The Men Will Talk to Me (Ernie O'Malley series Kerry): Interviews from Ireland's Fight for Independence

By Cormac O'Malley and Tim Horgan

County Kerry saw many of the most vicious episodes in both the War of Independence and the Civil War. Many Republican survivors of these events were reluctant to speak about their experiences, even to their own family. However, they were willing to talk to Ernie O'Malley, who was the senior surviving Republican military commander from the period of those struggles.
By transcribing O'Malley's notebooks, where he recorded these interviews, Cormac O'Malley and Tim Horgan have made available previously unpublished first-hand accounts of Kerry's role in the fight for independence. The interviews provide an unrivalled insight into this important period of Irish history, including controversial incidents such as the Ballyseedy massacre, the battle at Headford Junction and executions by the Free State forces.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mercier Press
• Release date: Jun 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781781170984

Book preview

THE MEN

WILL TALK

TO ME

KERRY INTERVIEWS

BY ERNIE O’MALLEY

EDITED BY

CORMAC K.H. O’MALLEY AND TIM HORGAN

MERCIER PRESS

Cork

www.mercierpress.ie

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© Original notebooks of Ernie O’Malley, UCD Archives

© Preface: Cormac K. H. O’Malley, 2012

© Introduction: Tim Horgan, 2012

© Footnotes: Cormac K. H. O’Malley and Tim Horgan, 2012

ISBN: 978 1 85635 952 8

ePub ISBN: 978 1 78117 098 4

Mobi ISBN: 978 1 78117 099 1

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Preface

Introduction

North Kerry and Tralee

Dan Flavin

Denis Quille

Con Casey

Mick Fleming

Billy Mullins

Tim Hurley

Tadg Kennedy

May Dálaigh

Bill Bailey

South and West Kerry

Greg Ashe

Tom O’Connor

Bertie Scully

Andy Cooney

Tom McEllistrim

Johnny O’Connor

Jack Keogh

John Joe Rice

Dinny Daly

Chronology of Significant Events in Kerry related in the Interviews (1916–1923)

Index

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Foremost in this endeavour to facilitate public access to the Ernie O’Malley Military Notebook Interviews have been Seamus Helferty, director, and his staff at the University College Dublin Archives, the keepers of the Ernie O’Malley Archives. This publication could not have been started without their support and backing over these past few years. They shared the vision.

The people who have helped unstintingly along the journey to completion of this transcription project have been legion. Special thanks should be given to Eunan O’Halpin at Trinity College Dublin’s Institute for Contemporary History, who facilitated a one-day seminar on this transcription process back in 2009.

In terms of this Kerry volume it could not have been undertaken but for Tim Horgan agreeing to take on the initial burden of transcribing the interviews published here and others not chosen, including two of his own grandparents, Madge Clifford and Jack Comer. A project like this needs local lore and Tim undertook this task tenaciously, professionally and generously.

I could not have undertaken this effort without the emotional support of my wife, Moira, my children, Bergin and Conor, and David Boyle, who have been so supportive on the technical side.

Many thanks should be given to Mary Feehan of Mercier Press, along with her highly supportive staff, for agreeing to publish this volume as the first in a series of books of the interviews.

CORMAC O’MALLEY

We must initially recognise the foresight and endeavour of Ernie O’Malley and the willingness of the veterans of the revolutionary period in Kerry to tell their stories so that we, with the help of many others, can bring to today’s reader the historical background details that we hope will add to the value of the interviews in this volume.

The Ernie O’Malley Notebooks are the most important primary source of information on the 1917 to 1923 period, though access to them has been hampered by his almost indecipherable handwriting. I am deeply grateful to Cormac O’Malley for his ongoing efforts to complete his father’s task of making the content of the interviews available to a wider audience and for the privilege of allowing me to be part of the project.

Many individuals have given freely of their time and knowledge to clarify items in these interviews. I am especially indebted to George Rice for his invaluable information regarding his father, General John Joe Rice, and for sharing his unique knowledge of the Republican struggle in Kerry and its personalities. I am grateful to the daughters, sons and relatives of the interviewees who shared their memories and photographs: Cormac and Declan Casey (Con Casey), Eileen, Caroline and Colm Quinn (Greg Ashe), Áine Meade (May Dálaigh), Jack, Joan and Ann Flavin (Dan Flavin), Breda Keane (Denis Quille), Tim and Patrick Kennedy (Tadg Kennedy), Dervil Fleming Townsend (Mick Fleming), Tadhg, Maureen and Mary Fleming (John Keogh), Liam Scully (Bertie Scully), Maureen O’Keeffe (Tom O’Connor), Kathleen Fitzgerald (Johnny O’Connor), Marie and Ciarán O’Connell (Bill Bailey), and William Mullins (Billy Mullins).

Many others have been most helpful, including Michael O’Hanlon (Charlie O’Hanlon), Pat McKenna, Rita and Michael Bernardi (Miah Grey), Maitias Ó Dubhdha, Eileen Dowling of New York, Stephen Kellaghan, Michael Diggin, Éamon de Búrca, Philip McConway, Michael Rafter, Mairéad Carroll, Seán O’Mahony,John Cronin, Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc and John Houlihan of the National Graves Association. My eternal gratitude to my mother, Eileen (Dodie) Horgan and to my late father, teacher and republican, Declan Horgan, always an inspiration.

Finally, this project would not have been possible without the encouragement, forbearance and assistance of my wife, Ruth, and children Ciara, Meadhbh, Declan and Tadhg.

Tim Horgan

ABBREVIATIONS

PREFACE

INTRODUCING THE ERNIE O’MALLEY MILITARY INTERVIEWS

CORMAC K.H. O’MALLEY

Though born in Castlebar, Co. Mayo, in 1897, Ernie O’Malley moved to Dublin with his family in 1906 and attended CBS secondary school and university there. After the 1916 Rising he joined the Irish Volunteers while pursuing his medical studies, but in late 1917 he left home and went on the run. He rose through the ranks of the Volunteers and later the Irish Republican Army, and by the time of the Truce in July 1921 at the end of the War of Independence, or Tan War as it was known, he was commandant-general commanding the 2nd Southern Division, covering parts of four counties, with 7,000 men under him.

O’Malley was suspicious of a compromise being made during the peace negotiations resulting in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921 and reacted strongly against the Treaty when it was announced. As a split developed in the senior ranks of the IRA in early 1922, he was appointed director of organisation for the anti-Treaty Republicans, who then took over the Four Courts in April. When the Four Courts garrison surrendered in June, he managed to escape. He was then appointed acting assistant chief of staff and officer commanding the Northern and Eastern Divisions, or half of Ireland. In early November he was captured in a dramatic shoot-out and was severely wounded. Ironically his wounds probably saved his life, as otherwise he would probably have been court-martialled and executed. While in Mountjoy Gaol in 1923, O’Malley was elected as a TD and later, despite his poor health, he went on a forty-one day hunger strike. Nevertheless, he survived – a matter of mind over body!

Having been released from prison in July 1924, and still in poor health, O’Malley went abroad to the south of Europe to help recover his health. He later returned to his medical studies in 1926 but in 1928 headed for the United States. While there, he began to write his much acclaimed autobiographical memoir, On Another Man’s Wound, published in 1936 after he returned to Dublin. He had spent seven years writing that book, which he meant to be more of a generic story of the Irish struggle than of his own activities. It was deemed to be a literary success and added to his reputation among many of his former comrades.

O’Malley’s memoir on the Civil War was not ready for publication, requiring more work, and over the next twenty years he sought to become more familiar with the Civil War period as a whole. What started out in the late 1930s as an effort to supplement his own lack of knowledge, had developed by 1948 into a full-blown enterprise to record the voices, mostly Republican, of the survivors of the 1916–1923 struggle for independence. He interviewed more than 450 survivors across a broad spectrum of people all by himself, covering the Tan War and the Civil War – all this at a time when the government was establishing the Bureau of Military History to record statements made by participants of the fight for freedom.

In the course of his interviews O’Malley collected a vast amount of local lore around Ireland. He wrote a series of articles for The Kerryman, but withdrew them. Instead he used the articles for a series of lectures on Radio Éireann in 1953. Subsequently the lectures were published in a series called Raids and Rallies in The Sunday Press in 1955–56. Meanwhile he used the interviews to add to his own Civil War memoir, The Singing Flame, published posthumously in 1978, and to write a biographical memoir of Longford Republican organiser, Seán Connolly, entitled Rising out: Seán Connolly of Longford, 1890–1921, also published posthumously, in 2007.

O’Malley was familiar with the field of folklore and was well read in Irish and international folklore traditions, and indeed in the early 1940s had collected folklore stories from around his home area in Clew Bay, Co. Mayo. In the course of these interviews he also picked up ballads and stories about the 1916–1923 period. His method for both series of interviews was to write rapidly in a first series of notebooks as his informant was speaking and then to rewrite those notes into a second series of more coherent notebooks. Occasionally he would include drawings of the site of an ambush or an attack on a barracks. In the rewrite process he added in his own comments in parentheses. Given his overall knowledge of the period based on his own Tan War activities and his Civil War responsibilities, he usually commanded a high regard from his informants. He felt that his former comrades would talk to him and tell him the truth.

From an examination of his interviews, O’Malley does not appear to have used a consistent technique, but rather he allowed his informant to ramble and cover many topics. In his rewrite of an interview he often labelled sections such as Tan War, Truce, Civil War, Gaols, Treatment of Prisoners, RIC, IRB, Spies, Round-ups and the like. The tone is conversational, allowing the narrative to unfold. He wrote down the names of people and places phonetically rather than accurately. The interviews are fresh and frank, and many of their stories may never have been told even to their children as these men did not speak openly about those times. Dr Tim Horgan, my co-editor in this book, says that he could hear the voice of his grandmother, Madge Clifford (Comer) of Tralee, speak through the interview, because O’Malley had captured her intonations and phrasing so clearly about matters never discussed before.

This book focuses on eighteen O’Malley interviews that give the broadest coverage to the many activities in far-flung corners of Kerry. Though most of these men rejected the Treaty, not all did, but the interviews reflect the dominance of Republican opinion among the Volunteers in Kerry. However, they also include two men who took the pro-Treaty side and one who remained neutral.

In transcribing O’Malley’s second series of interviews some modest changes have been made to help the reader better understand the interview. To enable reference to O’Malley’s original pagination, his pages are referred to in bold brackets, such as [59L], the L or R representing the left or right side of his original page. Unclear words have been put in italics indicating our best attempt to decipher them. The sequence of some interviews has been changed to better reflect the historical chronology, but the original pagination has been retained. Abbreviations have been standardised. Extensive footnotes provide a better understanding of the people, places and incidents involved, and some are repeated in a subsequent chapter to allow each chapter to be read as a complete story. The text has been revised to include the correct spellings for names and places, and the original spellings, usually written phonetically by O’Malley, have been included in the footnotes. O’Malley regularly inserted his own comments, queries and notes, and these are recorded in the text inside parentheses. Our editorial comments have been added in square brackets. O’Malley also inserted headings and subheadings into the text to clarify what each interviewee was talking about.

Each interview has been reproduced here in full. This means that certain parts of the text are difficult to read. O’Malley left many blank spaces where he was missing information and these are represented by ellipses in this text, but this often means that the sentence makes little or no sense. The style of local phrasing used in the interviews has been retained, some of which is no longer in common usage and may read strangely to the modern reader. In many instances names and facts have been added in a seemingly random manner to the text and their relevance to the discussion can be difficult to ascertain. However, we felt it was important to maintain the integrity of the original text, so these problems have been left unedited.

We have relied on the integrity of O’Malley’s knowledge of facts and ability to question and ascertain the ‘truth’, but clearly it is possible that the details as related here to O’Malley reflect only the perceptions of the individual informant rather than the absolute historical truth.

Ernie O’Malley (right) with his son Cormac at the Galway races in 1954. (Courtesy Irish Press)

INTRODUCTION

MEMORIES LIVE IN THE COUNTY OF KERRY

TIM HORGAN

The spirit of independence from central control has always been highly regarded in the Kingdom of Kerry. Back in 1583 in the hills above Ballymacelligott, Tralee, after four years of warfare, the great Earl of Desmond was captured and executed. Kerry was finally conquered by the English crown. Its broken people retreated to the bogs and mountain glens, taking with them their faith, the remnants of their culture and an independence of mind that would see them withstand the centuries of oppression that would follow. In the mid-nineteenth century, the children of a starving nation sought refuge in America and from there the winds of freedom in the form of the Fenian Brotherhood rekindled the faint embers of liberty that still remained in the hearts of a once proud people. James Stephens and his fellow Fenian organisers found ready and willing recruits in the county as they spread the message of insurrection. The Irish Republican Brotherhood became especially organised in Kenmare, Killarney and the south of the county. In 1867 the Fenians of Cahersiveen rose in a short and ill-fated armed revolt against the crown. Though quickly suppressed by the forces of the Empire and its Irish allies, the flame of freedom was not quenched by force of alien arms or condemnations from pulpits and politicians.

A generation later, during the Land War in the 1880s, young men from around Castleisland, Firies and Ballymacelligott would organise and arm themselves and roam the countryside to right the wrongs inflicted on their enslaved people. Again, the Empire would use its might to suppress these Moonlighters. Executions, imprisonment and banishment would prove to be insufficient to pacify the disaffected and in the early years of the twentieth century a proud people would find a renewed interest in their culture and history.

In 1913, shortly after the founding of the Irish Volunteers in Dublin, branches were founded in parishes and towns throughout Kerry. Leaders were elected and Austin Stack of Tralee became head of the Kerry Irish Volunteers. The seeds of rebellion were once again being sown when the Great War intervened. Following the call of John Redmond to the Volunteers to join England’s army, the majority of the Volunteers in Ireland joined his National Volunteers, but in Kerry the Irish Volunteers remained loyal to the Irish Republican Brotherhood and its council’s determination to strike for freedom. On Good Friday 1916, the attempt to land arms for the Rising at Fenit failed and Roger Casement was captured at Banna Strand. The first casualties of the Rising died at Ballykissane Pier in the chaos of that weekend, but the rebels at Valentia Cable Station informed the world on Easter Monday 1916 that the Rising had begun.

Following the arrest of Stack, and hampered by the necessary but excessive secrecy, the Kerry Volunteers were in disarray. Robert Monteith, who had landed with Casement, was given command of the mustered Volunteers and, having assessed the situation, he ordered the men to return to their parishes and prepare for another day. It was left to Jim Riordan in Firies to fire the only shots in Kerry in 1916. Executions and widespread arrests failed to intimidate those whom England could not purchase.

The Volunteer movement in Kerry had reorganised into a single brigade in 1917 and in April 1918 the Volunteers of Ballymacelligott attacked Gortatlea RIC barracks, the first such attack in Ireland following the Rising and long before Soloheadbeg in 1919. Further recruitment and reorganisation allowed the formation of three brigades in the county in 1919, dividing it into North, South and South-West Commands, and in each brigade were battalions and companies. Volunteer attacks on the crown forces escalated and at the beginning of 1921 a younger, more militant group of Volunteers gained command of the fighting men. Brigade flying columns were formed and the IRA, as the Irish Volunteers were called after 1919, gained in confidence and experience, inflicting large numbers of casualties on the crown forces.

Following the Truce in July 1921, with few exceptions, the officers and men of the three Kerry brigades rejected the Anglo-Irish Treaty. After the Free State army’s attack on the Four Courts in late June 1922 at the start of the Civil War, these men again took up arms in defence of their Republic. In a campaign marked by brutality, summary executions and massacres, the Civil War dragged on bitterly for ten months. By the time of Frank Aiken’s dump arms order in May 1923, Republican forces in North Kerry had been driven underground. In South Kerry they remained largely intact while fighting a guerrilla war with the invading Free State army which had reached a bloody stalemate.

Ultimately the defence of the Republic failed. The defeated Republicans were precluded from employment under the new Free State administration and many disillusioned men were forced to emigrate, largely to America. Those that remained regrouped into various factions. Most followed de Valera and his Fianna Fáil party into the constitutional politics of a twenty-six county state in 1927, while others remained resolute in their commitment to the Republics of 1916 and 1919 and, in the words of Liam Lynch, would ‘serve under no other law’.

In 1932 de Valera became Taoiseach. Pensions were offered to those who fought in the Tan War and medals given to those who would accept them. Some old soldiers refused these pensions even in their economic hardship, citing that the ideal for which they fought had not been realised and that to receive a monetary benefit would sully their sacrifices; still, most accepted. In the 1940s de Valera turned on his former Republican allies, including some of those whose interviews are included here, and during the Emergency hundreds were interned in the Curragh Camp, which had housed such men in the Tan and Civil Wars, including a large number of Kerrymen. IRA chief of staff, Charlie Kerins of Tralee and Maurice O’Neill of Cahersiveen were executed for their Republican activities.

By the 1940s the young men of the Tan War had settled into lives as politicians or as exiles in foreign lands, as farmers, teachers and shopkeepers. They told their stories in whispers to each other, away from the ears of the next generation. These young soldiers were becoming old men and memories would fade or stories would be taken to the grave. Counselled that these men would not talk, as many had not done so for the government’s official Bureau of Military History, Ernie O’Malley, who was recognised as a Republican military leader, replied that the men would tell him the truth – and the men did talk to him. The interviews are their stories, faithfully recorded, allowing future generations to know, without the dilutions of time or the censuring by current political opinions, the ideals, deeds and sacrifices of that remarkable generation. Perhaps long after roadside crosses have fallen and inscriptions on gravestones have weathered, it is these words that will be the lasting testament to these true patriots who fought and suffered in the defence of the ideals of the Republic proclaimed at Easter 1916.

In 1919 the original single Kerry Brigade was divided into three brigades. The Kerry No. 1 and No. 2 Brigades were composed of battalions, each of which was numbered and was composed of several companies. The Kerry No. 3 Brigade had no battalions, only companies. In the spring and summer of 1921 the brigade boundaries were redrawn and the battalions were renumbered and these changes are indicated in the map using brackets.

The principal locations and dates of events in Kerry in the 1916–1923 period.

NORTH KERRY AND TRALEE

DAN FLAVIN

(UCDA P17b/102, pages 94–97)

Daniel J. Flavin (1867–1955) was born in the United States but his family returned to Listowel when he was a boy. At the age of nine, following an injury, he had a leg amputated. The family had a grocer’s shop in Church Street, Listowel, which he inherited and expanded into a bookstore. Although his brother, Michael, was an anti-Parnellite Irish Parliamentary Party MP for North Kerry, Flavin became involved in Republican politics. He was elected a Sinn Féin member of Listowel Urban District Council in 1918. In April 1919 he was jailed for three months for having seditious material on his premises. Flavin was a judge in the Dáil Court in the town and represented the Listowel area in the Kerry County Council. In 1921 his shop was burned by the crown forces. He rejected the Treaty and was imprisoned during the Civil War. Following the cessation of hostilities, he returned to his bookshop and did not become actively engaged in politics. A lover of literature, his bookshop became a cornerstone of the literary tradition of Listowel.

This interview took place in Listowel in September 1949.

[Civil War:] [94R] Reginald Hathaway was his name.¹ He came to Ireland in 1918 and he was told we were savages. He was in Tralee for a while before he came out [on] the street. Then he got more friendly and he became more and more surprised as he began to meet people. He left Ballymullen Barracks, Tralee, and he joined the boys who had a flying column in Causeway. He had no gun and he was on the lookout for a gun. Fr George O’Callaghan told the people that this young Englishman might be a spy and to be careful of him. He said his rosary decade every night. He asked to be received into the church; and the lad said he would receive him into the church but he wanted a £10 note.

He joined the F/S Army as Hathaway. He got a gun, walked out to the lads and handed it up. We were in Tralee on the 10th of February 1923. ‘Free’ Murphy was in charge of Kerry …² He sent a note to me enclosing a request to the County Council to hold a special meeting so that they could issue a Republican Manifesto. In Scartaglin the meeting was to be held. I signed the necessary requisition, and another man also signed it. I was called upon to attend a County Council meeting on 10 February 1923. T.D. O’Sullivan, my comrade, was to go with me, and his wife wouldn’t let him go, so I went myself. There was a rumour in Listowel that there was to be an armistice and a [94L] downing of arms. I went back to Listowel to tell O’Sullivan and he came on then. We went to Knocknagoshel, and we were billeted in the Post Office. We went to bed after a good night for we drank a good deal of whiskey. The next morning, the bell tolled in the chapel. The priest came up to see us. ‘What do you come for?’ he said.

We were driven to Scartaglin, when we heard thunder. It was firing for the Free State had surrounded the area. I was held up by our column men. The thunder was coming nearer as we waited for the meeting, the summer thunder.

‘Line up,’ said a Free State soldier, ‘Colonel Neligan is coming.’³

‘You’re a nice boy,’ he said to me. ‘You said some hard things about Arthur Griffith.’ There had been a special meeting of the Urban Council to express sympathy [95R] with the death of Arthur Griffith, but I said, ‘His living was calamitous for his country.’ That was what Neligan was referring to, for Dave was my neighbour and I knew his father.⁴ We were brought to Castleisland for the secretariat department of the County Council and the engineering department had been captured. The Free State were very cross (for Gearóid Slattery had been shot in Scartaglin) in Castleisland.⁵ Then they marched us to Ballymullen and we were examined by young officers for attending an illegal meeting. ‘Sign this,’ said one of them, giving me a form to sign that I would not take up arms.

‘I demand my right as a civilian,’ I said, ‘and I demand my release.’

The others all signed.

A man came up. ‘I’m offering my services,’ he said. ‘My brother has been killed and I’m offering my services, and I’ll have a life for a life.’

‘I’m going to have 15 lives,’ said a soldier who had a Webley in his hand, ‘and I’ll have 15 lives.’

‘Why, did you know him?’

‘I was his chum,’ said the fellow with the Webley to the dead boy’s brother.

Hathaway was amongst the prisoners upstairs. There were 8 prisoners in this room. I noticed his Cockney accent and I asked one of our lads who was that. We used to have a game of solo every night. The spies were on them, for he and six other men and the son of the house were arrested and they were [95L] brought into Tralee Gaol at Christmas.

In January 1923, Paddy Daly issued a proclamation that he would take 4 men from each part, if Humphrey Murphy didn’t stop fighting, and he would shoot them; and H. Murphy issued another proclamation, that if Daly shot the 4, he would pick out the most prominent members of Tralee … and he would shoot them.⁶

Daly executed 4 in January, including Hanlon, son of the man of the house in which Hathaway was arrested and Hathaway took that execution badly.⁷ The Causeway district was getting tired and the people wanted to get the IRA to stop the fighting. An intermediary came in to Paddy Daly, who said that if they sent in 14 rifles, the Free State [96R] troops would be withdrawn. Pierce, the commandant, also said, ‘You must release our six men.’⁸ The rifles were brought in.

Daly and Neligan were there that day. He said to the prisoners, ‘South Kerry people are very innocent and very soft. You have a great regard for Humphrey Murphy, but he allowed me to land 390 men at Fenit. We are the real Republicans and we’ll have a complete separation, for we haven’t an organised army yet.’

Hathaway organised an attack. They ambushed Free State soldiers and they took refuge in a cave.⁹

He kept these fellows live all right (when they were caught) with quips and jokes, he kept their courage up. He was the son of a Swede, but outside he was always on the defensive for he was a double deserter from the British and from the Free State. The Free State men were to send a protest to the bishop against Fr George O’Callaghan. The F/S sent for their own chaplain who refused to allow him join the Catholic Church.

At the end of February, the clerk of the adjutant came in to us, for Daly sent down word to know what steps prisoners were going to take in connection with the Limerick precedent, for prisoners there had signed a demand for surrender. The clerk said, ‘And at 10 tonight, General Daly wants a definite answer.’

[96L] We said, ‘We would confirm the Limerick resolution which had called for a general amnesty and a dumping of arms.’

‘That’s not what General Daly wants,’ was the reply. ‘He wants you to follow in Deasy’s footsteps.’¹⁰

He picked out 16 men in that room and from these he was to select other men for execution. He went to the 16 then and he said the men in the gaol are signing the Deasy proclamation and if they wanted to save their lives, they had better sign it and they did.

72 out of 100 signed it. Mick Walsh, our commandant, was not much good. Six men put their backs to the wall and the Swede’s son was with them. They wouldn’t sign. [97R] I think the Englishman was at the head of this. ‘We can never disgrace the young lad from Ballyduff who was executed,’ he said.¹¹

I was in a circular room. Galvin was called out. They took out seven men that night and ours was a corridor room through which they would have to pass. We got a terrible fright as the men passed out for you didn’t know who would be next and we knew what would happen to them. After an hour, a man stumbled into the room. The rest of the 7 came back in a desperate state. ‘For God’s sake,’ we said, ‘get the sentry to call the medical orderly to bandage up the men,’ for 2 of them had had their arms broken.

Neligan never killed a man, I am told.¹² Next morning, 4 of them were carried to hospital. Their shirts were stuck to them with their own blood. Two curates came up when we were lined up in two ranks. Beehan, the Free State governor, and he knelt down trying to get their shirts off; and the two priests stood away off.¹³ When I said what I thought of them and the officers, one said, ‘Speak low, or the officer might hear you.’ Neither of them went to the hospital to see the badly injured men.

[97L] The F/S soldiers would throw a bandolier of ammunition in the fire when only they and the prisoners were in the room.

There was a rumour, which was deliberately circulated, that the Englishman had been responsible for the capture of the other men in the cave.

Fr Ferris, the chaplain, never came in to the prisoners. Fr Hugh Kane from Knocknagoshel was a good man to comfort prisoners. He was a prison chaplain, a real man.¹⁴

Tadg Brosnan came in.¹⁵ Mick Walsh, our O/C, used to pick out the men for work. They were not supposed to volunteer for work.

The Castlegregory men were very good-natured gentlemen. Dowling from there, his cap on his pole, was a good-natured gentleman.¹⁶

Footnotes

1Reginald Hathaway, who also used the surname Stennings (as was used in original text) and the alias Walter Stephens, was from Slough, Buckinghamshire, England. He served with the East Lancashire Regiment during the Tan War but deserted and joined the IRA in the North Kerry area. During the Civil War, he initially joined the Free State army but deserted, with his weapons, to the IRA. He and others, including James Hanlon, were captured at Hanlon’s father’s house. Hanlon was executed on 20 January 1923. Hathaway was freed when column leader Michael Pierce surrendered on 22 February 1923 and signed an undertaking not to take up arms again. Hathaway had originally been associated with Pierce’s column and so was included in the agreement. Angered at the execution of Hanlon and the suggestion by the Free State army that he was an informer, he again took up arms. He was finally captured at Clashmealcon Caves and singled out for particularly brutal treatment and was executed on 25 April in Tralee Gaol. He was affectionately known as ‘Rudge’.

2Humphrey ‘Free’ Murphy was O/C Kerry No. 1 Brigade during the Civil War.

3The sequence is unclear here, but is seems as if Flavin and his men were captured after being ‘held up’ by their own column men. Colonel David Neligan (not Nelligan as in original text) was intelligence officer, Kerry Command, Free State army.

4Neligan was born in Templeglantine in West Limerick.

5Lieutenant Thomas Slattery of Kerry Command, Free State army, was killed in action at Scartaglin on 11 February 1923.

6On 20 December 1920, Con Casey, Matthew Moroney, Dermot O’Connor of Tralee and Tom Devane of Dingle were sentenced to death by Military Court in Ballymullen Barracks. Humphrey Murphy issued a proclamation which named eight prominent pro-Treaty civilians who would be killed in the event of the four Republicans being executed. The death sentences were not carried out by the Free State army.

7On Saturday 20 January 1923, James Hanlon, Jack Clifford, James Daly and Michael Brosnan were executed by firing squad in Tralee Gaol.

8Michael Pierce surrendered on 22 February 1923 and on signing the form pledging not to take up arms against the Free State, he and his men were freed, including Hathaway.

9A column under Tim ‘Aeroplane’ Lyons attacked Free Staters in Ballyheigue in early 1923. Following this attack members of the column took refuge in the Clashmealcon Caves where they were besieged on 16 April. After three days and the deaths of Tom McGrath, Patrick O’Shea and Tim Lyons on the Republican side and Lt Pierson and Private O’Neill on the Free State side, the three remaining IRA Volunteers surrendered. These men, Rudge Hathaway, Edward Greaney and Jim McEnery, were subsequently executed on 25 April in Tralee Gaol.

10Following his capture on 19 January 1923, Liam Deasy, O/C 1st Southern Division, IRA, was sentenced to death. The sentence was deferred while Deasy sought to bring about a Republican surrender. On 29 January 1923 he signed a statement calling for an unconditional surrender that was widely circulated by the Free State army but was rejected by the senior IRA leaders. Having been shown Liam Deasy’s appeal for an unconditional surrender of 29 January, the Republican prisoners in Limerick Gaol issued a statement in early February appealing to the IRA leadership for a cessation of hostilities. Prisoners in Cork and Clonmel issued similar statements.

11Flavin is probably referring to James Hanlon from between Ballyduff and Causeway, who was executed on 4 January and in whose father’s house and with whom Hathaway was captured. The events to entice prisoners to call for surrender occurred in early February. Hathaway was released anyway in late February following Michael Pierce’s agreement with Paddy Daly, but he went on to resume active service.

12Flavin’s comment on Neligan could have had a tinge of sarcasm. There are references in these interviews to suggest that Neligan was directly and indirectly responsible for the killing of Republican prisoners.

13Beehan may be Fr William Behan who, like Fr William Ferris, was a curate in Tralee.

14Fr William Ferris was curate in Tralee and chaplain to the Free State army in the town. Though his sympathies were strongly nationalist during the Tan War, he showed great antipathy to the Republicans during the Civil War. Fr Hugh Kane was incorrectly spelt Keane in the original text.

15Tadg Brosnan from Castlegregory was O/C 2nd Battalion, Kerry No. 1 Brigade. He was captured late in the Civil War. He and Johnny (O’) Connor led a campaign of disobedience by Republican prisoners in Ballymullen Barracks, reversing the policy of the O/C Prisoners, Mick Walsh.

16Jeremiah Dowling (not Doolane as in original text),