A Hard Local War E-Book

William Sheehan

• Herausgeber: THP Ireland
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 573

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Following years of discontent over Home Rule and the Easter Rising, the deaths of two Royal Irish Constabulary policemen in Soloheadbeg at the hands of the IRA in 1919 signalled the outbreak of war in Ireland. The Irish War of Independence raged until a truce between the British Army and the IRA in 1921, historical consensus being that the conflict ended in military stalemate. In A Hard Local War, William Sheeham sets out to prove that no such stalemate existed, and that both sides were continually innovative and adaptive. Using new research and previously unpublished archive material, he traces the experience of the British rank and file, their opinion of their opponents, the special forces created to fight in the Irish countryside, RAF involvement and the evolution of IRA reliance on IEDs and terrorism.

Leseprobe

To all those who fought and died in Cork, 1919–1921

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old lie, Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen

First published 2011, this edition first published 2017

The History Press Ireland

50 City Quay

Dublin 2

www.thehistorypress.ie

The History Press Ireland are a member of Publishing Ireland, the Irish Book Publisher’s Association.

© William Sheehan, 2011, 2017

The right of William Sheehan to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 8748 6

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Historical Revisionism

Irish Historical Revisionism

The British Perspective

British Historical Revisionism

Section One

The Informal War

Chapter One

Reprisals

The Origins of Reprisals

The Conduct of Reprisals

The Control of Reprisals

Shifting Alliances

Chapter Two

The Soldiers’ Experience

An Unwanted Posting

British Soldiers and the IRA

British Soldiers and the War

British Soldiers and the Irish Population

Army Life in Ireland

The War in British Regimental Memory

Diverse Perspectives

Section Two

The British Army and the People

Chapter Three

The British Army’s Intelligence War

The Foundations

The Dangers and Difficulties of Intelligence

The Development of Military Intelligence

The Development and Protection of Signals Intelligence

Intelligence Success

‘Operationally Useful’

Chapter Four

Law and Propaganda

The Use of Special Military Areas

The Legal Foundations of Military Operations

The Use of Curfews

The Employment of Martial Law

Official and Unofficial Reprisals

Executions

The Development of a Propaganda Machine

Religion, Economics and the Rules of Engagement

The Impact and Importance of Propaganda

‘Rigorous Law is often Rigorous Injustice’

Section Three

The Guerrilla War

Chapter Five

The Military Challenge of the IRA

The Securing of British Transportation

The Evolution of British Tactics

The Myth of Crossbarry

‘Framework Deployment’

Chapter Six

The End of the Guerrilla Campaign

A Terrorist Strategy

The Military Realities of the Truce

‘Close on my Trail’

Conclusions

Appendix One

Official Punishments Carried Out Under Martial Law, 1921

Appendix Two

Restoration of Order in Ireland Act, 1920

Appendix Three

The Operational Procedures for Air Offensive Actions in Ireland, 1921

Appendix Four

Tom Barry’s IRA Report on Crossbarry

Appendix Five

The British Officers

Notes

Bibliography

Abbreviations

AAG

Assistant Adjutant General

AA & QMG

Assistant Adjutant & Quartermaster General

ADC

Aide De Camp

ADRIC

Auxiliary Division, Royal Irish Constabulary

AIR

Air Ministry

ASC

Army Service Corps

ASU

Active Service Unit

ATO

An t-Óglach

ANZAC

Australian & New Zealand Army Corps

Batt

Battalion

BIM

British in Ireland Microfilms

BMH

Bureau of Military History

Bn

Battalion

BWM

British War Medal

Capt

Captain

CB

Companion of the Bath

CBE

Commander of the Order of the British Empire

CC

Cork Constitution

CCA

Cork City and County Archives

CE

Cork Examiner

CMG

Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George

CMO

Courts Martial Officer

CO

Colonial Office

Col

Colonel

Cpl

Corporal

CQMS

Company Quartermaster Sergeant

CSM

Company Sergeant Major

CWN

Cork Weekly News

DAAG

Deputy Assistant Adjutant General

DAQMG

Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General

DMP

Dublin Metropolitan Police

DORA

Defence of the Realm Act

DSM

Distinguished Service Medal

DSO

Distinguished Service Order

ERG

Essex Regimental Gazette

GHQ

General Headquarters

GOC

General Officer Commanding

GSM

General Service Medal

GSO

General Staff Officer

HRJ

Hampshire Regimental Journal

II

Irish Independent

IMA

Irish Military Archives

IRA

Irish Republican Army

IRB

Irish Republican Brotherhood

IT

Irish Times

IWM

Imperial War Museum

JP

Justice of the Peace

KM

Kings Medal

KOSB

King’s Own Scottish Borderers

KSLI

King’s Shropshire Light Infantry

LG

Lilywhites Gazette

LHCMA

Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives

Lt

Lieutenant

MBE

Member of the Order of the British Empire

MC

Military Cross

MM

Military Medal

MP

Member of Parliament

MRG

Manchester Regimental Gazette

NAM

National Army Museum

NAUK

National Archives United Kingdom

NCO

Non-Commissioned Officer

NLI

National Library of Ireland

OBE

Officer of the Order of the British Empire

OTC

Officer Training Corps

Ox & Bucks

The Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry

Pte

Private

QM

Queens Medal

UCDA

University College Dublin Archives

UDC

Urban District Council

RA

Royal Artillery

RAF

Royal Air Force

RAM

Royal Artillery Museum

RAMC

Royal Army Medical Corps

RAMR

Royal Artillery Mounted Rifles

RASC

Royal Army Service Corps

RDC

Rural District Council

RE

Royal Engineers

RFA

Royal Field Artillery

RFC

Royal Flying Corps

RGA

Royal Garrison Artillery

RIC

Royal Irish Constabulary

RM

Resident Magistrate

RM

Royal Marines

RMLI

Royal Marine Light Infantry

RN

Royal Navy

RSM

Regimental Sergeant Major

SAA

Small Arms Ammunition

Sgt

Sergeant

SOGM

Soldiers of Gloucestershire Museum

TS

The Times

VM

Victory Medal

WO

War Office

WS

Witness Statement

Acknowledgements

‘No man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’

John Donne

This book would and could not have happened without the help of many people all throughout my life, in fact too many to mention. My interest in history comes from my grandfather, William Sheehan, my namesake and a member of the IRA in Cork during the War of Independence, and my father, Peter Sheehan, both now sadly deceased. Their gift to me was a love of learning and truth, and I dedicate this book primarily to them.

I must also acknowledge the great support of my remaining family: my partner Dr Rachel MagShamhrain; my mother Noreen Sheehan; my sisters Eileen O’Donoghue and Bernadette McAuliffe; their husbands, Patrick and Michael; and my nephews and niece Peter, Joseph, Eve, Matthew and Faye.

I was extremely fortunate in my PhD supervisor, Dr Maura Cronin, who has been a great guide and friend over the last few years. This book could not have been written without her invaluable assistance and support. It was refreshing to work in the professional and yet informal environment of the history department, Mary Immaculate College, and to have had the support of academics of the calibre of Liam Irwin, Dr Deirdre MacMahon, Dr Una Ni Bromill and Dr Liam Chambers. I could not have pursued my PhD without the financial support of the teaching assistantship, which Liam Irwin so generously provided. In addition, I would also like to thank Dr Stephen Thornton, head of the philosophy department and director of postgraduate studies for nearly all my time in the college. The companionship of an excellent group of fellow postgraduate students also made my years there a pleasure.

One of the most important resources for my research at Mary Immaculate College has been the library, or more correctly the fine staff therein. I would like in particular to thank Phyllis, Elizabeth and Maureen. I would also like to thank the following Irish archives and libraries for their support in allowing me to access material: the National Archives; the National Photographic Archive; the National Library; the UCD Archives; the UCC Library; the Cork City and County Libraries; and the Cork County Archives. I would also like to thank the Military Archives and in particular Commandant Victor Laing and Commandant Pat Brennan for their invaluable assistance on this and other projects.

This book has greatly relied on the assistance and support of many British archives. I would like to thank the Imperial War Museum, the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, Kings College, London, the National Army Museum, the Royal Artillery Museum, and the Leeds University Library. I would especially like to thank Anthony Richard, Stephanie Clarke and Lucy Farrow of the Imperial War Museum and Kate O’Brien of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives. Further, I would also like to thank all the copyright holders for allowing me to quote from an array of private papers. Appendix 4 is courtesy of UCD Archives.

Finally, I would like to thank my agents, Paul and Susan Feldstein, and also Shaun Barrington and Miranda Jewess at The History Press, whose editing and guidance made this a far stronger book.

Any and all failings in this book are my own.

Introduction: Historical Revisionism

A famous cartoon by David Low (see picture section, page 8) neatly sums up the abiding public memory of the British campaign in Ireland. It was printed in the Star following the imposition of martial law in Ireland, and the instigation of a policy of official reprisal; the ‘punishment by fire’ in the cartoon’s background reflects the then recent ‘Burning of Cork’. It is a straightforward presentation of British policy in Ireland as brutal and inept, two words which have come to define the conduct of the British Army in Ireland during the War of Independence, a testament, perhaps, to the work of Frank Gallagher and the Irish Bulletin, which did so much to shape the view of the war at the time and since. The campaign has left no enduring memory in the popular imagination of the British public, for these events took place during a period of history which for the British will always be dominated by the experiences of the First World War.

Irish Historical Revisionism

Nothing in Irish historiography has generated as much bitterness and hostility as the work of academic historians revisiting the history of the War of Independence. This criticism has often come from those outside the discipline, such as Seamus Deane, a distinguished scholar of Irish literature, who has argued that ‘revisionism’ is ‘not a genuine attempt to write value-free history, but a politically loaded project, an anti-nationalist project, in fact a Unionist project.’1 One local historian dismisses the work of ‘revisionist’ historians who, in the light of much new evidence, including that provided by the Bureau of Military History, are re-examining this conflict. He has gone even further by claiming that revisionist historians are agents of the British state, and that ‘by virtue of its power of patronage, which is very much greater than that of the Irish state, Britain has secured the services of many academics in the Irish Universities, paid for by the Irish tax-payer, in doing this work.’2 Many respected public commentators retain the most naïve view of the events of 1919–1921 and of the IRA. John Waters, a columnist for the Irish Times, has talked about how ‘passionate thoughts and deeds had inspired their generation to expel the conqueror for good.’3

Nor are government ministers immune to such historical commandeering, as was demonstrated by the speech given by Éamon Ó’Cuív, then Minster for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, at the Aubane Community Centre near Millstreet, on 30 January 2004, in which he presented the war as ‘a story of ordinary people rising up against tyranny and overwhelming odds, arming themselves with guns dispossessed from their enemies and at all times willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.’4 Ó’Cuív justified the IRA’s burning of Protestant houses with the explanation that, ‘War is no fun. But if you have no implement left to defend the poor of the society from having their houses burned down one after the other except to meet fire with fire and knowing that the sympathisers of the British would quickly put a stop to the burning because they were under threat for the first time.’5 The IRA’s crushing of various nascent Irish workers’ soviets which developed during this period perhaps should be taken as more indicative of their views on the working class revolution. This trenchant protection of the story of the War of Independence – as devised by what Tom Garvin described as the Fianna Fáil School of Revisionism – highlights a deep insecurity amongst many about the founding of the Irish State and the historical path that led to its creation. As Mike Cronin and John M. Regan have said ‘[r]epublican teleology had no use for Irish parliamentarians, Redmondite politics, Irish Volunteers in France, Flanders, and Gallipoli, or the first ten years of independence.’6 And as Charles Townshend has pointed out, ‘a republican-dominated perspective has obscured the majority view in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Ireland’ and indeed many of our previous histories have simply been the ‘presentation of the victory of revolutionary politics as inevitable.’7

A key role in the creation of the mythology of the war in the popular Irish imagination has been played by the numerous memoirs of IRA veterans such as Tom Barry, Liam Deasy, Ernie O’Malley and Dan Breen, all of whom have been bestsellers for years in Ireland, accepted and largely unquestioned. These works have been reinforced by a multitude of local historians who have been instrumental in shaping and influencing the public view of the conflict. They have often treated local myths as facts, and made accusations of the most serious of crimes on the basis of local stories rather than actual evidence. Execute Hostage Compton-Smith, for example talks about ‘the unethical war-like butchery of British troops in Ireland, at the behest of the British Government,’8 and also claims that the position of the British government, ‘long admired and respected, was shattered in the screams of women and young girls being raped by the Hampshires.’9 The work also presents a fanciful if not uncommon version of the Crossbarry Ambush of 1921 in which:

2,000 personnel converged at Crossbarry five miles from Bandon, under Major Percival where they were attacked by Tom Barry and his West Cork Brigade unit numbering 104 men. It was extremely humiliating for Major Percival of the Essex Regiment to be forced to flee and on looking back to see the abandoned lorries in flames having been set on fire by the victorious IRA.10

Similarly, Liam Deasy’s Towards Ireland Free presents Crossbarry as a triumph and the Truce as a victory, claiming that ‘[t]he efficiency of the movement as a guerrilla army, and its mounting achievements in the face of the ruthless British murder machine … succeeded in making it impossible for the British Government to rule in what was practically seven-eighths of Ireland’s territory,’ and claiming that for the grateful people of West Cork, ‘nothing was good enough for the brave soldiers who had forced the enemy to call a halt.’11 Brian Murphy, although not a local historian, writes in a similar vein in a recent work. In The Origins and Organisation of British Propaganda in Ireland 1920, he makes sweeping claims including that ‘the British engaged in deception and dissimulation; the Irish did not,’12 and ‘the British Army was inspired by racist sentiments, and that the IRA, while attacking loyalists did not engage in sectarian activities.’13 This type of broad statement is particularly unfortunate, since the main body of the work – a detailed examination of the work of Basil Clarke and the propaganda department based at Dublin Castle – is suitably detailed and takes care to validate both the provenance and intent of the historic material used. But there are two difficulties with Murphy’s work. One is the uncritical way he treats all the assertions made by the IRA, assertions which should surely also be treated with the same rigorous scrutiny as Clarke’s material. The second problem is Murphy’s obvious outrage at untruths in British propaganda, a fact that would be unsurprising to most observers given that the very nature of wartime propaganda is to misdirect and undermine the opponent.

This failure to preserve an emotional distance from the material is also evident in the work of Meda Ryan, in particular Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter. While here again much of the writing is excellent and obviously based on considerable research, Ryan remains overly reliant on Tom Barry’s own account for the section on the War of Independence. Crossbarry is the subject of a more in-depth analysis in this work, where there is an examination of the considerable dangers of using Barry’s Guerrilla Days in Ireland as a source. In short, in ‘popular history’ we all too often encounter the tendency unquestioningly to cast the Irish protagonists as good and the English as evil. The debate surrounding the work of Peter Hart illustrates one of the key problems concerning the historiographical treatment of this period.14 Hart has been criticised by some for his sources on the Kilmichael Ambush, allowing his better work on the killing of members of the Protestant community to be largely dismissed and ignored. The German historical term, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, which means coping with history, particularly with the terrible and uncomfortable areas of the national past, might well provide a useful model for Irish historians. This German model actively foregrounds the darkest hours of German history as a necessary corrective to any mythologising of the past in the service of ideology, a discursive practice that is also, it is hoped, a principle informing this analysis.

Revisionism is of course as old as the Treaty itself, not least the revisionism which presented dominion status and partition as the fruits of some form of military victory on the part of the IRA. The national attitude to the memory of the campaign was nuanced from the very beginning, as O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars demonstrates. Over the years, the work of Tom Garvin, J.J. Lee, Roy Foster and others has changed the academic understanding of late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century Ireland, and of the achievements of Irish constitutional nationalism. As Lee noted, it was ‘Irish constitutional nationalism [that] had destroyed landlordism.’15 Tom Garvin has also demonstrated in his work the precarious nature of support for independence in Ireland, noting that ‘the Irish revolutionary movement derived its energies from a series of grievances that were slowly being rectified.’16 It is on this tradition of critical and scholarly historical analysis that ‘revisionism’ is based. What makes revisionism such a contentious form is that it possesses ‘a preparedness to correct the distortions involved in the creation of national foundation myths.’17 Perhaps what disturbs the opponents of revisionism most is the thesis offered by Charles Townshend, that ‘the most challenging “revisionist” proposition [is] the argument that all the most important objectives of national liberation – including some such as unity, that were lost as a result of 1916 – could have been achieved without bloodshed or violence.’18

The last ten years have seen considerable evidence being unearthed in support of this proposition. A significant corpus of new research, such as Peter Hart’s work on Cork, Michael Farry’s on Sligo, Marie Coleman’s on Longford and Joost Augusteijn’s work on Tipperary and Mayo, have all contributed to a far more nuanced understanding of the complex nature of the Irish revolution.19 As Townshend has pointed out, ‘the most constructive development has been seen in local and community studies.’20 These studies have examined the IRA at the local level, looking at its formation and membership, and exploring how the experiences of both the war itself and the violence of the campaign had an impact on the Volunteers, their communities and opponents. Farry, for instance, considers the reasons for Sligo’s relative inactivity in the War of Independence and its prominent role in the Civil War, examining the competition between parliamentarianism and revolutionary nationalism, the social background of the activists and the regional differences in military activity within the county. Coleman again examines the social background of the republican activists and teases out the complex reasons for their involvement in the campaign, as well as the paying off of old local scores in the setting of the revolution. Hart and Augusteijn have paid particular attention to the subliminal sectarianism within the conflict, and considered how retrospective accounts have confused the historical realities.

These works have greatly increased our understanding of the revolution at regional level and have drawn from the new material contained in the Bureau of Military History, and though they have broken considerable new ground in our understanding of the Irish Revolution, they remain focused firmly on the Irish experience of the campaign. This book, too, adopts a local framework for analysis, but focuses particularly on the British Army’s experience of 1919–1921. All the modern scholarship on the Irish revolution has shown the IRA’s rural guerrilla campaign tailing off by the summer of 1921. Marie Coleman attributes this cessation in Longford directly to British pressure, as does Peter Hart in the Cork context.21 But the precise degree of this increased British pressure has been left largely unexplored; it is that gap in the historiography of the war that this book seeks to fill.

The British Army’s role has been under-researched and under-analysed, with some historians still portraying it as a lumbering giant around whom the pimpernels of the IRA ran rings. Back in the 1970s, some academics such as Tom Bowden criticised the British Army for the absence of tactical reflection, and believed ‘it was heavy handed when there was need for finesse,’22 although he failed to define ‘finesse’ in this context. From this he has produced a standard argument about the history of the period, namely that British forces lacked initiative. ‘The policies and actions of the British forces were limited to reaction against the moves of their opponents.’23 This concept of a British lack of initiative also informs what is one of his article’s most contentious claims regarding the British officers killed during Bloody Sunday: ‘Then, on 20 November 1920, he [Collins] assassinated the core of this group in one operation. There was little chance from that point on that the British would win.’24 As a corrective to such views, it is important to situate the Irish conflict in the context of the wider war in which the British were simultaneously engaged at the time. Equally important to note here is that one could argue with at least as much conviction that after the capture of almost the complete active portion of the Dublin IRA at the Custom House, there was little chance the IRA could win.

In a similar vein another American historian William H. Kautt has argued that ‘the operations that the Crown forces did conduct were rarely timely [and] usually failed to reach their tactical objectives (when they had any),’25 so that, ‘this war proved that a “small nation” could defeat a global power bent on winning.’26 Even some recent works, like Paul McMahon’s British Spies and Irish Rebels, still stubbornly hold the view that ‘the notion that the British crown forces had brought the IRA to the point of collapse, only to be betrayed by cowardly politicians, would gain more and more ground as the campaign receded into the past – it helped explain away Britain’s defeat at the hands of the rag-tag army.’27 However, McMahon like many others seems to have a contradictory view of the military realities of the campaign. While in the above quote he talks about an IRA victory, in an earlier part of his work discussing the war in 1921, he states that ‘the initiative may be said to have passed to the Crown Forces for the first time since May 1920.’28

In recent years, some historians like Michael Hopkinson have begun to deviate from the traditional position and acknowledge some improvement in British tactics, conceding that ‘for all the limitations of the British methods, the IRA had been placed on the defensive by the end of June.’29 Ferriter’s Transformation of Ireland, 1900–2000 also demonstrates a modified attitude to the British Army’s performance, describing its impact on the IRA in the following terms: ‘any possible negotiation gave much room for manoeuvre and a possible rest to a war-weary and stretched IRA, though the extent to which they were on the verge of military bankruptcy has been disputed.’30 Both these studies are perhaps limited by the lack of research on British military performance at a local level. Despite this recent revisionism, other prominent historians still maintain that there was a military stalemate in 1921. Richard English states in his recent work Irish Freedom that ‘in the summer of 1921 stalemate had been reached and a truce was declared,’ echoing David Fitzpatrick’s work of almost thirty years previously when he felt confident in stating that ‘both sides accepted defeat with the truce.’31

A further key difficulty in assessing British performance has been something of a lack of familiarity with British military history on the part of Irish historians. Many historians, both local and academic, fail to distinguish sufficiently between British soldiers and ‘Black and Tans’ or Auxiliaries. A similar lack of distinction is found with regard to commissioned officers and non-commissioned officers, with anyone seen giving orders to troops invariably reported as an officer. More dangerously, there has been a failure on the part of historians to place British tactics and operational methods within their appropriate context. For example, tactics like ‘drives’ are seen as wasteful and a sign of tactical weakness and a lack of innovation on the part of the British Army, but ‘drives’ were in fact a standard tactic used by all armies of the period in this type of warfare and indeed are still used today. They allow soldiers to familiarise themselves with the terrain, show the army’s control of the area, disrupt potential guerrilla operations and most importantly allow an army to maintain a tempo of active operations, keeping soldiers sharp. In this and other areas, such as martial law, communications and intelligence work, the British Army in Ireland drew from its considerable experience in imperial policing, and from then recent operations such as the occupation of the Rhineland, where both Generals Strickland and Jeudwine had already held divisional command.

The only detailed examination of British performance during the War of Independence remains Townshend’s British Campaign in Ireland, 1919 to 1921: the Development of Political and Military Policies, published in 1975. This is, however, more an examination of British strategy than an analysis of the experience of the ordinary soldier on the ground, or of the development of tactics at unit and regimental level. Townshend also repeats the idea that the majority of the officers and men in Ireland had little experience, or if they had, it was only the experience of trench warfare during the First World War.32 This fosters the idea that the British Army in Ireland was completely inexperienced with regard to guerrilla warfare and at a disadvantage from the beginning. Townshend reinforces this point later in his work, when he argues that these shortcomings meant that the British soldiers did not have the necessary skill to deal with the IRA in combat, arguing that ‘every soldier needed to be an expert skirmisher and sniper.’33 An examination of the background of the various British officers and the conduct of British military operations reveals that this was not the case. Again, in his conclusions, Townshend talks about the failure of the use of military force by the British, arguing that this was because the ‘Republican guerrilla campaign proved too determined, too resilient and too resourceful,’ and that the British lacked similar energy and drive.34 But it must always be remembered that regardless of the state of government policy, regiments and men on the ground still had to deal with and master the situation as they faced it. Paralysis at cabinet level if it existed did not, therefore, necessarily translate into inactivity or inertia on the ground.

So as yet, despite the considerable advances in research into the Irish revolution, there has been no detailed analysis of British tactics and operations at a local level – vital to a more balanced interpretation of the events of 1918–22. This book aims to begin to fill this gap. It suggests that no military stalemate existed in Ireland. On the contrary, both sides were continuing to learn and evolve, and were beginning to find innovative solutions to the military problems that they faced.

The British Perspective

When one examines the descriptions and assessments by the British officers cited in the official histories and in their private correspondence, a key question arises. Why were so many so convinced that it was they, not the IRA, who were close to victory? Even if we accept that there is an obvious and natural bias in such accounts, this conviction is remarkable. Brigadier-General Frederick Clarke, then a lieutenant in the Essex Regiment, reflected on the truce thus: ‘We did not see the rabble waiting somewhere nearby to take over the fort, which they never would have captured, but which our politicians had given to them.’35 Captain Jeune, one of the intelligence officers to escape on Bloody Sunday, recalled a conversation on New Year’s Day 1921 with Major-General Boyd, the commander of the Dublin District, who said ‘Well, Jeune, I think we have broken the back of the movement now, don’t you?’ Jeune continued ‘Yes, Sir and I think six months should see it out’ to which Boyd answered ‘Yes I think you are right.’36 Jeune goes on to say in his memoirs that ‘by the early summer the IRA were driven into the southwest corner of Ireland, and would have been quickly finished.’37 This view was shared by Brigadier-General Viden, then a lieutenant in the Suffolks, who believed that by the time of the truce, ‘the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Army obtained the upper hand.’38 The official history, the Record of the Rebellion in Ireland, offers the following view on the position of the IRA in the summer of 1921:

The rebel organisation throughout the country was in a precarious condition, and the future from the Sinn Fein point of view may be said to have been almost desperate. The flying columns and active service units into which the rebels had been forced, by the search for prominent individuals, to form themselves were being harried and chased from pillar to post, and were constantly being defeated and broken up by Crown forces; individuals were being hunted down and arrested; the internment camps were filling up; the headquarters of the I.R.A. was functioning under the greatest difficulty.39

The official history of the 6th Division in the Strickland papers put it very differently but no less forcibly: ‘There is no doubt that the truce of July 11th, 1921, was just as unwelcome to the British Army in Ireland as the Armistice of 11th November, 1918, was welcome to the British Army in France.’40

One could dismiss this as sheer bravura by the British forces. But the British officer corps found an unlikely supporter of this belief in Richard Mulcahy, the IRA Chief of Staff. In his treaty speech to the Dáil, Mulcahy stated:

[W]e are not in a position of force, either military or otherwise, to drive the enemy from our ports. We have not – those to whom the responsibility has been for doing such things – we have not been able to drive the enemy from anything but a fairly good-sized police barracks. We have not that power.41

Even more importantly, Mulcahy rejected the die-hard option of a terrorist campaign, because it would remove any possible future of friendship with the English people themselves. As he put it ‘how can we do it by choosing a weapon which will put the responsibility upon us of killing, in self-defence, the Crompton-Smiths of England?’42 At the end of his speech, Mulcahy gave his honest view about how the war had gone: ‘I do feel we have suffered a defeat at the present moment – but I do feel that the hour of defeat in any way is not the hour for quarrelling as to how it might have been avoided. We have suffered a defeat.’43

British Historical Revisionism

‘The First World War was about infantrymen and machine guns and massacres of British Soldiers. The Generals had been unbelievably incompetent, I learned, and millions had died as a consequence.’44 This is how Gary Sheffield, the noted military historian, explains his first exposure to the history of the First World War, adding in another section that ‘it is believed that the war was conducted by bone-headed British generals who, faced with trench deadlock, could think of nothing more imaginative than to hurl long lines of troops against German trenches and barbed wire.’45 This view has been promoted by individuals as diverse as A.J.P. Taylor, Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George and perhaps most famously, Alan Clark in his book, The Donkeys. Gradually, with the release of the official documents from the mid 1960s on, British historians have been forced to re-examine their understanding of the First World War, from the conduct of the war by Field Marshal Haig and other generals, through the development of infantry tactics, to the integration of new technologies such as the tank, the aeroplane and the wireless. As David Stevenson puts it in his 1914–1918, The History of the First World War:

The 1960s saw the beginnings of divergence not only between Taylorite interpretations and new research into the politics and diplomacy of the conflict, but also popular understandings of the military history of the war and new investigations into its strategy. This dichotomy was already evident in the BBC series,46 which owed its memorable artistic impact to its combination of disturbing images, plangent music, and sombre narration, but whose script, much of it written by John Terraine and Correlli Barnett, tried to convey that the struggle had been necessary, and that the Western Front concentration had been unavoidable, and that British generalship had risen to the challenge of intimidating circumstances. Similar themes appeared in Terraine’s Douglas Haig: the Educated Soldier (1963), and in a succession of later works by the same author, which at the time went against the grain of much writing on the war, but grew in influence in the 1980s and 1990s when a later generation of researchers drew on the newly opened War Office and cabinet archives and private papers. Some of their work still criticised the British high command, on occasion severely, but it depicted the BEF and the Dominion forces as learning from their mistakes, increasing their effectiveness, and playing a major role, perhaps the major role, in breaking the German army.47

At the core of this work is a parallel reassessment of British military performance in Ireland from 1919 to 1921, through a detailed analysis of the most contested region, Cork city and county. The shortcomings of past histories of the War of Independence, and the fact that the British Army’s experience at the ‘sharp end’ has been largely unexamined and ignored, and no real analysis has taken place at a local level, has left a vacuum. British historians’ revisionism with regard to the army’s experience in the First World War has not yet filtered through to an examination of the British tactics in Ireland. This book, in an attempt to redress this, will detail and analyse the experience of the British soldiers in Cork during this period, and the effectiveness of the British tactics against the IRA, and test these against the myths that surround the events of the period. The goal is, as far as possible, to separate the past from the propaganda.

This book focuses on the experiences of the British Army in Cork at the smallest echelon, that of the units, the men. It studies the degree of success of British counter-insurgency operations, and examines the factors that helped and hindered performance. How did the officers and soldiers feel about the Irish and the campaign? How did British tactics at a local level develop? How effective was military intelligence and what was its contribution to the British campaign? What were relations with the local communities like, and in what unofficial reprisals did the British soldiers engage and why? To answer these questions, new sources are explored. These include previously unused personal accounts, war diaries from the Royal Artillery, British local newspapers, RAF records held at Kew and new elements of the Record of the Rebellion, such as the section on law also held at Kew.

This study focuses on several key themes including the British memory of the campaign, the evolution of British tactics, the development of British intelligence and the use of martial law and law in general during counter-insurgency. It will also examine the nature of ‘unofficial’ reprisals, and suggest that they may be better understood by locating them in the widespread street violence of the period. The former focus on British strategic difficulties has, it can be argued, led to an underestimation of British performance at a local level.

Section One

The Informal War

I don’t want to be a soldier,

I don’t want to go to war.

I’d rather stay at home,

Around the streets to roam,

And live on the earnings of a well-paid whore,

I don’t want a bayonet up my arsehole,

I don’t want my bollocks shot away.

I’d rather stay in England,

In merry, merry England,

And fuck my bleeding life away.

First World War British Soldiers’ Song

I wore a tunic,

A dirty khaki tunic,

And you wore civilian clothes.

We fought and bled at Loos

While you were on the booze,

The booze that no one here knows

Oh, you were with the wenches

While we were in the trenches,

Facing the German Foe.

Oh, you were a-slacking

While we were attacking

Down the Menin Road.

First World War British Soldiers’ Song

This section explores the experience of British soldiers in Cork through the examination of two areas, firstly the issue of unofficial reprisals, and secondly the soldiers’ own experience and understanding of the conflict itself.

‘Unofficial reprisals’ have long been problematic in the history of the campaign. Were reprisals, as many have alleged, orchestrated by senior army officers, or were they a phenomenon that originated within the rank and file as a response to the circumstances in which they found themselves in Ireland? It will be argued that ‘unofficial reprisals’ can be better understood within the culture of enlisted men in the army and within the context of local street violence in Cork, that there was no political or senior military authorship of the events in question and they were more part of what Private Cordner of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders remembered about the time and location, recalling that in 1918 paydays in Kinsale were extremely rough, and fistfights were a common occurrence.48 It is significant that much of the violence in Cork that was linked to the ‘unofficial reprisals’ occurred on weekends and late in the evening, presumably after the considerable consumption of alcohol.

A local newspaper from Shropshire, the Wellington Journal and Shrewsbury News reported the feelings of the men of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry as they left Fermoy in East Cork: ‘They were not sorry to leave a town in which not a man had the courage to express sympathy with the murdered man’s relatives.’49 The murder in question was the killing of Private Jones during the Wesleyan Raid in September 1919, when a church parade of the Shropshires was ambushed and the men had their weapons seized. The paper also informed its readers that Shropshire had given more during the First World War than the whole of Ireland, a remark which reveals much about the attitude of the English public towards the campaign in Ireland. ‘We fought and bled at Loos, while you were on the booze,’ the lines of the First World War song quoted, sum up the feelings of many in the Kings Shropshire Light Infantry who were awaiting demobilisation in Fermoy.

Remembrance and commemoration play an important role in British military life, and the British Army’s collective memory of the conflict in Ireland will be examined through the published histories of the various regiments involved in the campaign. The regimental histories rarely discussed any of the unofficial reprisals engaged in by the troops, and, if they did, offered opinions such as: ‘It never easy for men to remain steady when true stories were widespread of officers and men, who had survived the worst of the Western Front, being shot in the back by plough boys using weapons bought with American money.’50 But most of the histories remained entirely silent on the campaign in Ireland, lost as it was between two world wars.

Chapter One

Reprisals

Arguably the most emotive word used in the historiography of the War of Independence is ‘reprisal’. From 1919 to 1921, these ‘outrages’ formed a staple of Sinn Féin propaganda, as evidenced in the Irish Bulletin, and played a key part in their campaigns to garner sympathy through overseas press coverage. The reports of homes destroyed, women attacked and children terrorised were all carefully designed, packaged and presented to support the Republican cause. And while this discourse was designed with the specific political goals of the time in mind, it remains the most powerful and enduring understanding of these events in Ireland today.

There can be no doubt that quite apart from any conflict with the IRA, significant street fighting did take place between civilians and soldiers in Cork city and county, and that British soldiers did engage in unofficial reprisals. Nevertheless, these events do not speak for themselves, and therefore need to be located and understood both within and in relation to the particulars of the period. This allows a more nuanced analysis of perhaps the most lasting view of these incidents, which is that unofficial reprisals were deliberately engineered and encouraged by both the British government and senior British officers, or, in a more damning interpretation led by the senior officers themselves.

One can read the street fights which occurred all through this period as something of an unofficial war. They were fought outside the war per se, as they were not fought for the Crown or the Republic, but can be considered an almost primitive struggle for the possession of public space, and on occasion for the control of local women.

The Origins of Reprisals

From the surviving papers of Lieutenant-Colonel Hughes-Hallett, then a junior officer in the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry, comes a description of how the news broke of the attack on the Wesleyan Church party in September 1919.

Then – one Sunday – while the main body of the Battalion was falling-in in front of the Church, after Church parade, a hatless soldier rushed up calling out that he had a message for the C.O. After been [sic] jumped on (!) by the R.S.M., he was fortunately seen by the C.O., who called him up. His story was that he was one of the Wesleyan Party, going to their chapel in Patrick Street, some ‘baker’s dozen’ strong. As they filed into the chapel door-way (he was last man in the file and a cross-country runner) a gang of locals, sitting lounging around – in ambush – on various walls, suddenly produced revolvers and ‘loaded’ staves from their sleeves, and opened-up on the backs of the troops at point blank range. The troops were carrying their rifles (for safety, just as was the custom in India), but no ammunition. One soldier (Pte Lloyd) was killed on the spot and the rest knocked down. Their assailants seized their rifles (13, I think) and drove off towards Cork.51

The private killed was in fact William Jones, a young Welshman from Carmarthenshire. Jones, only 20, was to have been discharged that week and was due to get married to his fiancée Gladys Thorpe the following week when he returned home.52 Such an IRA attack resulting in an army casualty was rare at this stage of the conflict, but the Wellington Journal and Shrewsbury News offered an insight into why the IRA may have opened fire on the church parade rather than simply taking their rifles. It noted that the soldiers were attempting to fix bayonets just before they were fired on, thus implying a defensive element to the IRA’s shooting of these British troops.53 Whatever the reason, both Jones’ death and the failure of the Fermoy jury to deliver a murder verdict directly contributed to the reprisal carried out by the British troops.

The loss of a comrade was the key link amongst many of the reprisals carried out in the Cork region, as the cases of Bandon and Cobh show. Bandon, a prosperous market town in West Cork was subjected to a reprisal by the Essex Regiment in July 1920, the catalyst being the killing of Lance Corporal Maddox while on intelligence duty. The anger of the soldiers was fuelled by their frustration at the fact that it was uncertain whether or not an inquest would be held into the killing.54 Cobh, on Cork Harbour, was soon to join Bandon and Fermoy in experiencing the anger of British troops, in this case the Cameron Highlanders. Following the death of Private Hall in an ambush, the Camerons decided to vent their frustration on the town, and on 27 August 1920, at about 10pm, some 20–30 Highlanders ‘entered the town armed with rifles and heavy pieces’ to exact retribution55. In nearly every case of serious violence, the reprisal was the direct consequence of the killing of a British serviceman in the immediate area.

An exception to this was the reaction of British troops to the kidnapping of Brigadier-General Lucas. Lucas and two other officers, Colonel Tyrrell and Lieutenant-Colonel Danford, were staying in a fishing hut near Kilbarray, about seven miles from Fermoy. The officers were abducted on 26 June 1920 by IRA volunteers. While they were being driven away by their captors, the British officers planned their escape in the rear of the car by conversing in Urdu. However, the escape attempt failed, resulting in the serious wounding of Lieutenant-Colonel Danford. The IRA left Colonel Tyrrell behind with Danford, and the two officers made their way back to Fermoy, and word of the kidnap began to filter down to the troops in the various barracks in Fermoy.

On the following night, soldiers were out socialising in Fermoy, some in the local cinema and others in the public houses, while some were boating on the river. However, between 11 and 11.30pm, as some of these men were on their way back to barracks, other troops left the barracks and entered the town. Soon hundreds of British troops from the Buffs, the Royal Field Artillery and the Royal Air Force had taken to the streets. They ‘made their way to the town, singing, shouting and exclaiming, “We want our General”, “Give us our General” and proceeded to run amok along Pearse Square!’56 According to newspaper reports,

The outbreak was on a much more extensive scale than those of September and November last, when considerable damage was done to property, and there can be no doubt that the present scene of destruction must have been carefully planned by a large number of soldiers, who were the principal participants in it.57

The Cork Examiner went on to state that it considered these events to be a military reprisal for the kidnapping of the General and that ‘it was a cruel and terrifying experience to which to subject inhabitants, who could have no participation in the kidnapping of Brigadier Lucas.’58 While the kidnapping of Lucas did not involve a fatality, it is possible that many of the soldiers involved in the reprisal may have believed that the General was dead or that he was about to be killed.

When we examine the days on which the reprisal took place, one could suggest that the connection between soldiers drinking and unofficial reprisals was not confined to the case of Lucas. The Cameron Highlanders’ reprisal on Cobh was on a Friday night, the Essex sacked Bandon on a Thursday, both nights when as the weekend drew near drinking could be expected. The King’s Shropshire Light Infantry were moved to Victoria Barracks in Cork on 14 September in an effort to defuse local tensions in Fermoy and rebuild relations with the local community there. However, this was not an end to the problems; the tension transferred to Cork, and on the nights of 9 and 10 November, a weekend, soldiers from the regiment conducted running street battles with local civilians in Cork city. Hughes-Hallet recalled:

Cork was not a happy station. There was soon trouble, started by Sinn Fein gangs cutting off the hair of girls seen to be chatting with soldiers, who naturally resented it. Entrenching-tool handles soon found their real use, up the sleeve, and heads were being cracked and opponents being pushed into the River.59

As this quote suggests, other issues besides fatalities had the potential to cause or exacerbate trouble. It was a confrontation over local women that provided the spark that ignited the street fighting on that November weekend. In the words of the Cork Examiner,

On the night of 9 November 1919, a group of soldiers proceeding down from the barrack to King Street, behaving in an aggressive fashion, were booed and jeered by civilians. The soldiers broke through the police lines and the soldiers and members of the crowd were soon in handigrips [sic] and fighting took place at different points along the thoroughfare.60

However, that was not the end of the confrontation, and violence again erupted on the following night, when various groups of soldiers – mainly composed of the Kings Shropshire Light Infantry – who were apparently in a festive mood as they marched through MacCurtian Street, engaged in ‘some cheering and sing loyal songs’.61. Like fraternising with local women, this raucousness provided locals with an excuse to restart the fighting, and indeed it was probably the intention of the servicemen to provoke the locals to violence against which they could then defend themselves with impunity. No doubt this trouble would have continued the following night and, indeed, young local men gathered in MacCurtian Street in anticipation of another clash.62 The soldiers, whose provocative behaviour had been partially responsible for the clashes, were confined to barracks.

Whatever the catalysts at local level, the actions of British soldiers in Ireland must be understood in the context of Britain as a whole. Ex-servicemen had been at the forefront of many riots in Britain in 1919, 63 often a reaction to the perceived unjust treatment of soldiers or ex-servicemen. A police station in Wolverhampton, for instance, was attacked in July 1919 in order to release two soldiers who had been out drinking and had been arrested by local police. The violence of the assault on the local police station can be gauged from the newspaper report that, ‘[s]tones began to fly, a long wall 6 ft. high was torn down, brick being used freely as missiles, while battering rams were improvised in attempts to break in the doors of the police station.’64 The police remained under siege until reinforcements arrived from other towns. Likewise, participants in Peace Day celebrations in Swindon – predominantly ex-servicemen – also attacked a police station the same weekend.65 In another incident, in June ‘after two Canadian soldiers were arrested and locked in the cells of Epson Police Station, about 400 of their comrades besieged the station, demanding their release.’66 A police sergeant, Thomas Green, was killed in the resulting disturbance. There was also serious rioting in Luton that July, because of ‘the town council’s refusal to the ex-soldiers of Wardown Park for a memorial service.’67The Times reported that ‘the town hall has been practically destroyed, together with most of its contents,’ while other premises were targeted but saved by local firemen, of whom fourteen were injured in the riot.68 While the police were reinforced from surrounding areas, they found themselves face to face in street battles with a combined force of soldiers and ex-servicemen. The Times noted: ‘there is a military camp at Biscot, within two miles of Luton, in which are numbers of soldiers on furlough and awaiting discharge, and it is certain that amongst the mob which took part in the firing of the Town Hall were several men in uniform.’69 As Keith Jeffery has noted, there were also riots by soldiers in Folkestone over the extension of their service in January 1919.70 Charles Carrington, an officer in the First World War and later a publisher with Cambridge University Press remembered, ‘there were many soldiers’ riots during the war … though they were not published in the newspapers, most of them ebullitions of hot temper by men exasperated by some abuse.’71 He also noted that ‘several times Whitehall was invaded by mobs of servicemen who had seized army lorries and had driven to London to demonstrate outside the War Office.’72 Such disturbances were then not confined to Ireland, and grew from the frustration of both soldiers awaiting demobilisation and ex-servicemen who faced bleak employment prospects on return from the front. These outbreaks were every bit as violent in England as they were in Ireland and underline the fact that no political direction or encouragement was required for soldiers to violently redress any perceived slight or attack.

Irish ex-servicemen were not immune to this kind of irregular assertion of their rights, and they were behind the single largest street confrontation with the British Army in Cork. The Record of the Rebellion, which called these events in a somewhat overblown fashion ‘The Battle for Cork’, provides the following account of the incidents which ignited the violence:

One party of troops operating in the Shandon area was attacked by a party of civilians, who endeavoured to disarm two soldiers, one of whom was wounded. The troops opened fire on these rebels, killing one. On the following night, as a reprisal for the shooting of their comrade, a large number of rebels concentrated in the main thoroughfares of the city and attacked a number of unarmed soldiers who were out on pass and some indiscriminate shooting on the part of these rebels resulted in the wounding of two young ladies in the King Street area. The civil authorities called on the troops for assistance, and a party of troops was sent out at once. As the party entered King Street, fire was opened on them by a number of rebels, who had taken up position in houses and laneways. The troops returned fire, and a number of rebels were killed.73

The Record of the Rebellion went on to describe the ‘battle’ proper as follows:

Disturbances took place in Cork City during the night, and one man was shot by troops during a fracas in which he and others attacked a patrol. On the following evening about 500 civilians man-handled unarmed soldiers in the town, and indulged in a good deal of indiscriminate firing. An armed part of about 50 men was at once sent out from the barracks. This party was fired at on reaching the principal street. The fire was returned at once and a considerable number of casualties inflicted, and after two or three hours patrolling, during which fire was opened on them from side streets and a few bombs thrown, they restored order completely in the city. The troops suffered no causalities, but inflicted severe loss on their attackers. The exact number was never discovered, but was believed to be about 25. The press was almost silent on the subject, so it is probable that they included no women or children or persons about whom Sinn Fein propaganda could have protested.74

This ‘battle’ is noticeably absent from IRA records and memoirs, and with very good reason. As we shall see, they had little involvement in this event. The absence of IRA accounts begs the question as to who these rebels were and what actually happened.

The Record of the Rebellion is correct in identifying the incident that sparked the ‘battle’. Early in the morning of 18 July, James Bourke, a local man, was killed by a British military patrol. He was a labourer in a local chemical works and an ex-gunner in the Royal Field Artillery, having seen service in the Boer War and the First World War. Bourke and other ex-servicemen had attended a boxing tournament in the Cork Opera House on the night of 17 July. He and his friends, three other ex-servicemen, encountered two soldiers of the Hampshire Regiment, an NCO and a private, at a fish and chip shop near the Opera House and there were some verbal exchanges. The groups parted, but met again on the North Gate Bridge several minutes later, where a fight broke out between them. An RIC patrol led by a Sergeant Sullivan arrived on the scene and succeeded in separating the groups. However a military patrol from the Hampshires passed by and opened fire, wounding James Bourke, who was then finished off by bayonet. The remaining ex-servicemen were actually protected and led away by a group of Republican police. At any rate, this was the account of events accepted by the inquest and supported by the RIC.75

The official British Army version was quite different and it is interesting to note the points on which the RIC, army and even newspaper accounts differ from one another. According to the British Army,

Two soldiers on pass were twice accosted and attacked by the same three armed civilians. On the second occasion, the N.C.O. blew his whistle to alert a military patrol, which arrived (twelve strong) and was also attacked by these three men. In the ensuing struggle, James Bourke was shot.76

The second account was that of the RIC county inspector who stated in his monthly report that the matter began as a drunken squabble between soldiers and ex-soldiers, and was being broken up by the police when an approaching military patrol fired three to four shots, killing James Bourke. Interestingly, the soldiers from the Hampshire Regiment involved in the altercation with Bourke were reported in The Times as being drunk,77 yet although the RIC labelled the case as a homicide, there was no further investigation.78 Unlike the Record of the Rebellion, which was written later, the army press release made no mention of any soldiers being wounded in this incident, and while the Record stated that the two soldiers were on operations and armed, the press release claimed they were unarmed and on pass. Tellingly and perhaps in an attempt to address local rumour, the press release specifically stated that no bayonets were used. However it also failed to mention that the RIC were present at the scene. Neither the RIC nor British Army mentioned finding any weapons on Bourke. All the inconsistencies in this case can perhaps be linked to the army’s embarrassment that this incident involved the death of an ex-serviceman, and a desire to manage the reporting of the event to minimise that embarrassment.

When Gunner Bourke was buried on the afternoon of 20 July, over 5,000 ex-servicemen from all over the city and county attended the funeral and accompanied the hearse through the streets; the procession was led by three bands, while thousands lined the route to witness its passage. This was larger than most Sinn Féin or IRA displays and indicates the number and significance of Irish ex-servicemen as a group within Irish society at the time. It is significant that contrary to tradition, no Union flag was placed on the coffin. However Bourke’s honour guard consisted exclusively of ex-soldiers,79