.
A quick-witted policeman remembered that the only limestone road in
Cloonalla was the road from Ballybor to Castleport, so that it was easy
to tell in a house by an inspection of boots if any man of that
household had been present at the ambush, and that night the fathers
suffered for the sins of their sons, and the sons paid the full price of
the gunmen’s crime.
Like good soldiers, the gunmen carefully thought out their line of
retreat before the ambush took place. They found that a broad river ran
through the demesne parallel to and about 400 yards from the main road,
that the nearest bridges above and below were five miles away, and that
across the river ran a range of wild and desolate country. In a wood on
the bank of the river they found fishing-boats, used for netting salmon
during the summer-time, and before the ambush the leader sent two of his
men to collect all these boats at a certain part of the river, and to
remain there in readiness to take the remainder and their bicycles
across. As soon as the ambush was over they collected their bicycles,
crossed the river, and were soon riding through a little-known pass in
the mountains on their way to carry on their devil’s work in a part of
the country many miles removed from the scene of the Cloonalla ambush.
VIII.
MR BRIGGS’ ISLAND.