The Fallen: Gardai Killed in Service 1922-49 E-Book

Colm Wallace

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

Seitenzahl: 402

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

In 1922 the fledgling Irish Free State decided to replace the RIC with the Civic Guard (An Garda Síochána). This new Irish police force found itself dealing with an unsettled population, many of whom were suspicions of law and order after centuries of forceful policing by the British. It was decided that the Gardaí would uphold the law with the consent of the people however, and that they would remain unarmed. This brave decision may have been popular with ordinary Irishmen and women, but it left members of the force vulnerable to attack and even murder. Many Gardaí met their death in the first decades of the Irish State. This is their story.

Leseprobe

This book is dedicated to the Gardaí who gave their lives in the defence of Ireland and its people.

Tiomnaím an leabhar seo do na Gardaí a thug a mbeatha agus iad ag cosaint tír agus pobal na hÉireann.

First published in 2017

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© Colm Wallace, 2017

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1.     Garda Henry Phelan

2.     Sergeant James Woods

3.     Garda Patrick O’Halloran

4.     Detective Arthur Nolan

5.     Sergeant Thomas Griffin & Garda John Murrin

6.     Garda Thomas Dowling

7.     Sergeant James Fitzsimons & Garda Hugh Ward

8.     Detective Timothy O’Sullivan

9.     Superintendent John Curtin

10.   Detective Patrick McGeehan

11.   Detective John Roche

12.   Detective Richard Hyland & Detective Sergeant Patrick McKeown

13.   Detective Sergeant Denis O’Brien

14.   Detective Michael Walsh

15.   Detective George Mordaunt

16.   Garda Denis Harrington

17.   Garda James Byrne

18.   Chief Superintendent Seán Gantly

Afterword

Appendix

Notes

Further Reading

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book has been a long time coming, but it was worth every second. I could not have finished, or even started, without the care and support of my family and friends. Whenever I have needed them, they have been there.

First and foremost, I would like to thank Rebecca for her unlimited patience in putting up with me while I was writing this book. I could not have undertaken this project without her endless support and belief that I could do it. A heartfelt thanks also to Kathleen, who kindly proofread this book several times, making it what it is today, with positivity and patience.

I am indebted to Tom Hurley, whose documentary, A Boy of Good Character, gave me a valuable insight into the story of Henry Phelan.

A special thank you to the staff of the National Archives, Military Archives, UCD Archives and National Library of Ireland who provided invaluable help with my research.

Finally, I would like to thank my mother and father for their unending love, support and encouragement. Without their selfless dedication to my education, I would not be writing these words.

INTRODUCTION

‘You will have one great advantage over any previous police force in Ireland. You will be the people’s guardians, not their oppressors; your authority will be derived from the people, not from their enemies.’

Michael Collins

‘You are going out unarmed into a hostile area. You may be murdered, your barracks burned, your uniform taken off you, but you must carry on and bring peace to the people.’

Eoin O’Duffy, Garda Commissioner

Several systems of policing have existed in Ireland over the centuries with varying levels of success. The most sophisticated of these were the County Constabularies, in existence since the beginning of the nineteenth century. These were individual bodies responsible for maintaining law and order in their own local areas until 1836, when they were amalgamated with the Irish Constabulary. Belfast and Derry Police worked as separate entities until 1865 and 1870 respectively, when they too were subsumed into the umbrella organisation.1 The Irish Constabulary was awarded the prefix ‘Royal’ in 1867 for their part in the suppression of the Fenian Rising of the same year. The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) was overseen from its headquarters in Dublin Castle, for seven centuries the ceremonial head of British rule in Ireland. John Morley, a British politician and supporter of Home Rule, would describe the British regime in Dublin as ‘the best machine that has ever been invented for governing a country against its will’.2 The police force was an integral part of implementing law and order on behalf of this regime.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the RIC was predominantly made up of Catholics and Irishmen. Despite this, it never managed to achieve the full support of the population. The force found itself as the main enforcers of tenant evictions during the Potato Famine and later the Land War, thus convincing many Irish citizens that the police were the enemy, rather than the protector, of the people. The RIC’s association with the suppression of the Easter Rising and their relationship with the hated Black and Tans and Auxiliaries during the War of Independence did little to help their reputation in the country.

Éamon de Valera outlined republican policy succinctly in 1918 when he stated, ‘Sinn Féiners have a definite policy and the people of Ireland are determined to make it a success; that is, to make English rule absolutely impossible in Ireland.’3 In order to achieve this goal it was important to undermine the most fundamental of governmental duties: policing. Republicans knew that the RIC played a vital role in the day-to-day administration of the county and if the constabulary was to collapse then independence from Britain was sure to follow. In January 1919, on the same day that the first Dáil met in the Mansion House, two members of the RIC were killed. Their deaths are often cited as the first in the War of Independence. Patrick McDonnell and James O’Connell were shot dead by the IRA in an ambush in Soloheadbeg, County Tipperary. The two men were Irish Catholics. Over 400 more of their colleagues would suffer a similar fate before the end of the conflict.

The repeated ambushes throughout the 1919–1921 period resulted in hundreds of casualties and had a profound effect on the morale of the force. As the campaign intensified mass resignations followed. Some officers left their posts due to fear of the IRA while others resigned in sympathy with the republican cause. These resignations, along with the loss of RIC men killed in action and an unprecedented spate of suicides amongst serving policemen, left a shortage of officers. The decision was taken to withdraw the remaining members of the RIC from their vulnerable rural stations to larger towns where large numbers of constables were consolidated in fortified barracks, supplemented by British ex-soldiers in the form of the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries. This left large tracts of Irish countryside untouched by law and order. With no one to uphold the peace in many rural areas, petty crime became an issue, causing the IRA to step into the breach and found the Irish Republican Police, who oversaw policing in much of the country until the end of the War of Independence.

A treaty with Britain, ending the war, was signed in December 1921 and ratified by the Dáil the following month. It gave the Irish control of most of their own domestic affairs and also included provision for satisfying the Irish demand for disbandment of the RIC, who had been denounced by Eoin MacNeill of the first Dáil as a ‘force of spies, a force of traitors and a force of perjurers’.4 The formation of a replacement police force was thus one of the most pressing items on the agenda. Kevin O’Higgins described the unenviable situation the government found themselves in: ‘We were simply eight young men in the City Hall standing in the ruins of one administration with the foundation of another not yet laid and with wild men screaming through the keyhole. No police force was functioning throughout the country and no system of justice was operating.’5

The first meeting to consider the prospective policing body was held on 9 February 1922 in the Gresham Hotel in Dublin. The government was represented by Minister for Defence, Richard Mulcahy and Éamonn Duggan, the Minister for Home Affairs. A committee was quickly set up under Duggan, the son of an RIC man himself, to decide on the fundamentals of the new constabulary. The committee also consisted of several former RIC officers. It was decided that the republican police that had served during the war were unsuitable due to a lack of training and discipline. A new force would therefore be necessary. Michael Staines, 1916 veteran and acting chief of the Republican Police, was appointed the first commissioner and he was responsible for many of the changes that made the Gardaí what it is today.6 The RIC was in the process of disbandment, meaning Staines and his committee had just months to design, train and deploy an effective police force.

The committee proposed a non-political police force of 4,300 officers, broadly similar to the RIC, which would be directly accountable to the elected government and the Minister for Home Affairs. Unlike in England, where the police was divided into small sub-units, the Civic Guard would be centrally controlled but dispatched to 800 smaller stations throughout the country. The only exception was Dublin City, which would be policed by the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP). This was eventually amalgamated with the Garda Síochána in 1925. The badge was altered and the Civic Guard wore blue to distinguish them from the RIC, who had worn bottle-green uniforms. The changes amounted to far more than crests and clothing, however.

Although the RIC had been predominantly Catholic, the upper echelons of the organisation had been mainly Protestant and unionist. The new police force was primarily drawn from ex-members of the IRA, many of whom would have loathed the RIC and would never have contemplated joining the former policing authority. The initial criteria for membership were stringent: the applicant had to be an unmarried male, aged between 19 and 27 and was usually required to have fought in the War of Independence. He needed a written reference from a superior officer in the IRA, as well as a statement of good character from the local parish priest. The minimum height requirement was 5ft 9in, with a chest measurement of no less than 36in. The applicant had to be educated enough to have a good standard of reading, writing and arithmetic, a skill not universally possessed in 1920s Ireland. The new force was also strictly non-political and concerned itself only with civil and criminal matters. Furthermore, serving Civic Guards were disqualified from running in elections.

The government was mindful that large numbers of anti-Treaty republicans were determined to frustrate the new police at an early stage and the recruitment process was not widely announced. It was of paramount importance that the recruits could be relied upon to stay loyal to the pro-Treaty government, so their political affiliations were closely scrutinised. The first member of the Civic Guard, Sergeant McAvinney, was enrolled on 20 February, less than two weeks after the initial meeting. McAvinney and his colleagues faced a huge number of fundamental problems in the earliest days of the force. Shelter, perhaps the most basic requirement of all, was an immediate issue. As soon as the Crown forces evacuated a suitable building in 1922, the Irish Army moved in, using it as a training base in anticipation of the inevitable Civil War. For the first weeks of its existence, the Civic Guard could find no headquarters from which to conduct their operations.7

The first batch of recruits was eventually dispatched to the Society Showgrounds in Ballsbridge, a venue that was hopelessly inadequate for the education of a prospective police force. Much of the training and drilling of the new recruits was carried out by ex-members of the RIC, availing of the very same booklets and manuals that they had used prior to disbandment. It was probably common sense to have the training supervised by former policemen who had years of experience in maintaining law and order, but the appointment of ex-RIC men was a source of bitterness and anger amongst many former IRA volunteers who, up until months before, had viewed these men as their sworn enemy.8 Even the men who had resigned from the RIC in sympathy with the republican cause during the war were viewed with deep suspicion by those who had secured Ireland’s freedom. The deputy commissioner of the new force, Patrick Walsh, was also an ex-RIC man, a fact that was particularly unpalatable for rank-and-file officers.

George Lawlor, who was later to become a superintendent and founder of the Garda Technical Bureau, wrote of his time in the training camp and the tension that existed between former IRA soldiers and their RIC compatriots:

My dislike for the police force remained with me and my training under ex-officers of the RIC did not soften my feelings towards the profession. The position of things did not make for the best form of police training. The knowledge obtained by men in law and general police duties was poor.9

Lawlor would not be the only Garda with reservations about the training he received, and from whom he received it.

On 25 April 1922, the recruits were transferred to Kildare Military Barracks. Shortly after arriving, a cohort of recruits, a minority of whom were loyal to anti-Treaty republicans, mutinied. Angry and disappointed by the presence of high-ranking former RIC officers in the new force, they refused to accept Staines’ authority as commissioner and took over the armaments and the running of the camp. Staines was forced to leave the barracks under cover of darkness and tender his resignation to the fledgling government. A number of the rebels defected to the republican side, although the vast majority would stay loyal to the pro-Treaty government. It was arguably the biggest crisis in the history of An Garda Síochána but proved to be mercifully short-lived. Michael Collins himself visited the camp several times in its aftermath and came to a compromise with the rebelling Gardaí whereby the RIC members would be reassigned as civilian advisers. The situation was quickly back under control and former IRA commander and army chief of staff Eoin O’Duffy was chosen as the new commissioner.

O’Duffy, who had served bravely in the War of Independence, proved to be a tireless and energetic leader, although one who courted controversy on occasion. The Monaghan native was a strict disciplinarian who wanted the Civic Guard to be seen as an ordered body of religious, nationalist and temperate men. He stood by his recruits in almost every situation, regardless of the accusations levelled against them. After a less than exemplary start, O’Duffy later privately admitted that the early attitude to the Civic Guard was one of distrust but under his stewardship it eventually began to mould itself into a formidable and effective police force.

The new recruits were initially given firearms training but after the mutiny it was decided that the Civic Guard would be an unarmed force, a ruling that caused much surprise and debate throughout Ireland. The country found itself facing the frightening prospect of Civil War. The newly formed nation was also awash with guns and the timing of the announcement baffled many. The seeds of this radical policy had been sown after several tragic incidents in the early days of the Guards, however. Between April and September 1922, three trainee officers were accidentally shot dead by their colleagues, while two members of the force committed suicide using a gun. These tragedies, along with the mutiny, caused the provisional government to rethink their initial plan to issue a gun to each member of the Guards and an unarmed policy was adopted, one which has continued to this very day.10 It was decided that any armed disturbances, especially political ones, would not be dealt with by members of the Civic Guard, instead being handled by the army of the state. Crucially, this limited the number of dealings that Guards had with the IRA in the troubled early years of the 1920s, helping to depoliticise the force and cement their reputation as honest brokers in political disputes.11

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) was an example of what the Gardaí could have been. The CID was also in existence in Ireland for the duration of the Civil War and its officers were permitted to use arms in the discharge of their duty. Acting as a parallel plain-clothes police force, the CID was based mainly in the Dublin area, its headquarters being Oriel House. This armed policing unit was completely separate from the Civic Guard and soon became mired in controversy and criticised over their brutal methods. Despite being heavily armed, it suffered four deaths at the hands of the IRA in the course of its short existence. The unarmed Guards, often commended for their even-handedness during the Civil War, were more fortunate, suffering just one fatality. It would later be revealed that Liam Lynch, Chief of Staff of the IRA towards the end of the conflict, had forbidden the killing of the unarmed Guards, although he encouraged attacks on their barracks.12

Despite the lack of fatalities, the Guards were not popular amongst republicans. The government’s claim that the force’s only duty was to apprehend criminals and that they would take no part in politics was refuted by many on the republican side. Rory O’Connor openly said that the force was not needed as policing could be carried out by the Irish Republican Army. He also claimed, falsely, that the Civic Guard was largely made up of the hated Black and Tans.13 The laws and court system of the British era remained largely unchanged and republicans were immediately hostile to the new force, which they saw as a continuation of the status quo.

On 28 March 1922, the subversives ordered that recruitment to the Civic Guard be halted and added that any man who insisted on joining the force was to be boycotted in much the same way as the RIC had been. Several warnings were posted in the first days of the Civic Guard, threatening what the Irregulars called ‘the semi-military force’ with serious repercussions if they did not vacate their posts.

They followed through with their threats. Instances of violence against potential recruits were common in the early days of the force, a number of trainees being intimidated, beaten and kidnapped. On 10 April 1922, a party of men called at a house in Skreen, a village situated near Dromore West, County Sligo. They asked for a young man named Barrett, who was known to have enlisted in the Civic Guard shortly before. When his father would not allow his son outside, they shot the elderly man in the head instead, before fleeing. Just days later, republicans occupied a number of important buildings in Dublin City, amongst them the Four Courts. From this base they sent peace terms to the government in a desperate attempt to avoid Civil War. Foremost among their demands was the disbandment of the new police force and the responsibility for the detection of criminals to be handed back to the IRA. These terms were rejected. The Civil War began at the end of June 1922, just before the police force was to be deployed. Without the support of a vocal minority of the country, there was a widespread sense of foreboding that the Civic Guard would get off to a violent start.14

The last RIC officers left their posts in August 1922. Meanwhile, regular incidences of crime, agrarian violence and attacks on landowners and unionists necessitated the swift deployment of the new recruits of the Civic Guard. By September much of the east of the country had been pacified and the first detachment of Gardaí was deployed to the parts of the twenty-six counties considered safe by the National Army. Tracts of the country, particularly Munster and Connaught, remained paralysed by violence, however, and were not considered safe for the new recruits. Even some of the areas regarded as peaceful faced spontaneous attacks; stations in Kilkee, County Clare, Wolfhill, County Laois and Blessington, County Wicklow, were all attacked and ransacked shortly after the Guards had been installed.15 The IRA had broken the morale of the RIC during the War of Independence and they appeared to be following a similar path with the Civic Guard. It was widely speculated that the unarmed Guards were left vulnerable to attacks by members of the anti-Treaty IRA and between September 1922 and the summer of 1923 over 200 Garda stations were attacked, bombed or burned and 400 Guards were assaulted, stripped or robbed.16

Although the repeated attacks by republicans continued, the Guards attempted to stay above the political fray and stick to strictly criminal matters. In November 1922, Henry Phelan was shot dead in Mullinahone in an attack suspected to have been carried out by republicans. He was the first Garda killed in the line of duty. Surprisingly, no other Garda was killed during the conflict. The IRA had realised that the attacks were unpopular with the general public. The organisation released a further memorandum a month after his death that forbade violence against unarmed Guards.

The clashes with the IRA continued over the decades, however, and many Gardaí were killed in fire fights. Even more disturbingly, on occasion the IRA ambushed and killed policemen who they felt had been giving the organisation too much attention. Although the IRA remained the greatest threat, other dangers befell unsuspecting Gardaí. In the history of the Free State, Gardaí met their deaths at the hands of armed bank robbers, deranged lunatics and even colleagues and fellow members of the force.

In each case the Gardaí identified suspects almost immediately but obtaining convictions proved to be no easy task. Many of the attacks were carefully planned and the perpetrators were able to avoid detection or receive an acquittal in court. When the criminal was identified, tried and convicted, the penalty varied. One of the suspects was declared insane, another was sentenced to just twelve months in prison. In other cases, examples were made of those found to have murdered Gardaí. A number of prisoners were condemned to death and met their end in front of a firing squad or at the hand of Pierrepoint, the state hangman.

The Garda Síochána Temporary Provision Act of 1923 laid down the rules under which the new police force would operate. The government was well aware of the likelihood of Gardaí being killed in the line of duty and Section 7 of the Act allowed compensation to be paid to dependents of Gardaí ‘killed in the execution of their duty or dead in consequence of wounds received in the execution of their duty’.17 However, getting compensation from the government would prove to be no easy task.

The Irish Free State lasted until 1949 and in 1923 the Civic Guard were renamed An Garda Síochána (Guardians of the Peace). The Gardaí deserve a great deal of credit for helping to pacify a nation after the horrors of the Civil War. By the end of the 1920s, the force had a ratio of just 1.5 Gardaí to every 1,000 people in certain parts of the country, yet were able to oversee an increasingly law-abiding society.18 This small number of men helped in no small way to get a fledgling nation onto its feet. It would come at a heavy cost, however. This book tells the story of the twenty-one policemen, members of both the Gardaí and the DMP, whose lives were cut short in the course of their duty during the lifetime of the Free State.

1

GARDA HENRY PHELAN

‘You can take it from me, it was an accident.’

The Civic Guard was founded in February 1922 and was sent out amongst the people in the early part of September of the same year. The bitter Civil War was still ongoing at that stage and the deployment of thousands of government-backed Gardaí was certain to cause unrest, particularly in areas controlled by republicans. The assurance that the Gardaí was above politics and concerned themselves only with criminal matters cut little ice with the anti-Treaty IRA and their supporters. The potential difficulties became obvious in early October when a bomb was thrown over the wall into the barracks on Ship Street behind Dublin Castle. Dozens of barracks were attacked in the first months and it seemed only a matter of time before a young Garda would find himself on the wrong end of an IRA bullet. Henry Phelan would be the unfortunate victim in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was the first member of the force killed in the line of duty.

Henry Phelan was born on Christmas Day in 1899 in the townland of Rushin, just outside Mountrath, in what we now know as Laois but was then called Queen’s County.1 He was the youngest of a large Roman Catholic family of nine children. When he was a small baby his father had died, forcing his mother and siblings to run the farm alone. Despite this, Henry received a remarkably thorough education for the time, attending Paddock National School until the ripe age of 16, when he left to work on the farm.2 As he grew older he became interested in nationalism, eventually following the well-worn path of many of his generation to serve in the IRA during the War of Independence. Although Laois had been relatively quiet during the period, Henry was described as ‘an active member of the IRA flying column’ in the Black and Tan War by no less than Eoin O’Duffy, Garda Commissioner. This was despite the fact that he had three older brothers who were officers in the RIC, one of the IRA’s prime targets.

After the truce had been signed, Phelan continued working as a farmer but had designs on membership of the Civic Guard. He applied and was quickly accepted into the force, undergoing a short period of training in the Curragh. After he qualified, he was amongst the first detachment of twenty-six Gardaí sent to the old RIC barracks on Parliament Street in Kilkenny City on 27 September 1922. The force, described as a ‘fine body of young Irishmen, athletic and intelligent’, was greeted warmly and Phelan spent a month in the city.3 At the end of October, along with twelve of his colleagues and a sergeant, Phelan was transferred to the rural town of Callan, where he was tasked with keeping the peace in south and west Kilkenny. The new force situated itself in a vacant house beside the Bank of Ireland and near the ruin of the RIC barracks, which had been burned down by the IRA the previous year.

Despite being the county that had produced such ardent nationalists as James Stephens, Kilkenny had been relatively quiet during the War of Independence, particularly in comparison to neighbouring Tipperary. The town of Callan was an exception, however, as the seventh battalion had based itself in the town and frequently linked up with South Tipperary brigade in attacks on British personnel during the conflict.4 The new Gardaí could thus expect some republican resistance and this was borne out by an eventful first week, shots being fired on Bridge Street in the town near the barracks on one occasion, while separately a number of bicycles were commandeered by armed men. Worse was to follow for the inexperienced young Gardaí.

Just after 3 p.m. on Tuesday, 14 November 1922, Henry Phelan was with Garda Irwin and Garda Flood, both recruits from County Limerick. The men decided to seek an afternoon’s leave from Sergeant Kilroy, their superior officer. Their request to leave the barracks and venture out to Tipperary was granted on the condition that they return promptly by 5 p.m. The Gardaí had by no means gained full acceptance in that early stage of their existence and the three men’s choice of destination was a risky one.

They had decided to cycle the 5 miles south-west over the county border to the small village of Mullinahone. The trip was a recreational one and the Guards’ intention was to buy a sliotar (a hurling ball) and hurleys for a new team that Guard Phelan was attempting to set up in the Callan district. Phelan was a keen sportsman and, being from the parish of Castletown in Laois, still known for its hurling prowess, it is little surprise that hurling was his first love. Mullinahone was a small village of less than 300 people but one with a vast republican legacy whose most famous son was Irish poet and revolutionary Charles Kickham. Like much of the county of Tipperary, Mullinahone was supposedly under the command of the government but realistically Irregulars, or the anti-Treaty IRA, held great power in the area in November 1922.

Just three months before, on 23 August, the IRA had sent out a message to backers of the government. On that day, a national soldier named Patrick Grace was on leave and visiting relatives in the village when he was shot in the head and killed by an Irregular named Patrick Egan. In a twist of fate, Egan would himself be shot dead by soldiers the following year.5 Nevertheless, the three unarmed Gardaí felt safe enough to go to the area, entering the quiet village at 4 p.m. Its main street ‘presented its usual atmosphere of peace’.6 The conflict had now entered into a period of guerrilla warfare, however, and unexpected danger was liable to be around any corner in unsettled districts such as this.

Phelan and his colleagues succeeded in their mission of purchasing the sliotar and decided to go to Miss Mullally’s licenced premises and general grocer’s on Kickham Street in the village before they started off homewards. Gardaí were discouraged from drinking by their superiors, Commissioner Eoin O’Duffy being a vocal opponent of alcohol. The men followed their instructions to the letter, and chose to order lemonade. After entering, Irwin and Flood stood at the bar, while Henry Phelan sat sideways on a low stool at the counter, facing the door. After about seven minutes in the bar they ordered a second round of lemonade and were just finishing it when three armed men rushed into the premises. The first of the intruders produced a revolver, while the man directly behind him held a rifle level with his hip.7 The first man fired a shot in the direction of the three men from a distance of about 3 or 4 yards. It hit Henry Phelan in the face and he fell heavily onto the pub’s floor. The belated order was then given by the second man: ‘Hands up’.8

The remaining two Gardaí were horrified but complied with the command. The shooter then asked the shocked policemen if they had any arms. They replied that they did not. The second raider, who was still pointing a rifle at Irwin and Flood, seemed just as surprised by the shooting as the two Gardaí and he asked his compatriot, ‘What are you after doing? Why did you fire?’ The first man muttered something inaudible and placed the revolver back in its holster. The third man was still standing at the door and said nothing during the altercation. Garda Thomas Flood begged the men to allow him come to the aid of the stricken Henry Phelan, who was still lying on his face and hands. They replied, ‘You may.’

Guard Irwin, who still had his hands up, then asked the raiders if they would allow him go for a priest. They did not answer. Irwin bravely walked past them anyway, mounted his bicycle and made his way to Fr O’Meara’s house. Flood knelt down beside Phelan and lifted his head, to find blood haemorrhaging quickly onto the stone floor. The two raiders nearest the door exited and the man who had taken the shot asked again if they had guns to which Flood replied angrily, ‘No, and it is well ye ought to know we haven’t’. The raider answered, ‘You can take it from me, it was an accident.’ He then walked out of the premises. Flood, on confirming that his colleague was dead, went to the door to see if Garda Irwin was returning. He could not see him, but did witness the three raiders walking slowly down the street.

Miss Mullally had rushed into the back kitchen in terror when the armed men entered the premises. After they left she returned with her daughter and a local nurse, and the three women attended to Phelan. Garda Irwin had managed to locate Fr O’Meara and Fr Kelly, two local priests. Both were quickly on the scene to administer the Last Rites to the mortally wounded guardsman. The local GP, Dr Conlon, also came swiftly but could not be of any assistance as the Garda was already dead. Henry Phelan had not spoken after the shot and had died almost instantly. Word spread quickly about the first member of the Civic Guard to be killed in the new state.

Newspaper reports of the time describe the feelings of the local population:

There was indignation … that unarmed men, whose sole interest was the preservation of the peace, should have been set upon in such a manner [and that] the life of one of them was ruthlessly taken away without any cause whatever.9

Phelan’s body was initially laid out in the pub but removed from Mullinahone to Callan by motor car that night. The locals were already aware of the senseless shooting and large crowds awaited the hearse. The Garda’s remains lay in the barracks through Tuesday night and early Wednesday and ‘they were visited by throngs of people and fervent prayers were offered up for the repose of his soul’.10 A large crowd gathered to mourn at the Garda’s funeral in Callan and all the businesses and houses closed and drew their blinds. Several other Gardaí carried the coffin while a contingent of National Army soldiers watched on before the cortege travelled the 42 miles onwards to Mountrath where the young man was buried in his home parish.

The inquest into Garda Phelan’s death was held at midday on Thursday, 16 November. Dr Conlon explained to the court that the bullet had entered Henry Phelan’s left jaw and exited through the back of his neck, thus severing his spinal cord, killing him instantly. A deeply affected Miss Mullally also appeared in the stand and outlined the events of the day. She was asked if she could identify the shooter in question, to which she replied, ‘It is very hard.’ She then replied that she could, although she would not like to say his name out loud. She consequently wrote the murderer’s name on a piece of paper and handed it to the doctor, who in turn passed it to the jury. It was not read out loud.

Dr Crotty also spoke, describing the Gardaí as ‘men of peace … with no interest or concern in political or army matters. Deceased was the first member of the Civic Guard who has met his death under such circumstances and I hope and pray he is the last.’ This statement was met in the courtroom with cheers and cries of ‘Hear, hear!’ The doctor, and indeed the members of the court, were not to know that this earnest desire would not be fulfilled and that Henry Phelan would prove to be the first in a long line of members of the Gardaí murdered while carrying out their duty. After a lengthy deliberation, the jury came to a verdict: ‘The deceased died from a gunshot wound wilfully and maliciously inflicted and that the person who fired the shot is guilty of murder.’

Condemnation of Phelan’s death was swift. Garda Commissioner Eoin O’Duffy said of his slain colleague, ‘Young Guard Phelan was foully murdered in broad daylight without getting time to say “the Lord have mercy on my soul” … He was guilty of no greater crime than going into Mullinahone to buy a hurley ball.’ He added sarcastically, ‘Two heroes armed with rifles held the door while the third put a revolver to his head and fired a bullet through his brain.’ He then sympathised with Phelan’s mother, remarking, ‘She did not think that when her son survived the Black and Tan terror that there were still people in Ireland who could act so callously.’

The day after Phelan’s death, with the manhunt for the suspects in full swing, the local Gardaí suffered another blow when twenty-five men escaped through a tunnel from Kilkenny Jail, which had been used to hold military prisoners.

It was at this point that the government took the gloves off in the Civil War against the IRA. Three days after Garda Phelan’s death, four IRA volunteers became the first people to be executed by the Irish state after being found to have guns in their possession illegally. The executions would come thick and fast from then on. Eighty-one republicans were executed in the course of the Civil War, thirty-four in the month of January 1923 alone.

As for the actual shooting of Henry Phelan, it would be almost two years before anyone was detained. At 5 a.m. on the morning of 1 August 1924, local houses suffered surprise raids. Two local republicans were finally arrested by Gardaí and Military Police and charged with the Garda’s killing. The first was James Daly, a labourer and ex-British soldier from Coolagh, 4 miles from Callan. The second man was named Philip Leahy and was a farmer’s son and native of Poulacapple, just inside the County Tipperary border. Poulacapple is a small townland just outside Mullinahone that was well known for its republican sympathies. It had even hosted one of the last anti-Treaty IRA meetings before the end of the Civil War, six months after Phelan’s death. Neither Daly nor Leahy were alleged to have fired the shot but both were described as ‘aiders and abettors’ to the crime.11

The prisoners, described as having a respectable appearance, stood before the District Court in Kilkenny three days later.12 Neither man would participate in the trial, however. Both sat facing away from the judge and refused to take their hats off their heads or stand up, merely stating that they refused to recognise the court. This was in spite of the Garda present forcibly removing their headgear and admonishing them for not respecting the process. Superintendent Feore told the court that when arrested, the men had told Gardaí that they had nothing to do with the crime. It was also mentioned that neither man was accused of murder and that although the name of the man thought to have fired the shot was known, he was not before the court at that present time as the Gardaí were unable to locate him.

Garda Flood entered the witness box and reiterated his version of events of that fateful day. He would not conclusively identify the prisoners, however, telling the court that the raider with the rifle looked like Daly, while he could not definitively identify Leahy as one of the three men present at all. Garda Irwin disagreed. He believed that Leahy had carried the rifle but Daly was not one of the three men in question at all. The men were initially remanded on bail but the chances of a conviction on such contradictory evidence seemed slim.

So it proved. No conviction was forthcoming against either man, and the perpetrator was never brought to justice, in spite of the fact that Miss Mullally had been able to identify him. The Garda Commissioner, hinting that he knew the identity of the culprit, described how ‘Guard Phelan was an active member of the Flying column in Mountrath during the Black and Tan terror and his assassin was fighting on the side of the British.’13

It was speculated in later years that Phelan, the only Garda killed during the Civil War, was mistaken for his brother, an RIC officer, or for another man who had served in the police who had the same name as his brother. Other accounts claim that local people were unaware that the Gardaí were unarmed, due to the lack of communication into the town in those troubled times, and that the raiders had gone in to procure arms before the gun had gone off accidentally.14 Either way, the shooter had allegedly been spirited away to America in the aftermath of the crime, never to face justice for the act.15

During the War of Independence, an astonishing forty-six RIC policemen had been shot in County Tipperary. Henry Phelan would have believed that the new unarmed Civic Guard would be able to go about their business without the same safety concerns but tragically this was not the case. He was not the first policeman to be shot dead in the Premier County; neither would he be the last. The shooting of the young Garda was extremely unpopular, locally and nationally. He had been unarmed and posed no threat to the gunmen. Less than one month after his death, a general order by the IRA was circulated, instructing volunteers not to fire on unarmed Gardaí.16

Henry Phelan’s comrade, Inspector Bergin, gave a touching tribute to his fallen colleague as he was lain to rest: ‘May the holy soil of Erin’s Isle, rest lightly on your breast, may your name be wrote in letters of gold, on the roll of Erin’s best.’17 As the first Garda killed in the line of duty, Henry Phelan’s memory has lived on. A memorial was unveiled in his name in the Garda station in Mullinahone in 1997.

2

SERGEANT JAMES WOODS

‘I will make you talk.’

By December 1923, the Civil War had been officially over for some six months. However, sporadic skirmishes still occurred. The situation in County Kerry, part of the so-called ‘Munster Republic’, was particularly difficult to control. As the Civil War had continued, the republicans had retreated further south and west until eventually Kerry was their main base. The county had a huge republican contingent and the National Army struggled to gain popular support there, often having to bring in men from outside the area to maintain an uneasy peace. These transfers of troops often occurred by sea as the county was too dangerous to access by land. More than seventy state soldiers had been killed in County Kerry alone during the conflict. The army responded in kind, killing a number of republicans in controversial circumstances, the deliberate blowing-up of eight anti-Treaty prisoners in the Ballyseedy Massacre causing particular outrage. Incidents like these ensured that governmental officials were wildly unpopular amongst sections of the county’s population.

This unpopularity extended to the Civic Guard. One newspaper remarked on 18 November 1922 that, ‘With the possible exception of Kerry, the Civic Guard are today in every county of the twenty-six administered by the provisional government.’1 However, by the beginning of December, the government deemed it safe enough to send a contingent to the county and by 17 January the Gardaí and court system were reported to be functioning well in Tralee, with three other Civic Guard outposts scattered throughout the rest of Kerry.2 The Gardaí largely stayed out of the IRA’s line of fire in its first months, apart from a few isolated incidents, such as in the spring of 1923 when officers were twice held up by an IRA leader named McCarthy, who deprived them of their bicycles. He was shot dead by Gardaí in Dingle shortly afterwards.3 Garda Henry Phelan had been the only member of the force to meet his death during the Civil War but on 3 December 1923 this run of good fortune would come to a shocking end in Scartaglen with the shooting of a second officer. James Woods would be the first sergeant killed in the history of An Garda Síochána.

Scartaglen is a small village in the Sliabh Luachra area of East Kerry, which is renowned for its rich heritage in music and literature. Like most of that part of Kerry, the area was also well known as a strong republican heartland in the aftermath of the Civil War. In a confidential report to the Minister for Home Affairs in 1923, Garda Commissioner Eoin O’Duffy specifically named the village as a hotbed of Irregular activity. He described how armed men moved freely and he urged the army to ‘make a special effort to catch them as their presence is having a very bad effect’.4 The RIC had been attacked and expelled from the village at an early stage in the War of Independence and by the time the first Gardaí arrived in the area at the beginning of 1923 it had been without a functioning police force for a considerable period of time.5 The first recruits were almost exclusively young, inexperienced men. They were faced with the difficult task of attempting to re-impose law and order on an area where they faced a good degree of opposition. The overwhelmingly anti-Treaty area would remain hostile to anyone working for the Free State government for a long time after the Civil War and Sergeant James Woods and his officers faced an unenviable assignment.

Woods was born in 1901 in Craggycorradan West, a townland situated between Doolin and Lisdoonvarna on the west coast of County Clare. His parents, James Snr and Margaret, were farmers and James was the second of nine children born to them.6 He proved to be a good scholar and after reaching adulthood embarked on a career in teaching, spending a year training in Waterford. He had strong nationalist sympathies though, and after the year was complete he left this potentially comfortable existence to fight with the IRA in the War of Independence. When the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed and the call came for young men to join the fledgling Civic Guard, Woods applied immediately. He came from a family steeped in the newly formed Garda force, having two brothers who achieved high ranks early in their careers. Powerfully built, over 6ft in height and academically gifted, James Woods seemed a perfect fit and was accepted into the force in November 1922. After a short period of training he was stationed briefly in Bantry, County Cork, before he was promoted to the rank of sergeant. Woods was just 22 years of age but O’Duffy’s policy was to appoint men with some form of higher education to senior positions.7 The young sergeant was then dispatched to the troubled village of Scartaglen.

The Garda force found themselves woefully under-resourced after their deployment. Many of the former RIC police barracks had been razed to the ground by the IRA in the previous years so the Gardaí had to put up with makeshift barracks, particularly in the more rural parts of the country. In Scartaglen they found themselves forced to use the house of local man Jerimiah Lyons as their temporary Garda station. The owner still occupied the house and it was clearly ill-equipped to serve as a police station as his family and the Gardaí living in the house were forced to share a kitchen. But desperate times called for desperate measures, and as the dwelling was reasonably comfortable and situated in the middle of the village the Gardaí chose it as their short-term headquarters under the stewardship of Sergeant Woods.