Unlikely Rebels (16 page)

For narrative purposes I must backtrack a little. While he wooed Grace, Plunkett was deeply involved in the politics of arming the Volunteers for a rebellion still not envisaged by either Roger Casement, an executive of MacNeill's Dublin Brigade of the Irish Volunteers, or its chief officer, MacNeill himself. Both men resented how easy it had been for the Ulster Volunteers to arm to oppose Home Rule, and neither man supported Redmond's solution to entice the granting of Home Rule by expending Irish lives in the trenches. Both did, however, see the need to improve their military strength against unionist aggression, and the Irish Volunteer Executive had sent Casement to Germany to seek help. The philologist and scholar Kuno Mayer disclosed that John Devoy actually cautioned the Germans about Casement, whom he mistrusted undeservedly. In fact, Joseph McGarrity, one of the most important men in Irish-American circles at this time, said it was a separate group – not Devoy's Clan na Gael – who arranged Casement's arms mission. Casement himself sought not only arms but also to create an Irish Brigade from the captured British army POWs who were Irish. The Devoy interference could not have helped his cause, and Casement met with a poor response from both the German diplomats and the POWs.

When it was decided to send Joseph Plunkett to Germany to join Casement, he started to talk of his health requiring another trip abroad. He grew a beard and destroyed various photographs of himself. On his arrival in Berlin, whereas Casement had dealt with politicians and prisoners, Plunkett went to the military authorities and to the German high command. His extraordinary thoroughness was only disclosed in 1991 when papers were acquired by Lieutenant Colonel J. P. Duggan, having lain in German archives since 1915.
[1]
They were described by the late Fr F. X. Martin as ‘nothing short of sensational', and, according to Dr Donal McCartney, ‘They show that it was not a question of a group of poets going out with a harebrained scheme.'
[2]

The documents fall into three categories:

1. a briefing on the Irish Volunteers, 1915
2. a detailed disposition of British forces in Ireland
3. a survey of coastline and maritime counties of Ireland

Dr McCartney agrees with Fr Martin's assessment of their importance: ‘Maybe I expected that there was a military plan all along but I feel that this is not the complete outline. Obviously Joe Plunkett, apparently carrying all the details in his head, could not have spelled them out fully.'
[3]

To ensure the trustworthiness of any recruits from Germany for the Irish Brigade (a low figure of fifty is mentioned), their
bona fides
would be established by the password ‘Aisling' and also by the use of the old circle and sword emblem used on Plunkett's letters to Grace.

However, the strategic sketch unearthed in 1991 by the German archivists is the most impressive component of the find. It is all there, relayed enthusiastically supposedly from memory to the Germans by Plunkett: the British camps, the garrison towns, the troops, the artillery depots, the batteries of guns, the store depots, the number of infantry, the field howitzers, the forts, the RIC placements, the drop in manpower as British troops were deployed to Europe. Plunkett's argument, it is believed, was that the Irish Volunteers needed hands-on help to meet their age-old enemy. He gave, it is alleged, all the above from memory and, also from memory, the number and deployment of the Volunteers. To have memorised and relayed such detail would be impressive but almost essential. Had such documentation been found on his person by a British agent, it would almost certainly have been the end for both the messenger and the message. Nevertheless, a grandson of Geraldine Plunkett, Dr John O'Donnell, has in his possession a hollowed-out walking stick belonging to his great-uncle Joseph Plunkett and it is believed this may well have been the hiding place for the aforesaid details. The only way to determine which story is correct would be to ascertain whose handwriting appears on the papers. Either way, Plunkett had to know facts and figures to argue them.

Unfortunately for Irish hopes, the Germans, at this stage, were faced with heavy battles, including the notorious Somme. However, they did not totally reject the request for help. Plunkett went home to relay their promise of
captured arms only, then went on to America, to give details there of a planned uprising. Back home again, his health deteriorated once more, but that did not prevent his working with Rory O'Connor on munitions and telegraphy, nor his pursuing of romance with Grace. He had also drawn up an operational plan for the Rising and showed it to an enthusiastic Connolly, who worked with him to improve it. Strategic, strong, Dublin buildings, forming a rough ring around the city centre, would be occupied, and the arms promised from Germany would be landed on the Kerry coast and distributed about the country. The stage was set, but the opening performance was to encounter several hitches. The wonder of it was that a military engagement took place at all.

It was, in fact, an order made in code by the Castle authorities,
the Castle Document
, that precipitated the Rising. This proposed not only making sweeping arrests of leading Volunteers and of those with non-militant cultural interests, such as Gaelic Leaguers, but also launching raids for arms, occupying the homes of Volunteer leaders and surrounding some buildings, including the archbishop's palace. A Volunteer undercover man named Smith in Dublin Castle had brought the document to the Volunteers, in stages, as secrecy allowed. Decoded by Plunkett, the translation was printed on a hand press at Larkfield by George Plunkett and Colm Ó Lochlainn.
[4]

The British authorities were anxious to wash their hands of any immediate responsibility for the rebellion, but
the
Castle Document
showed their intention to be the first to strike. When the decoded version was published, the Castle denied its authenticity, causing it to be termed a bogus ploy of the insurgents. Grace left an unequivocal testimony to its veracity: ‘Although it was published in Holy Week, it had come from the Castle some time before that. It did come out from the Castle that is quite certain. I know who brought it … Mr Smith was in the Castle.'
[5]

There was chaos at Liberty Hall and at St Enda's; indeed, there was chaos everywhere. The Dublin Castle authorities proposed to arrest about 100 Volunteers. Pearse's reaction was immediate: it was a case of who would strike the first blow, Castle or Volunteer? It must be the Volunteers. At Liberty Hall, the reasoning was ‘now or never'.

The non-belligerent Chief of Staff of the Volunteers, Eoin MacNeill, whose house was amongst those to be isolated by the British, instructed his men to resist arrest, but only defensively. On hearing a rumour that an armed Volunteer confrontation was planned, however, he stated angrily that the
raison d'être
of his Volunteers was not aggression and agreed to approve mobilisation only on hearing of the awaited German guns which made armed confrontation seem inevitable. The German vessel
Aud
, however, with its cargo of rifles and machine guns, was cornered by the British HMS
Bluebell
on 22 April 1916. Its quick-thinking German captain sank the ship – cargo included.
[6]
Moreover, Roger Casement, who had arrived back in Ireland on a German submarine, had been taken into custody shortly after landing the day before. MacNeill immediately cancelled the mobilisation order.

The Rising was postponed for twenty-four hours, but on Monday, 24 April 1916, north of the Liffey, the GPO and Four Courts were occupied. South of the Liffey it was Bolands Mills, St Stephen's Green (including the Royal College of Surgeons), Jacob's factory and the South Dublin Union, with outposts. Dublin Castle and Trinity College were not occupied: this had been intended until the confusion of the counter-order and the loss of the
Aud.

It was as jumbled an army as you could find. There were in fact two armies: the Citizen Army under Connolly and the Irish Volunteers under Pearse. This division became blurred, however, and eventually they became known as the Irish Republican Army. The Hibernian Rifles also took part, and the fact that Britain continued to call them all Sinn Féiners (who never had an army at all), or Shinners, added to the mixture. There was also a great discrepancy in their training and their gear: Howth rifles, guns, historic pikes (acquired from Professor Donal Ó Buachalla), DMP and RIC batons, automatics, a Russian rifle from the
Aud
, even a Carson rifle from the north of Ireland inscribed ‘For God and Ulster'.

As to dress, some wore the stipulated full uniform; others wore a bandolier as the only available indication of their military status. In between these two extremes various compromises were made to achieve a military look. Mostly those involved had paid for their gear from their own very limited resources.

The participants and sympathisers were equally varied: two knights, Casement and Sir Thomas Myles (who assisted at the Howth gunrunning), a knight's daughter (Louise Gavan Duffy), a countess, two professors, a lecturer, poets, novelists, Éamonn Ceannt (who had played Irish music for Pope Pius X), teachers, an auctioneer, a judge of the circuit court, trade-union leaders, an engineer, an alderman, a surgeon, medical students, a scientist, the head of an old Gaelic clan, printers, actors and actresses from the Abbey, a Protestant woman called Nellie Gifford who used to teach domestic science in rural Ireland, two Swedish sailors on leave who joined in enthusiastically, as well as a mêlée of clerks, carpenters, bricklayers, shop assistants, railwaymen, plumbers, decorators and some unemployed. A veritable conglomeration, but they showed an enthusiasm that soared when they saw the flag symbolising the Irish nation waving above the garrisons they held about the city.

Thomas MacDonagh had bidden a tearful farewell to his wife Muriel. Plunkett sent the gun to Grace at Temple Villas. Emotions ran high as Pearse stood outside the GPO and declared the rebirth of a nation, reading from the statement headed, ‘Poblacht na h-Éireann: The Provisional Government of the Irish Republic to the People of Ireland.' The seven names at the bottom of the statement were Thomas J. Clarke, Seán Mac Diarmada, Thomas MacDonagh, P. H. Pearse, Éamonn Ceannt, James Connolly and Joseph Plunkett.

Notes

There have been many cameos recorded of what went on in Sackville Street (now O'Connell Street) during that historic week, some unforgettable: the dignified Pearse standing outside the GPO on Monday 24 April 1916 declaring the birth of their Republic to mostly disinterested passers-by; the building behind him being prepared for siege with sandbagged windows; those who had been on the premises already made prisoners; Pearse's steady voice calling out the emotive phrases:

In the name of God and of the dead generations … supported by her exiled children in America … We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland … In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom … six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms … we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic … The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty … We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God … no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine.

It has been said that this man's proper milieu is among the church's saints even though his detractors say otherwise. In a tribute, one of his pupils, Alfred Dennis, described Pearse's relationship with his students: ‘They did not tell him lies, because he believed every word they said.'
[1]
General Blackadder, president of the court martial that tried the insurrectionists, observed regretfully, ‘I have had to condemn to death one of the finest characters I have ever come across. I don't wonder that his pupils adored him.'

When biographers undertake a description of Joseph Plunkett's part in the GPO garrison, they seem committed to the inclusion of two matters and little else: his frailty and his jewellery, and that little else is not always accurate. Thomas Coffey mentions his filigree bangle and two antique rings, his emaciation, the surgical bandage around his throat (Plunkett had undergone surgery on his tubercular glands the previous week) and his uncertain step; yet he concedes that the young, post-surgery invalid showed an astonishing flow of nervous energy when the fighting got under way.
[2]
Charles Duff speaks of him tottering about but doing all he could, though he may have been ‘ready to fall at any moment', but Duff admits his signing of the Proclamation and giving the Rising all his
moral
support.
[3]
Ruth Dudley Edwards records the particular contributions of Connolly, Pearse, Clarke and Mac Diarmada. She allots just one sentence to Plunkett: ‘Plunkett was dying of consumption.'
[4]
In Kenneth Griffith and Timothy O'Grady's work,
Curious Journey
, the jewellery has proliferated into ‘an assortment of rings, bracelets and bangles'.
[5]

The illness and a ring and a bracelet were valid observations, but they were looking at a half-full vessel and seeing it half-empty. Quite different are the observations of those who were actually in the GPO. To start with, the Army Council of the Volunteers had replaced Eoin MacNeill with Plunkett as Chief of Staff of the Volunteers. He had already done a man's part in the movement by his theatre work, his journalism, his journeys to the USA and Germany, and his plan of the city's garrisons in his capacity as Director of Operations, as approved by Connolly. Now, despite post-operational fatigue, in that blazing, smoke-filled building, he played his part as leader, as those who were there have recorded. Desmond FitzGerald remembered his cheerfulness and that, despite his fatigue, he reassured, smilingly, those who were concerned for him as they set out initially from Liberty Hall for the GPO.
[6]

In the GPO, when the shelling was at its worst, it is recorded that no one was more assiduous than Plunkett in keeping up morale, and, walking past the men at the windows, he called out when an enemy barricade was on fire. Within that barricaded building, as the fighting progressed, he is reported as redirecting Fergus O'Kelly and his men back to the premises of the Dublin Bread Company, a building strategically important because of its position between Abbey Street and Eden Quay. O'Kelly had received an order from Connolly to evacuate the tower of the building (vulnerable to snipers), and there had been a misunderstanding that the whole of the building was to be evacuated. O'Kelly explained this to Plunkett, who looked up from what he was doing and said, ‘I know. Collect your men and go back.' O'Kelly did so. Then Plunkett sent his younger Volunteer brother, George, across Sackville Street to stop the looting in the shops.
[7]
George, revolver in hand, gave a ‘stop looting or else' ultimatum to the looters. Finally, as the shelling intensified and the possibility of the sandbagged windows catching fire increased, Commandant Plunkett gave orders to douse the sandbags with water.

In between all this, he was writing a sort of war diary. Enough has been preserved to show he was very much au fait with what was going on – not ‘laying down his maps and thinking of Grace'. He has recorded in the diary the taking over of the post office and the reading of the Proclamation, also the repulse of an attack by the Lancers. Obviously dispatches were coming in, and he records the attempt to take Dublin Castle. Entries for Easter Tuesday are on missing pages but, as Director of Operations, Plunkett was also interested in another dispatch relating to the extraordinary success of Commandant Ashe in Garristown in defeating the police, and also the movement of 200 IRA men from Navan to Dublin. Recorded also are the injuries to James Connolly's arm and leg, especially the fractured shinbone. The burning of Linenhall Barracks, in possession of the enemy, is noted, as are the boring through of buildings. There is a copy also of the ‘unconditional surrender' notice sent by Brigadier General Lowe. Other entries refer to practicalities about food, signals and barricades.

Desmond Ryan, who was there, tells us of Plunkett, ‘During the worst stages of the shelling no one was more assiduous in keeping up the spirits of the defenders. He walked past a long line of men at the front windows, smiling.'
[8]
He is there, up to the end, rallying his men as they make a dash from the GPO inferno through a hail of machine-gun fire and rifle bullets: ‘Plunkett orders a van to be dragged across one of the lanes down which the machine-guns rattled, a feeble screen enough but it served its turn while Plunkett stood there shouting: “Don't be afraid … On! On! On!”'
[9]

He was with the Pearse brothers, the wounded Connolly, Clarke and Mac Diarmada in the precarious security of 16 Moore Street when it was decided to hand in their guns. Nurse O'Farrell brought them Brigadier General Lowe's orders for surrender, and Ryan describes Willie Pearse, Plunkett and Seán MacLochlainn heading the surrendered garrison, ‘waving white flags as if they were banners of victory'.
[10]

It is difficult to conceive what inner physical and psychological reserves this young leader called on to carry him through those nightmare days and nights. Back from Germany, illness in Spain and a trip to America, he was supposed to be resting when he returned to Ireland. Instead, he had worked on munitions and on other preparations for the big day. He had meetings with the Military Council at midnight on Holy Saturday, lasting till 2.30 a.m. The next morning at 8 a.m., the Military Council met again. Later that day, Joseph wrote the letter to Grace commiserating with her on her ‘old cold' and declaring that he was ‘keeping as well as anything' but had to go into the nursing home to rest that night – in preparation for the next day. On Easter Monday morning, his aides-de-camp, Michael Collins and Commandant W. J. Brennan-Whitmore, called for him. Clarke and Mac Diarmada were advised to reach the GPO at their own pace, owing to Clarke's general health and Mac Diarmada's polio limp. But Plunkett, the man ‘dying of consumption', marched from Liberty Hall with Pearse and Connolly at the head of the men, some of whom had trained at his family home at Larkfield
.

Apart altogether from the recent vindication of Plunkett by the unearthing of the documents from the German archives, he developed the innovative idea of broadcasting the birth of the Republic to the world by wireless telegraphy. He ordered the closing of the official station at Ventry in County Kerry and the setting up of their own. The disaster of the
Aud
, a vessel which incidentally did not have a radio, put an end to that imaginative idea.

An article on Plunkett by Lieutenant P. B. Brennan features one soldier evaluating another: ‘He followed orders, made his own and thought in broad sweeps … he was prepared to die for his beliefs.'
[11]

On the matter of his choice of garrisons, as director of military operations, the buildings chosen were well spaced out and strong, even the thick-walled stone buildings of the outpost distilleries and Jacob's, a biscuit factory, with towers commanding a panoramic view of the city.

Survivors of the GPO garrison have left several records of the special relationship between Connolly and Plunkett, men from two very different rungs of the social ladder. It has been recorded that some of the garrison, including Winnie Carney, Connolly's redoubtable secretary, at first looked askance at this young director of military operations who wore ‘geegaws', a Dublin flippancy for accessories or jewellery. But Connolly assured her that in military matters none equalled Plunkett. She soon forgot her prejudice because he displayed such virtues of command in that extraordinary siege. He was pragmatic, commanding, decisive and encouraging, even if he did have to rest a little.

To set the antique-ring record straight, on the day Grace was received into the Catholic Church by Fr Sherwin, 7 April 1916, her fiancé presented her with a poem: ‘For Grace on the Morning of her Christening.' One of her gifts to him was an antique emerald ring, a family heirloom, when they became engaged.

Muriel MacDonagh played her quiet part in the drama of Easter week. She had the two children to think of, but her home at Oakley Road, Ranelagh, became a rendezvous for the anxious wives of the rebel commandants. In the early part of the week she is said to have reached the GPO and to have spoken to Plunkett, who gave her a message for Grace. The route to Jacob's, where her husband served, was more inaccessible. Even Brigadier General Lowe had to meet MacDonagh quite a distance from that garrison. When the surrender came, MacDonagh wished that he might see his wife ‘one last time', but when he was asked by Nurse O'Farrell if she would try to get Muriel to come to see him, he looked around dejectedly at the process of evacuation and surrender and said simply, ‘Not like this.'
[12]

Nellie Gifford worked hard at the Royal College of Surgeons garrison, under Commandant Michael Mallin and Countess Markievicz. Her later account of her stewardship there, published in
An Phoblacht
, misprinted her name as ‘Mary Donnelly'.
[13]
Her description shows an innocence of things martial and a certain insouciance from this daughter of a comfortable unionist household who had once more publicly and gladly cast her lot not only with republicans but with the working-class members of the movement.

In an (unpublished) account, Nellie starts off by describing how she had breakfasted on the Easter Monday with Grace, the only sibling left in the Gifford household.
[14]
There were also, as well as her parents, a resident nurse required for Frederick, now bedridden following a stroke, and one resident maid. Fortunately, Isabella did not breakfast with her daughters that morning and so did not see the parting of the girls when Grace ran down the steps and insisted that a reluctant Nellie take, for protection, the small gun Joseph had sent to her through Michael Collins. Nellie was not at all sure, any more than many of the Volunteers, what ‘reporting for manoeuvres' meant, especially in view of the apparent initial shilly-shallying. The Dublin Brigade mobilisation order, for instance, simply instructed that an overcoat, haversack, water bottle and canteen be brought, with rations for eight hours. Arms and ammunition should be carried, and everyone with a cycle or motorcycle should bring it. Those who were to serve under Commandant Éamonn Ceannt in the South Dublin Union got the strongest clue: they were asked to bring, in writing, the name of their next of kin. The first real hint of war that Nellie Gifford received was when she left her home – from a Rathmines neighbour who said there was shooting in the city.
[15]

On reaching St Stephen's Green, Nellie met Margaret Skinnider, a Scot who had aligned herself with the movement and who was later badly wounded. ‘You're late' was her greeting, though indeed punctuality was not an outstanding feature of this insurrection, with men drifting in to their various posts as they heard that the countermanding order of MacNeill had itself been countermanded.
[16]

Nellie found St Stephen's Green occupied by the Citizen Army, with armed men behind the railings, trenches being dug and a tent erected by Countess Markievicz opposite the Royal College of Surgeons. The fine day became a kind of picnic, and Nellie's duties began to take shape: bringing required medicine, providing tea and scones, and carrying dispatches. She asked Andy Dunne to sing a rebel song that Countess Markievicz had written, but he baulked, in case it might seem like gloating and offend a prisoner who had been taken. A laden bread van trundled by, and its contents were commandeered, with a precise receipt for the bread handed to the astonished driver. Somewhere a rebel was ticked off for a breach of duty. ‘Aw give us a chance,' he said, ‘it's me first revolution.'
[17]

Night fell, and things were not so cosy. It turned chilly, and the British had mounted a machine gun at the Shelbourne Hotel, overlooking the Green. Nellie and her mates slept on the hard benches of the summerhouse, normally used to shelter performing bands. It was decided to evacuate the Green on the Tuesday and to occupy the adjacent College of Surgeons, emptied of students for the Easter break. The lone watchman would not open the door to them, so he was warned to step aside while they blasted it in. In twos and threes, as instructed, they made their way from the Green under heavy fire. Once inside, they knelt down and said the rosary. When they settled down for the night, they were glad to be under a roof. The women in the garrison were given pieces of carpet to keep them warm, less lucky than their sister rebels in the Four Courts garrison, who wrapped themselves in the ermine-trimmed robes of the judiciary.