Those of Us Who Must Die E-Book

Derek Molyneux

• Herausgeber: The Collins Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

The 1916 Rising is one of the most documented and analysed episodes in Ireland's turbulent history. Often overlooked, however, is its immediate aftermath. This significant window in the narrative of Irish revolutionary history, which saw the rebirth of the Volunteers and laid the foundations for the War of Independence, is usually covered as a footnote, or from the biographical standpoints of the leaders. Picking up where the authors' acclaimed account of the Rising, When the Clock Struck in 1916, left off, we join the men and women of the Rising in the dark abyss of defeat. The leaders' poignant final hours and violent ends are laid bare, but the perspective of those with the unpalatable task of carrying out the executions is also revealed, rectifying a historic disservice to those who reluctantly formed the firing squads. While the prisoners in Dublin awaited their grisly fates, others were deported in stinking cattle boats to camps in England and Wales. When they returned, it was to a jubilant welcome in a radically changed country. The gruesome death of Thomas Ashe in September 1917, after being force-fed in Mountjoy Prison, became a marshalling point for the republican movement, as his funeral saw Volunteers once again assembled in uniform on Dublin's streets. The next phase of the struggle was born, under new leaders who had 'graduated' from the internment camps known as 'Republican Universities', ready and eager to fill the void left by the executed visionaries. The authors sifted through thousands of first-hand accounts of the suffering endured when ordinary people set out to change history. Their stirring account will transport readers into life as it looked, sounded and even smelt to those taking part in this crucial juncture of our history.

Leseprobe

DEREK MOLYNEUX and DARREN KELLY are close friends with a passionate interest in Irish and military history. They administer the popular Facebook page ‘Dublin 1916–1923 Then & Now’ and are authors of When the Clock Struck in 1916 (2015). Derek has an intimate knowledge of Dublin’s streets, based on many years as a motorcycle courier, and understands how the same streets have preserved so much history. He now works in the Department of Foreign Affairs. Darren, who has been interested in Irish revolutionary history since the age of ten, is a technician in the music industry.

Follow the authors on Facebook: Dublin 1916–1923 Then & Now

To our wives and children for your continuing patience,love and inspiration

Contents

Map of west Dublin in 1916

Introduction

Prologue

1.The First Prisoners – Richmond Barracks and Kilmainham Gaol

2.The Prisoner Selections Begin in Richmond Barracks

3.Round-ups, More Selections and Civilian Backlash

4.The Deportations Begin

5.The Military Prepare to Make Their Next Move

6.The First Courts Martial and the Second Deportations

7.The First Executions in Kilmainham Gaol

8.Courts Martial in Richmond Barracks Gather Steam

9.An Unexpected Wedding, and Four More Firing Squads

10.Courts Martial Continue and Another Volley at Dawn in Kilmainham

11.Changing Sentiment in Dublin and Further Deportations

12.Four More Are Shot

13.The Endgame Approaches

14.The Final Executions and an Unexpected Visitor to Richmond Barracks

15.Internment

16.Triumphant Return to Dublin

17.Hunger Strikes and a Movement Reborn

Epilogue

Notes

Sources

Acknowledgements

Map of west Dublin in 1916 showing the positions of Richmond Barracks, Kilmainham Gaol, The Royal Hospital Kilmainham and Arbour Hill.

Kilmainham Gaol,

7.5.’16.

My dear Annie and Lily,

I am giving this to Mrs. Murphy for you; she’ll not mind to hear of what is happening, and she’ll get you all to pray for those of us who must die. Indeed you girls give us courage, and may God grant you Freedom soon in the fullest sense. You wont see me again, and I felt it better not to have you see me, as you’d only be lonely, but now my soul is gone and pray God it will be pardoned all its crimes. Tell Christy and all what happened and ask them to pray for me.

Goodbye, dear friends and remember me in your prayers.

Your fond friend

C. O Colbáird

The letter of 27-year-old Captain Con Colbert to Annie and Lily Cooney written the day before his execution. ANNIE O’BRIENWS 805

Introduction

The 1916 Rising is one of the most written-about episodes in Ireland’s turbulent history. Less well documented, however, is what happened in its immediate aftermath. Many publications cover the courts martial, deportations and executions as a footnote to a wider subject matter, or take a biographical viewpoint of the leaders, either collectively or individually. A small number of books deal exclusively with the courts martial. We felt, however, that the overall narrative of Ireland’s revolutionary period was missing a hugely important and no less fascinating focus: the in-depth story of the post-Rising events in Dublin, as well as what followed, from the perspective of those on both sides who were actually there.

For a great many of the participants, what happened in the days, weeks and months after the Rising was probably worse than the fighting itself. In some ways, the combat seen in Dublin and elsewhere during Easter Week was, for those who took part, as exhilarating as it was traumatic. The same could not be said of what came in its wake. Some expressed the wish that they had not survived the insurrection when they found themselves incarcerated in conditions that drove them to the brink of insanity – and, on more than one occasion, beyond.

Yet the period between May 1916 and the autumn of 1917 saw the rebirth of the Irish Volunteer movement. Shattered as it was following its military defeat, and reeling from the executions of its leaders, by late 1917 it was beginning, against all odds, to reshape itself into a formidable force which now had a considerable strategic advantage compared with the rebel units who had turned out on Easter Monday 1916. The Volunteers now had widespread public support, shown by the jubilant welcome they received from thousands of civilians when they returned from imprisonment and internment.

Following the final Republican surrenders in Dublin and elsewhere after Easter Week, the men and women of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army were staring into the dark abyss of defeat. Many were unable to comprehend why they had capitulated. They felt a sense of desolation at the shattering of the dream for which they had trained so long and fought so tenaciously. The angry reaction of a huge section of Dublin’s civilians towards them came as a great shock that added immeasurably to their anguish. Dublin had divided loyalties at the time of the Rising. Despite significant support for the revolutionary cause from many quarters, thousands of Dublin’s civilians took the opposite view. Many who had relations serving in the British Army saw the insurgents as traitors; others were happy to be part of the British Empire; another significant cohort were content with the promise of Home Rule at a later date, however hollow that promise had proved to be. The Volunteers knew this, and had accordingly expected some backlash, but nothing approaching the levels of venom spat at them, to the point where, more than once, enemy soldiers had to intervene to protect them.

The rebel prisoners who were initially detained in Richmond Barracks in Inchicore faced horrendous conditions. They were kept in overcrowded cells with inadequate ventilation, very little water and abysmal hygiene. Fighting men and women who had not eaten, drunk or slept in days had to face the backlash from cruel and hostile enemy soldiers. They then witnessed the pitiless selection of their more prominent figures by detectives for the military courts. The deportations that followed were both terrifying and stomach-churning. Loaded onto stinking cattle boats, many of them expected to be sunk in the Irish Sea by an enemy determined to take revenge. Some were so dejected at this point that such a fate would have been considered a blessing. Then the authorities exacerbated the trauma of defeat with the executions of the rebellion’s leaders and more prominent participants.

The courts martial that preceded the executions were swiftly convened, and carried out with equal haste. Despite official records being incomplete, our extensive research has enabled us to gain a reasonably comprehensive picture of the more prominent trials, as well as a picture of what the British officers overseeing them thought of their adversaries. Much of it is surprising. The reactions of the Volunteers to the trials varied. Some wanted nothing to do with them and effectively refused to acknowledge their authority. Others were aghast at the apparent disregard for due process afforded them, a sentiment shared by their most prominent prosecutor, Lieutenant William Wylie.

The executions that took place following the courts martial have been well documented in terms of their victims’ personalities, their histories, and their positions in the revolutionary movement. Their chronology is generally well known. However, we felt that there was still a dearth of literature about what happened when the actual executions took place. This is something we have endeavoured to put to rights in this book. Seven of the 14 men shot in Kilmainham Gaol were, after all, in effect the founding fathers of the Irish Republic, having signed the proclamation that underpinned it. Much has been spoken and written of their and the other condemned men’s lives, and indeed of their poignant final hours, but comparatively little has been written of what actually took place in the Stonebreakers’ Yard when they were put to death. There are, of course, numerous detailed written accounts recorded by the monks who ministered to the condemned men as their final hour approached, but from the perspective of those who had the unpalatable task of carrying out the executions there are comparatively few details.

The principal reason for the lack of official written records from the British side is that anonymity was afforded to both the officers and enlisted soldiers who oversaw the executions. At an administrative level, meticulous records were kept on the condemned men, but the opposite is the case when it comes to those whose boots were on the ground, who carried out the sentences. To remedy this, we have painstakingly trawled through the available accounts from those who were there. Significant detail was passed on by word of mouth, often years later, as well as being recorded in diaries or memoirs. Such sources have yielded knowledge of how these momentous, historic events unfolded. Additionally, while there was no clear-cut manual on firing squads in the British Army at the time, there was a protocol that could be adapted to any given situation, whether on the Western Front or in Dublin. By comparing shootings on the Western Front with those in Kilmainham we could see that, with some exceptions, the same basic protocol was followed. Unfortunately, some officers in charge of firing squads in Dublin were pitifully lacking in any instruction on the protocol, as were their men. This would have horrific consequences. Having approached our research in this way we feel that we have managed to convey to the reader not only how mechanically gruesome the execution procedure itself was, but also how disturbing it was for many of the infantrymen who formed the firing parties, and their officers. In this regard, we hope to have rectified a historic disservice to the men who faced the firing squads, as well those who reluctantly formed them.

The accounts of the executed men are compelling. The stoicism they displayed was admired by many of the soldiers who faced them from the butt end of a rifle, as well as their officers, who at least respected the integrity of their cause and their courage in pursuing it. The following quote, recorded in 1920 by the regiment that provided the firing squads, attests to this.

‘That is why every Sinn Feiner who was condemned to death stood in the courtyard at Kilmainham before the firing squad, drawn from a sister Battalion to our own, steadily, like men, without flinching, and without support. All faced the rifles not as craven rebels, but like men dying for a great idea. Soldiers who were present, ever susceptible to courage whenever they find it, acknowledge this.’1

Inevitably, the trauma that befell the rebellion’s participants – on both sides – brought forth the human face of war. In numerous cases during its aftermath, unexpected acts of kindness were shown to the surrendered insurgents by their British Army captors, some of whom came from the very units that had suffered the worst at their hands during the fighting. It was not only the rebellion’s leaders who showed astonishing fortitude. The spirit and sheer tenacity displayed by both the officers and rank and file of the Volunteers greatly impressed many of their captors.

Another striking characteristic that was evident in the ranks of the Irish Volunteers, the Irish Citizen Army, the Fianna, and Cumann na mBan was camaraderie.2 It was needed. These people had trained and fought hard together, knowing that going up against the might of the British military could prove fatal to them, and catastrophic for their families. Nevertheless, a significant number, living as they did in a city with the worst slums in Europe, and the highest rate of infant mortality, felt they had little to lose from a system that offered scant opportunity for the ordinary man and woman. Many of their countrymen who fought in Dublin and elsewhere felt the same. Those Volunteers of better financial and social standing – of whom there were many – felt that recent developments, such as the flagrant disregard of legally constituted Home Rule, in favour of the Unionists who sought to usurp it, with arms if necessary, shone a light on where they really stood. Few of them hated the British – far from it – but equally, they would die before bowing down to its empire, which they saw as the root cause of so many of their country’s woes.

Not all of those who had fought against the British Army during Easter Week 1916 were killed or captured. There were breathtaking escapes under fire; some evaded imprisonment by both pluck and luck; others simply melted away. But over three thousand prisoners, including innocent civilians, were rounded up and processed by the detectives of Dublin’s G-Division. Their enthusiasm for their work was not forgotten during the War of Independence that began three years after the Rising, and in which several of them were gunned down by assassination squads.

Our story begins with the Republican surrenders at the end of Easter Week itself, and the immediate aftermath. We then deal with the rounding up and processing of prisoners, the courts martial that followed, and the leaders’ executions. We do our best to transport the reader back to the city as it must have looked, sounded and even smelled. We wanted to convey the events in as visceral a manner as possible, as we did in this book’s predecessor – When The Clock Struck in 1916: Close-Quarter Combat in the Easter Rising (The Collins Press, 2015). Our unflinching accounts are at times not pretty, but we have no wish to sanitise history. We assume the reader will have some degree of prior knowledge of the background to the insurrection itself and its fundamental reasons.

After looking at the incarcerations, courts martial and executions, we touch on the surviving insurgents’ fascinating journeys into exile in England and Wales, where they were imprisoned or interned in various camps and prisons, testing their physical and psychological resilience to breaking point. Many of their captors were similarly tested when confronted with their determined and wily Irish adversaries.

Finally, we provide a brief window on their return to Dublin – to a completely different political landscape – where the Volunteers immediately took up the baton under new leadership, only to suffer another devastating loss when Thomas Ashe died on hunger strike in September 1917. His funeral became the rallying cry that saw Volunteers once again assemble in uniform on the streets of Ireland’s capital.

We have followed the same thread of characters as those featured in When The Clock Struck in 1916, as well as adding some new ones. Ordinary men and women from all walks of life – the ‘butchers, bakers and candlestick makers’ – took on the biggest empire the world had ever known, an empire on which ‘the sun never set’. Their extraordinary stories are gripping. What they experienced in Richmond Barracks, Kilmainham Gaol and in England was just as important in a historical context as the events they lived through during the Rising itself, and in the years that followed.

The area of west Dublin where Richmond Barracks and Kilmainham Gaol are situated still echoes today with the history that haunts the former barracks’ open acres and rustic structures, as much as it does the cold, bleak Stonebreakers’ Yard in Kilmainham Gaol. It was here where the shape of Ireland was changed irrevocably and for ever. It was, fundamentally, the secretive and legally suspect nature of the courts martial, and the executions, that eventually turned the tide of public opinion in Ireland in favour of the Republican and nationalist causes, and drove a great many whose prior allegiances were either ambiguous, or directed in varying degrees towards the Crown, into the arms of those who sought to subvert the same Crown’s authority in Ireland. Indeed, it is often argued that General Maxwell – the man the Crown placed in charge following the insurrection to suppress the cause of the nationalist enemy – ended up doing a great deal more to advance it.

What followed the Easter Rising would lead three years later to the bitterly contested War of Independence. The anguish of the Rising’s defeat and the desperate uncertainty as to the future of the nationalist and Republican movement was gradually overcome by the rejigging of the Irish Volunteers under the very noses of the authorities. Frongoch internment camp in north Wales became known as the ‘Republican University’, the Irish Volunteers’ equivalent of Sandhurst Military Academy, which has trained British Army officers for over two centuries. Prisons such as Lewes, Dartmoor, Maidstone, Broadmoor and Portland ended up serving a similar purpose. From these bleak places emerged new leaders, such as Thomas Ashe, Éamon de Valera, Harry Boland, Liam Tobin, Michael Collins and Richard Mulcahy, ready and eager to fill the void left by the orators and visionaries who had been executed the previous year, and who were equally willing to lay down their lives if necessary. Following their deportations and imprisonments the Volunteers and Citizen Army returned, hailed as heroes, to a different Ireland. The same men and women then set about seizing the initiative handed to them by the actions of the military under General Maxwell, who, like his Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, had completely misjudged Irish sentiment in May 1916. The propaganda victory Asquith and Maxwell handed to the Republicans was not wasted. The nationalist skill in public relations was then employed with similar, if not greater, effect in September 1917, when the Volunteers, the majority of whom had by then returned to Ireland, paraded once again in public for Thomas Ashe’s funeral. Commandant Ashe’s death was the result of no less brutal treatment by the authorities than the executions in Kilmainham the previous year.

Many of the same rank-and-file members of the Volunteers, Cumann na mBan and Citizen Army endured not only the Rising and its aftermath but also the continuing struggle for Irish independence in the years beyond. Their stories are tremendously important both to Ireland and to Britain. One of our principal sources, the Bureau of Military History in Cathal Brugha Barracks, offers an unequalled wealth of human history in revolution. The bureau holds thousands of first-hand accounts of the suffering endured when ordinary people set out to change history. They are laced with intensity, tragedy and, often, hilarity. It has been a privilege to present these unforgettable stories and, once again, we hope we have done them justice.

Derek Molyneux & Darren Kelly

Prologue

‘Sure we have had a fine fight’

At 2 a.m. on Friday 28 April 1916, a Royal Navy destroyer crept slowly up the estuary of Dublin’s River Liffey. British Army General Sir John Grenfell Maxwell stood on its wooden deck along with his retinue. The 56-year-old general had been charged by his political and military masters in London with stemming the Easter Rising in Ireland, now entering its fifth day. His mandate was to crush enemy resistance in both the capital and the country, and to see that those responsible were punished. He was then to ensure that order was restored to Ireland as quickly as possible. This was particularly urgent given the pressure that Britain and its empire were under as the Great War escalated.

Each man who stood with the general on the ship’s deck was transfixed by the spectacle of the burning city ahead of him. Central Dublin was an inferno, having been under British artillery fire for two days. The destroyer’s sleek form cut through the narrowing river as it entered the city. The figure of Commerce at the top of the Palladian dome of Dublin’s Custom House was outlined clearly by the flames consuming all in their path in Sackville Street a half mile to the north-west. At North Wall Quay the ship drew alongside a smaller vessel with a gun mounted on its bow. When it was tied up, gangplanks were thrown across to the other vessel, and from there to the dock. Then a British Army staff officer came aboard the destroyer. As he approached the general and his entourage, they noticed the Military Cross ribbon on his chest – this was a man to be reckoned with. The officer saluted the general, and told him in a pronounced Irish accent that his cars would arrive shortly. Some of the officials accompanying the general enquired, in equally distinctive English public school accents, about the fighting in Dublin. The officer replied, ‘Sure we have had a fine fight.’1

Soon afterwards, two motor cars pulled up at the dock. The general and his attendants disembarked and made their way to the cars, whose engines were ticking over quietly, their passenger doors held open by saluting drivers. Their destination was the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham, the British Army headquarters in Ireland, situated two miles to the west of the burning city centre. Their route, however, would be an indirect one – along the North Circular Road – because the rebels continued to occupy the General Post Office (GPO) and the Four Courts, both of which stood in their path. The drivers picked up speed passing the bombed-out shell of Liberty Hall. Lieutenant Alfred Brucknill – an Admiralty barrister, who sat next to the general – looked on as Maxwell re-read his orders, and he glimpsed the words: ‘To take all such measures as may be necessary for the prompt suppression of the rebellion in Ireland’.2 He also noticed the instruction that civilians could be tried by courts martial under the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA). As Maxwell’s legal adviser, Brucknill knew that, despite his orders, the general had limited powers – the Act did not provide in any way for the event of armed insurrection. It appeared to him, therefore, that once they had overwhelmed the insurgents, they would need to find a means of charging them with ‘aiding the enemy’ – the Germans and the Central European powers – in order to permit the imposition of maximum sentences, i.e. executions.

They reached the Royal Hospital at 3 a.m., having had only one hair-raising incident en route when the lead car had not slowed down quickly enough at one of the numerous British Army checkpoints that had sprung up all over the city since the British military had established its stranglehold. The alarming sight of over a dozen raised rifles alerted the driver just in time for him to bring the car screeching to a halt and avoid a hail of bullets. British infantry throughout Dublin were in a high state of alert and would open fire at the merest hint of the enemy.

Several hours later, having rested and now enjoying a splendid breakfast, Maxwell was brought fresh news from England: the British cabinet in Westminster had declared that the entire island of Ireland was now under martial law. His own powers had now increased; in effect he was master of his own small kingdom. Stepping away from the table for a moment, he peered out of a huge window towards the South Dublin Union, the clear morning sky revealing an enemy flag hanging from one of its vantage points. The Union was just one of half a dozen Republican garrison areas in Dublin city that were still holding out. Maxwell declared loudly: ‘Two guineas to the man who brings that flag in!’ The green Republican symbol would, however, remain securely fastened in place at the Union until the following Sunday, and the general failed ultimately to get his hands on it.

1

The First Prisoners – Richmond Barracks and Kilmainham Gaol

‘Anyone want to see the animals?’

On the night of Saturday 29 April 1916, Dublin’s Easter Rising was all but over. As darkness fell on the smouldering city centre, roughly four hundred dishevelled, exhausted rebel prisoners were herded into the enclosed Rotunda Hospital grounds in Rutland Square, to the north of Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street). They were made up of the Irish Volunteer headquarters (HQ) garrison who had surrendered to the British in Moore Street earlier in the day, as well as most of the men from the Volunteers’ 1st Battalion, who had also surrendered that evening at the Four Courts. Fifty-eight other men from the 1st Battalion were still holding out in the North Brunswick Street area to their west, while in other city areas the remaining Volunteer Dublin Brigade battalions were also holding fast. Nevertheless, it was now only a matter of time before they too capitulated. The chilly night air was thick with smoke and dust from the once-picturesque boulevard of Sackville Street, now a post-battlefield ruin of smashed concrete, metal and broken glass.

Edward (Ned) Daly, the 25-year-old Commandant of the 1st Volunteer Battalion, moved among his comrades, ensuring that discipline was still sound, until he was pulled out from among them and thrown to the ground by his captors. He collected himself and glanced around. He now sat among the staff officers of the Irish Volunteers and their aides-de-camp. The men were penned in like sheep and surrounded by a cordon of men with bayonets. Behind the men pointing their 17-inch-long blades were formidable railings and walls, beyond which were additional platoons of enemy soldiers who, following a week of intense street fighting, felt little sympathy for their prisoners. Daly took a few moments to take in the unexpected turn of events. He could not understand why he and his men had been ordered by their commander-in-chief Pádraig Pearse to lay down their arms. His own battalion had been so well fortified in the Four Courts and North King Street areas that the British had found it impossible to dislodge them.

Daly was the youngest of the Irish Volunteers to hold the rank of battalion commandant. Raised in Limerick, he had joined the Irish Volunteers at its inception in November 1913 – ironically, in the same complex that now confined him and his comrades. He had quickly risen through the Volunteer ranks, displaying a military aptitude that, when tested in combat, had frustrated the enemy to such a degree that they had vented their fury on civilians, massacring many non-combatants. The 58 men from Daly’s battalion who were still holding out were now under the command of 19-year-old Patrick Holohan. A ceasefire was, however, in place.

Daly’s eyes fell on the youthful but weary face of 20-year-old Dubliner Seán McLoughlin. The last time they had met, McLoughlin, from nearby North King Street, had been acting as a runner between the Mendicity Institute, an outpost on Usher’s Island, a mile or so to their west, and Volunteer HQ in the GPO. Now the young man was among the rebellion’s subdued-looking leaders, having, unbeknownst to Daly, been promoted to the rank of commandant general the previous night. Daly asked McLoughlin what had happened and why they had surrendered.1 McLoughlin told Daly that he should ask Seán MacDermott – one of the rebellion’s chief architects – who was sitting nearby. Just then, a British officer noticed Daly and McLoughlin speaking and became angry. He shouted that if either of them uttered another word it would be his last.

Watching from not far away was 25-year-old Captain Michael Collins, aide-de-camp to another of the Volunteer leaders – 28-year-old Commandant Joseph Plunkett, the Volunteers’ Director of Military Operations – who lay next to him. Plunkett was dying of tuberculosis, and after a week of frenetic intensity and combat was now in a pitiful physical state. Two Cumann na mBan members, Winifred Carney and Julia Grenan, wrapped Plunkett in two overcoats, one of which belonged to Commandant James Connolly – the man in overall charge of the Volunteers’ Dublin Brigade – who had earlier been taken to Dublin Castle on a stretcher. Carney had been Connolly’s secretary. One of the overcoats was laid out on the ground beneath Plunkett, the other placed over him as a blanket.

As the long cold night dragged into the early hours of Sunday morning, the air was filled with groans, coughs and splutters from the prisoners huddled together and surrounded by the horseshoe-shaped hospital buildings. Sleep, a fitful luxury enjoyed only by those who could simply no longer remain awake, was frequently disturbed by loudly barked reminders that the men were surrounded by guards and that any escape attempts would be met with a speedy and lethal response from the machine gunners and riflemen positioned on the nearby rooftops. The ring of steel remained solid all through the night. Gunshots cracked in the distance. The Volunteers were packed in so tightly in places that men had to lie on top of one another. They were not permitted to stand up to relieve themselves. One particularly vicious British officer – 29-year-old Captain Percival Lea Wilson – darted from place to place among the Volunteers, striking matches in their faces and shouting at his men, ‘Anyone want to see the animals?’2 Lea Wilson had only recently left a nearby public house, which had reopened immediately after the fighting had finished to meet the demands of thirsty soldiers. He was quite drunk. He was wearing a smoking hat with a tassel attached, and looked somewhat ridiculous. When Volunteer Frank Henderson rose to his knees to urinate, Lea Wilson struck him on the back of the head with the butt of a rifle he had grabbed from an infantryman.

At one point, Commandant Daly asked a passing British non-commissioned officer (NCO) for permission to reach across several feet to where his personal belongings lay on the ground. The NCO obliged by picking up the items himself and handing them to Daly. Enraged by this simple act of kindness towards the enemy, Lea Wilson ran at the soldier, berating him and calling him ‘a bloody servant to the rebels.’3 He then approached Daly himself and dragged him to his feet. As soon as the battle-weary commandant was standing, Lea Wilson ripped the epaulettes from the shoulders of his tunic, before ordering a nearby soldier to perform another search on him, which resulted in Daly being stripped half naked.

The unhinged Lea Wilson then turned his attention to Daly’s brother-in-law, Tom Clarke, the 58-year-old rebel leader, raised in County Tyrone, who had been the first to put his name to the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, which had been read aloud outside the GPO the previous Monday. That seemed a different world now. Clarke, worn out and frail, and nursing a gunshot wound that pre-dated the insurrection, was pulled out from those surrounding him and dragged to the steps of the hospital’s main entrance. There, the captain had him stripped naked. Noticing several horrified nurses looking on at the humiliating spectacle from the upstairs windows, he roared up at them, ‘Nice general for your fucking army!’ Then, turning back to Clarke, he berated him again. Clarke may have appeared physically frail, but during his life his mental constitution had already withstood sustained and unimaginable assaults. His body was weak, but psychologically he had, by now, been tempered to the point of near impenetrability. He leaned in and whispered something to the captain that further enraged him and resulted in Clarke getting a slap from one of the officer’s gloves across his gaunt, wrinkled face. An angry cry came from among the surrounding Volunteers. Some began to get up, their eyes fixed squarely on the demented enemy officer. They then heard several unmistakable metallic clicks. The soldiers were preparing to fire. Commandant Daly quickly brought his men under control, fearing that any fracas would result in a massacre.

Captain Lea Wilson then ran towards a section of his soldiers, shouting wildly at them: ‘Whom do you consider the worst, the Boches or the Sinn Féiners?’4 The soldiers replied with varying degrees of enthusiasm that the ‘Sinn Féiners’ were the worst. Lea Wilson played to the gallery, asking what they should do with them. ‘Shoot ’em, stick a bayonet in ’em,’5 was the reply from one man. Some of the infantrymen watched in disgust. Others looked uncomfortably at one another, wondering if the officer had gone mad. When Lea Wilson turned his attention to Commandant Plunkett, Michael Collins, in desperate frustration, said, ‘This is a very sick man – will you leave him alone?’ Collins also made sure to take in as much information as he could about the enemy officer.

On the same Sunday morning, two miles west of the Rotunda, the far more salubrious setting of the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham was a hive of activity. On the top floor, British riflemen and Lewis gunners had concealed themselves behind the twenty or so windows that opened from the huge roof facing the still embattled South Dublin Union – one of the four Republican garrison areas still holding out south of the River Liffey. Any visible enemy movement within the Union would draw immediate fire from here. On the ground floor below this lethal cordon General Maxwell and his staff stood around a large table on which lay several unrolled maps. Adjutants interjected periodically with updated estimates of enemy numbers, while fingers hovered and pointed at various map positions. The officers were trying to figure out where to concentrate, and subsequently deal with, the anticipated huge hauls of Volunteer and Citizen Army prisoners from the city. More prisoners were also expected to be taken throughout the entire country and marshalled in the capital once it was properly secured.

The Royal Hospital Kilmainham, British Army headquarters in Ireland. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF IRELAND

Richmond Barracks, the biggest barracks in Dublin and less than a mile to the south-west of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in Inchicore, was soon chosen for its sheer size. Its hundred-year-old barracks square, normally the scene of square-bashing by the boots of the Royal Irish Regiment, measured over a dozen acres and its enclosing walls stood 30 foot high in places. This, together with its numerous buildings and outbuildings, made it ideal for containing a large number of prisoners. Its proximity to Kilmainham’s Royal Hospital and – equally important – Kilmainham Gaol, presented additional advantages, as did its closeness to Kingsbridge (Heuston) railway station. Dispatches were now sent out to the barracks’ officers and men telling them to prepare for what was to come.

A significant problem facing the British command was how to distinguish the enemy ringleaders from their rank and file. In one sense their task so far had been made easier: many of the leaders had identified themselves and led their men and women to the surrender points in Sackville Street the previous evening. The downside, however, was that the British officers and soldiers would be unable to pick out any of the main players in the Volunteer movement other than those who presented themselves voluntarily. Maxwell decided that the best course of action would be to use the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP), particularly G-Division, to help identify the ringleaders. G-Division was a detective unit based in Great Brunswick Street (Pearse Street). It had had been keeping tabs on the movements of the Volunteers and Citizen Army since their inception three years earlier. The unit, which had been on standby, was quickly summoned. It was then decided that once the insurrection’s ringleaders and instigators had been identified and separated, the remainder would be deported to prisons and camps on the other side of the Irish Sea. The requisite transport could be commandeered and the authorities in England would be notified. Round-ups would follow to capture those who had either escaped or had not risen with their comrades the previous week. In this way, the British hoped to destroy once and for all an enemy they considered a many-headed snake.

At 8 a.m., back in the Rotunda grounds, the British NCOs ordered the bone-weary, half-starved men of the GPO and Four Courts garrisons to form into ranks four deep. They were then marched out of the gates facing Cavendish Row, where they found two long lines of enemy soldiers, on either side of the road, awaiting them with bayonets fixed. Three regiments were represented: the Royal Irish Rifles, the Royal Irish Regiment and the Staffordshire Regiment. They numbered almost two men to each prisoner.6 The rebels and their leaders marched between the enemy infantrymen until they reached the head of the two lines. As soon as the Rotunda was empty the soldiers turned to face forwards. The officer overseeing all of this had received a dispatch ordering him to march the prisoners to Richmond Barracks. Sitting astride a fine bay horse, he rode arrogantly up and down the line of assembled men before finally issuing the order to move out. The British sergeants then bellowed the command to their troops – ‘Forward march!’ The Volunteers kept in step. The sound of hundreds of marching men soon echoed around the surrounding area and was met with silent stares from scores of gathered civilians. A low melodic hum began to be heard among the ranks of Volunteers – the tune ‘God Save Ireland’. It was quickly taken up by more of them as they raised their heads. Soon, the entire column were singing the old rebel song. Some held back tears; others looked defiant, bolstered by the growing melody accompanying the tramp of their feet. As the head of the column reached Lower Sackville Street the eyes of soldier and Volunteer were stung by smoke from the fires in gutted buildings. Commandants Daly and McLoughlin congratulated their men at maintaining such fine order, and issued repeated commands to the men to keep their heads high and their spirits up. Volunteer Maurice Fitzsimons of the 1st Battalion was marching next to his comrade Éamon Dore, a medical student from Limerick. He turned to him, asking if he was feeling downhearted. Dore replied to his fully uniformed friend that he was not – he was proud. Fitzsimons then cried out to the rest of the surrounding men: ‘Are we downhearted?’7 Moggy Murtagh, marching in front of him, answered at the top of his voice, ‘No!’ A prod from a British NCO’s bayonet, however, warned Murtagh to keep his mouth shut. Fitzsimons was stabbed in the behind by a more forceful lunge of the same razor-sharp blade.

General Sir John Grenfell Maxwell, at the centre of picture, accompanied by his retinue in Dublin. Lieutenant Brucknill is third from left. COURTESY OF KILMAINHAM GAOL ARCHIVES

Joseph Plunkett had somehow found the strength to keep up with the marching column. He was helped on his way by Michael Collins. Seán MacDermott, on the other hand, following close behind the tail end of the column, which was still on Upper Sackville Street, found it impossible to keep up. He had earlier been relieved of a walking cane he had used since contracting polio in 1912. Captain Lea Wilson had taken it in a final act of cruelty. He explained why he was limping to a Lieutenant Ruxton of the Royal Irish Regiment. Ruxton was intrigued by the sight of this crippled and kindly faced man dressed in civilian clothes. He asked him: ‘How did you get into this affair?’ He was unaware of MacDermott’s position as a principal agitator of the rebellion. MacDermott, from Kiltyclogher in County Leitrim, was the secretary of the Irish Republican Brotherhood’s (IRB’s) Supreme Council.8 For many years he had been the Volunteer movement’s best-known personality, and he had been a military member of the movement, albeit without an officer’s rank, since its foundation. He replied: ‘We all have our place in the organisation.’ The British officer appeared sympathetic, and detailed a corporal and a section of men to guard MacDermott. He was then permitted to walk at his own pace. Winifred Carney and Julia Grenan were allowed to remain at his side.9 They marched off slowly, taking turns supporting him, surrounded by soldiers.

The surrendered GPO and Four Courts garrisons crossed the River Liffey at O’Connell Bridge, overlooked by the huge statue of another Irishman who had striven to free his people, albeit in a less violent fashion, during the earlier part of the previous century – Daniel O’Connell. The ‘Liberator’, as he was known, was today riddled with bullet holes and surrounded by devastation. The group then passed along Westmoreland Street, between Trinity College to their left and the old parliament building to their right, before marching into Dame Street, where clusters of civilians lined the route, some staring silently, others shouting words of support. Many more hurled abuse. Curiously, standing among them were men in civilian clothes with white and blue striped armlets, and carrying batons. Charles Saurin, of the 2nd Volunteer Battalion detachment that had fought in the Sackville Street area, guessed that they were Special Constables, or plainclothes policemen, back on the streets after having been withdrawn for their own protection the previous week.

Winifred Carney, James Connolly’s 26-year-old secretary, who helped tend to the desperately ill Joseph Plunkett in the Rotunda grounds during the night of 29–30 April. The following day she assisted Seán MacDermott after his walking cane was taken from him by Captain Lea Wilson. COURTESY OF KILMAINHAM GAOL ARCHIVES

As the sun began to bathe the city, some of those on the march began to collapse from exhaustion and hunger. Their comrades picked them up and supported them. Michael Collins took turns with several other men to support Joseph Plunkett. Some of the soldiers flanking them took pity and offered them their water canteens, only to be scolded by their own comrades, who looked with contempt upon such acts of empathy towards a hated enemy.

The torment intensified when they reached Francis Street’s junction with Thomas Street, just to the west of Christchurch, where larger crowds had gathered on both sides of the road, forming a hate-filled gauntlet. Screams and shouts that the rebels were ‘murderers and starvers of the people’10 were hurled at them. Soldiers had to hold the mob back at bayonet point as they pressed forward, launching missiles and spitting. The Volunteers were perplexed. These were the very people they had tried to set free. Many of the residents of the Francis Street area were vexed that these men had taken up arms against the army in which many of their husbands, sons and fathers served – simply, in many cases, to put food on their families’ tables. The officer in charge rode up and down their ranks on his horse, amused at the local people’s attitude to the prisoners. At James’s Street they were ordered to turn right to avoid the South Dublin Union – still in rebel hands – which was roughly five hundred yards to their front and left. Soon they were descending between the huge flanking walls of Steevens’ Lane towards Kingsbridge Station, where they turned left onto St John’s Road. The eight-foot granite walls of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham were now on their left. Behind the walls, on the raised grass banks, stood dozens of British soldiers shouting insults at them – one proclaiming loudly to Volunteer Captain Frank Henderson that their ‘friends’ – the Germans – had just been badly mauled by the British Army. Many of the British soldiers, not to mention the Irish civilians, had suspected the Germans of having masterminded and financed much of the Rising.

The Volunteers eventually reached Kilmainham crossroads, where they turned right onto Emmet Road. Within minutes, at approximately 10 a.m., they were marching through the entrance gates of Richmond Barracks. Volunteer Lieutenant Oscar Traynor, the 30-year-old from the 2nd Battalion detachment that had fought in both the Fairview and Sackville Street areas, noticed a Capuchin monk in his sombre-looking cassock standing outside the gates, crying and saying over and over the word ‘Misneach’.11 The British soldiers looked at him with curious frowns, little realising that the word was Irish for ‘courage’. He was trying to give the men heart for what they were about to face. They would need it.

The barracks square of Richmond Barracks – home to the Royal Irish Regiment, where rebel prisoners were processed and their leaders selected for court martial. It was a scene where both cruelty and kindness was shown to prisoners by their captors. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF IRELAND

Minutes later, the head of the column reached the centre of the barracks square. The officer in charge dismounted from his bay horse and went to hand over command of the prisoners to Lieutenant-Colonel Fraser. Fraser was Provost Marshal,12 and was in charge of prisoners at Richmond Barracks. A large crowd of off-duty soldiers and what appeared to be their wives, some of whom were carrying babies and children in their arms, gathered to examine the ranks of rebels. Abuse quickly followed. One group of soldiers launched an attack with their fists and feet, but were eventually pushed back by the guards.

As the Volunteers stood in lines, one of them, Arthur Shields, pulled a cigarette from his pack. As he went to light it, a British corporal roared, ‘Stop that! Do you know where you are?’ A sergeant appeared and laughingly boasted to the corporal, loud enough for most of the Volunteers to hear, that he had been digging graves since early morning. The sergeant then approached Shields, eyeing him with a look of contempt, and said, ‘I hope I’ll be on the firing party to-morrow’.13 Shields, despite his sudden trepidation at the sergeant’s menacing comment, denied him the satisfaction of a reaction. The two NCOs then moved away.

Meanwhile, two miles to the east, in Ship Street Barracks, situated at the rear of Dublin Castle, three Volunteer captains – Liam Tannam, Michael Staines and Diarmuid Lynch – were lined up in its yard with several other prisoners who had just been ordered out of their cells. Among the others were four Volunteers who had helped to carry the badly wounded Commandant Connolly by stretcher to Dublin Castle the previous day, before being detained themselves in the castle. The three officers and the four other men had since shared a cell with several Citizen Army men who had been captured alongside Dr Kathleen Lynn while fighting in the adjacent City Hall. Lynn and the others had themselves been taken prisoner after the ferocious battle there on Easter Monday. Dr Lynn had assumed command of the City Hall garrison after two of its officers were killed by enemy fire. She was now being held with some other Citizen Army women in a stinking, lice-ridden cell beneath Dublin Castle’s cobblestones. The Citizen Army men now stood close to Captains Tannam, Staines and Lynch.

Soon after they had assembled in the yard, the gathered men were looked over by DMP detectives and intelligence officers. The policemen took great satisfaction in breaking the news to them that the rebel HQ had officially surrendered.

Liam Tannam, 21 years old and from Wilton Place in Dublin, had joined the Volunteers in 1914 and the IRB in 1915. He had been introduced to the former, and sworn into the latter, by Éamonn Ceannt, the commandant of the Volunteers 4th Battalion. Tannam himself served as commander of E Company, 3rd Battalion. He had been at the forefront of the recent fighting on Sackville Street and Moore Street.

Tannam and his two fellow officers cursed quietly. They had protested vigorously at their detention in the castle the previous day, insisting that they had come there under an escort during a ceasefire to transport a wounded officer – Commandant Connolly – into enemy custody, and that, as per the rules of war, they should then have been released to their units. Their protests had fallen on deaf ears. The surrender now boasted of by the officers and detectives came as no great surprise, especially considering the ruins they had left behind and the subsequent sight of massed enemy troops, not to mention their artillery. However, they strongly felt that they should have been permitted to return to the men under their command, whose fate – whatever it might be – they would be content to share. Shortly after the detectives had finished gloating, soldiers ordered the assembled men to march out.

The forbidding walls of Kilmainham Gaol, built in 1796. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF IRELAND

The haggard-looking group eventually reached the forbidding stone walls of Kilmainham Gaol. Kilmainham had ceased operating as a prison in 1910, but since the outbreak of the Great War it had been used as a military detention centre. The prisoners were taken inside the gaol before being split up and shoved into cells, three men to each. The cells’ whitewashed walls were smeared with blood,14 suggesting that brutal treatment was being meted out. The prisoners soon discovered that the prison warder on duty that day had little affection for the recent arrivals. He taunted them continuously. Lynch, 38 years old, took offence at this and insisted they be treated as prisoners of war. The warder’s response was a vicious blow to Lynch’s jaw with his baton.

Captain Staines was thrown into a cell already occupied by two looters, who were sitting on the only bed. Staines, the son of a Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) officer from County Mayo, quickly collected himself and glared at them. He had no love for looters, having seen at first hand how they had pillaged Sackville Street on Easter Monday. He had served as the GPO garrison’s quartermaster, and was also an IRB member. When he and his fellow officers had witnessed the looting carried out by hordes of Dublin’s desperately poor slum-dwellers, they had felt disgusted, considering the looters to have thus brought their rebellion, and the tricolour flag he had raised on the GPO’s roof, into disrepute. Both looters stood up straightaway and offered the battle-hardened rebel officer the bed.

Back in the Sackville Street area, at approximately 11.00 a.m. the 2/6th Sherwood Forester Infantry Battalion, which had been engaged in the recent heavy fighting in the area, received fresh orders following the earlier departure of the Republican prisoners from the Rotunda. A small detachment was sent to the eastern side of Sackville Street to the nearby Summerhill area with orders to reopen Kennedy’s bakery and distribute bread. This was urgent – the population was beginning to starve. The remainder of the battalion would search houses and buildings for hidden or wounded rebels, or their arms, and remove the many dead.

The men of the 2/6th moved nervously forward from their barricades in the Moore Street/Capel Street/Great Britain Street (Parnell Street) area. Despite the previous day’s surrender the dry cracks of rifle shots and the sharp staccato of machine-gun fire could still be heard from across the city. D Company moved out from Great Britain Street, filtering into the lanes and alleyways around Moore Street. One detachment from A Company moved into Cole’s Lane and Denmark Street. Every house and building had to be searched from top to bottom. B Company concentrated on Capel Street, while C Company made their way into Upper Abbey Street.

A lieutenant named Brace, and a 12-man section from D Company, found themselves in Sackville Lane at the northern end of Moore Street. Amid the detritus of battle scattered all along the narrow lane they saw three dead bodies. A sergeant stopped, knelt, and searched each body in turn while the remainder of the section moved on, scanning every nook and cranny for danger. On one of the bodies the sergeant found a bloodied letter which began ‘Written after I was shot,’ and ended ‘Goodbye darling.’ There was also a communiqué from Commandant-General James Connolly. Then, as the sergeant looked up at the wall above the body, he frowned – the word ‘O’Rahilly’ appeared to have been written on the wall in blood. This was the Volunteer captain who had led a charge into enemy fire on Moore Street the previous Friday. Reading the letter again, the sergeant saw that it included a delivery address. He handed it to Lieutenant Brace. One of the sergeant’s section members then called out in alarm when he noticed a rifle poking out from the roof of a nearby public house. The troops rushed at the building, forcing the door, then made for the roof, calling on the enemy rifleman they assumed was there to surrender. There was no reply. Carefully moving onto the roof with weapons at the ready, the infantrymen found to their relief that the position was unmanned. Ominously, however, they discovered that the recently departed sniper had enough food to keep him going for several days, a daunting prospect considering the number of buildings yet to be cleared, any of which could conceal a well-supplied sniper.