The Squad (33 page)

‘Across the road I could see all the Squad men and members of the second battalion, standing under the middle arch. Needless to say, I did not recognise them. At the same time, I noticed a big crowd of civilians standing outside the entrance to Brooks Thomas. A major or some high-ranking officer arrived and held a conversation with a few men in civilian clothes. Then I noticed that the crowd started to file past them and go into Brooks Thomas. On observing this, I started to move up, inch by inch, towards the entrance until I came in front of the officer. As I was moving along, I thought I got a strong smell of petrol from my hands. I took a few cigarettes out of my pocket, wet them and rolled them very well into my hands, giving a smell of tobacco.’

Now it was Byrne’s turn to go before the officer.

‘Could I go home now?’ he asked.

‘What are you doing here?’ the officer asked.

‘Sir, I was on my way to Brooks Thomas to buy some timber.’

The officers frisked Byrne and pulled out a carpenter’s rule and a few pieces of paper on which he had jotted different sizes of pieces of timber to bolster his cover as a carpenter. ‘Get the hell out of this,’ he said, returning the ruler and pieces of paper.

‘Thank you, sir.’

Before the operation, many of the Squad had met in the typographical society’s offices in Gardiner Street, and Byrne knew that Tom Keogh had left his bicycle there. ‘Accordingly, that was the first place I made for, in order to get Tom’s bike. I then cycled to O’Connell Bridge and saw all the boys being carried away in military lorries. It was a standing joke ever after – Where are you going, Vincie? Is it for your timber?’

‘The military and police officers, amazed that the fire brigades had not answered the fire calls, despatched a party to investigate,’ reported the
Irish Times
. ‘When they reached Tara Street fire station, they learned that the firemen had been warned by the IRA that they would move at their own peril. Once assured of an auxiliary escort, they promptly manned the engines and rushed to the Custom House, but by then the fire had taken hold and the building was eventually gutted.

That evening Michael Collins wished to see the state of the Custom House for himself. Johnny Dunne and Joe Byrne of the Squad went with him. ‘We walked down from the Engineer’s Hall in Gardiner’s Row and mingled with the people,’ said Byrne. ‘Collins did not say anything but smiled when he saw the place was still burning, and then moved off. We went up Abbey Street, turned into O’Connell Street and to Parnell Street. Immediately on entering Parnell Street, auxiliaries were holding up people and Collins was held up. I heard him abuse the auxiliary.’

‘How dare you!’ Collins said. ‘Do you know who I am? Give me your name and number. I’ll deal with you later.’

‘The auxiliary apologised and Collins went on his way,’ Byrne continued. ‘Apparently the auxiliary was so excited about the incident that he let us by also. We proceeded to Kirwan’s public-house, Parnell Street, and Collins stood us two glasses of malt.’ Dan McDonnell observed that Collins ‘was not too happy about the results.’ There were over a hundred men involved in the operation, and over eighty of them were captured. Paddy O’Daly, Joe Leonard and Vinny Byrne had managed to escape but most of the members of the Squad were arrested.

Seán Doyle and Jim Slattery were seriously wounded. They actually got to talk to one another in the Mater hospital. ‘On the night of the burning of the Custom House,’ Slattery noted, ‘a party of British military and medical men came to the Mater hospital and examined our charts. The nun warned me beforehand to pretend I was asleep if they came. I pretended to be asleep and they looked at the chart.’ Doyle died the following day, while Slattery remained in the hospital for nearly a fortnight.

In reality the attack on the Custom House was a military disaster, but de Valera was interested in its propaganda value. It turned out to be a propaganda success and a political victory, because the British government came under intense international pressure to try to negotiate a settlement.

Collins had a very narrow escape a couple of days later. He should have been in his finance office at 22 Mary Street when it was raided, but he had been delayed and was warned off once the raid was in progress. They raced through the offices first merely counting those present as they went in search of Collins himself. Alice Lyons, his secretary, had put on her hat and coat and promptly walked out of the building as the security forces were combing the building. Later all of the people in the building were interviewed and the officer in charge noted that one person was missing.

‘I distinctly remember meeting a lady in the inner office when we first entered,’ he said. ‘Where is she now?’

‘That must be Mick Collins who escaped disguised as a lady,’ someone suggested in an undertone. Of course, this added to the myths surround the elusiveness of Collins. While his mystique continued to grow, his influence within the IRA was on the wane.

The remaining members of the Squad were amalgamated with the ASU, which became known as the Dublin Guard, under the leadership of O’Daly, but not without some controversy. He spoke to a joint meeting of the remaining members of the Squad, the ASU and the intelligence officers at the Plaza hotel in Upper Gardiner Street.

‘O’Daly addressed all present and stated that he had now been appointed to command the ASU,’ stated Joe McGuinness of the ASU. ‘He said that owing to the very much reduced strength of the ASU on account of arrests and other casualties, it was now proposed to reorganise it and that, from that day on, the Squad, the ASU and intelligence would merge and form one unit under his control.’

The combined strength of the two amalgamated units was 120 men. This was divided into two half companies, with Joe Leonard of the Squad in charge of the half-company covering North Dublin.

Even though the opposition to O’Daly from within the Squad had evaporated following the arrest of Keogh and the other dissidents during the Custom House operation, the transition was still far from smooth. Paddy Flanagan, the head of the Dublin ASU, resigned, as did his adjutant, Mick White, following O’Daly’s appointment. ‘When I took over I told the men that we were having no staff officers,’ he explained. ‘Every officer and non commissioned officer would be a leader in attack. The lieutenants would not alone take orders from me, but they would look for jobs and keep the men employed. Every Tan and military lorry was fair game, but no individual shootings of civilians must take place; no man had the right to say who was a spy. Headquarters were the only people who would give an order for an execution.’

‘An all out effort was being made by those still at liberty to increase the number of attacks, so that the enemy would not be aware of the depletion the Custom House arrests had made in the ranks of the active volunteers in Dublin,’ noted Charlie Dalton. Instead of targeting only specific individuals, members of the former Squad were targeting any enemy personnel. But some individuals remained targets, such as Ormonde Winter, the head of British intelligence operations. On the afternoon of 2 June a small group of IRA men ambushed the RIC car in which Winter was travelling along Thomas Street approaching the junction with James’ Street. A grenade was thrown at the car and several revolver shots were fired, but Winter escaped with just one minor bullet wound.

Plans were also made to attack the British hangman, John Ellis, and his assistant, William Willis, the following week, as they arrived from England to hang Edward Foley and Patrick Maher in Dublin on 7 June. Ellis was the chief British hangman. He had already carried out the executions of Roger Casement and Kevin Barry, along with all seven others already hanged in Dublin during 1921. Even though members of the IRA staked out Kingstown to kill the two hangmen as they arrived, both had already slipped in without being noticed. It was only much later that the IRA learned that Ellis and Willis always arrived some days in advance.

Collins was still director of intelligence, but he had effectively lost control of the Squad, and all of his moles within the police in Dublin had been uncovered. David Neligan did remain undetected. ‘After a while I suggested to the British that it would be better for all the British secret service men to meet some place where we could have a discussion,’ Neligan noted. ‘The meeting took place in the North Dublin Union. About forty or fifty of those fellows turned up there. I got to know several of them and where they were living too.

‘There was to be another Bloody Sunday, but the Truce came along and it saved those fellows,’ he added. Indeed, there was also a plan to kill as many auxiliaries as possible on the streets of Dublin but it too was called off.

Lloyd George had been anxious to negotiate ever since the previous autumn, but his wing of the Liberal Party was only a small minority within the coalition government. The Conservatives actually enjoyed a clear overall majority in both houses of parliament. They could therefore bring down the government at will. While Hamar Greenwood was contending that the security forces were winning, Lloyd George had to wait, if only to strengthen his own negotiating position. The attack on the Custom House seemed to undermine the contention that the security forces were getting the better of the IRA, because in May 1921 the British suffered their heaviest casualties since the Easter Rebellion.

The number of attacks on the security forces in the first six months of 1921 was supposedly down, but the number of casualties was dramatically up. The total casualties for the second half of 1920 were 174 killed and 310 wounded, whereas 317 were killed and 638 wounded in the first half of 1921. In the circumstances it seemed unlikely that the IRA was about to collapse.

There was a noticeable relaxation on the part of British officials. De Valera had been arrested and quickly freed and told to await a communication from the British prime minister. This turned out to be an invitation to London to discuss terms for a peace conference. De Valera demanded a truce first and the terms of a truce were agreed on Saturday to come into effect on the following Tuesday. Brigid Lyons was passing Mountjoy Jail on Sunday when, on impulse, she went up to the door to request permission to see MacEoin. ‘There’s a one outside wanting to see MacEoin,’ he said to someone inside the gate.

‘What do you want to see him for? he asked. ‘Do you have a permit?’

When she replied that she did not, he slammed the wicket. Then she heard the bolt on the door being withdrawn and a well dressed man came out. She did not know him, but later learned he was Sir Alfred Cope, the assistant secretary at Dublin Castle.

‘I am trying to get into to see Commandant MacEoin,’ Brigid said to him, ‘and they won’t let me see him.’

‘That’s too bad,’ he said. ‘Are you a friend?’

When she said she was, he turned to the warder and said, ‘Take the visitor to see Commandant MacEoin.’ She was as surprised at the use of MacEoin’s title as she was at being taken to see him.

The Truce came into effect on 11 July 1921. Collins sent a message to Brigid Lyons that night that he would like to accompany her to see MacEoin on Wednesday afternoon at 2.15. She made arrangements for herself and ‘James Gill’ to visit. The Big Fellow entered the jail as Gill.

‘It was a joy to see Seán MacEoin’s surprise when he saw Mick Collins walk into Mountjoy that day,’ remembered Brigid. ‘Seán just greeted him as a visitor but there was no hiding his inner delight.’

The following day MacEoin wrote to Brigid. ‘I don’t know how to explain to you how grateful I am to you for your visit yesterday. My old heart beat high with joy and all I could do was stare and murmur to myself “Thank God”. I am sure you understand how I felt,’ he wrote.

‘I will be forever grateful to you for that visit,’ he continued. ‘Never were you so welcome and that welcome will always remain so long as I remain.’

There was no doubting the intensity of MacEoin’s appreciation at Collins’ gesture. Later the Big Fellow caused a certain amount of disquiet within Sinn Féin circles by announcing that the dáil would not consider peace terms offered by the British unless Mac Eoin was first released. The British had already announced that all the other members of the dáil would be released, but they were holding on to MacEoin because he had been sentenced to death. Collins had no authority for his pronouncement, but it worked and the British promptly released MacEoin.

Part of the loyalty that Collins attracted was prompted by the sense of caring that he generated. Men believed that he really cared about them as individuals and that he would go to extraordinary lengths to try to rescue them. After the Anglo-Irish Treaty was accepted by the dáil in January 1922, Collins became chairman of the Provisional Government. Some of his subsequent behaviour though raised questions about whether he would ever have been able to adapt from the part of gang leader to a more restrained role in civilian government.

On 21 January 1922 Collins thought he had an understanding with Sir James Craig, the prime minister of Northern Ireland, in accordance with which prisoners would be released. These included ten ‘Monaghan footballers’ who were arrested crossing the border on 14 January. They were supposedly going to play a football game, but were actually planning to spring three prisoners from Derry Jail who were under sentence of death for killing a warder.

When it became apparent that he had overestimated the significance of his understanding with Craig, Collins came up with a plan to kidnap about a hundred Orangemen and hold them as hostages for the three men under sentence of death. General Eoin O’Duffy, who took over as chief-of-staff from Richard Mulcahy when the latter became minister for defence, arranged the overall operation, which was supposedly undertaken by anti-Treaty forces. On 7 February forty-two unionists were kidnapped and held hostage. The whole thing was a reckless act, especially when it was learned that the three men had already had their sentences commuted earlier that day. If the sentences had not been commuted, would Collins have had some of the hostages executed?

He even tried to have the hangman and his assistant killed. Having failed to intercept John Ellis and William Willis on their way to Dublin on previous occasions, Collins sent two men over to England to kill them in their homes.