Tom Barry (11 page)

During the Kilmichael Ambush, was there a false surrender or not?

Peter Hart published a book in 1998,
The IRA & Its Enemies,
and concluded that, ‘British information seems to have been remarkably accurate. Barry's “history” of Kilmichael, on the other hand, is riddled with lies and evasions. There was no false surrender as he described it. The surviving Auxiliaries were simply “exterminated”.'
[1]
Peter Hart, as part of his evidence, uses a ‘Rebel Commandant's report' from Sir Peter Strickland's papers. This report purports to have been written by Tom Barry after the ambush. It is contained in typescript with other typed documents and also in booklet form compiled by ‘General Staff of the 6th Divisional Area'. There is no mention of a false surrender in this report.
[2]
Peter Hart further cites the omission of the false surrender in an article by Tom Barry in the
Irish Press,
26 November 1932, as being ‘a direct contradiction, in substance and tone, of what he wrote in 1949'.
[3]
In a television documentary Hart draws attention to the non-mention of a false surrender and questions Barry's ‘lies and evasions'.
[4]

In Barry's later writings and broadcasts he did not fail to mention the false surrender and stressed that the order to kill the enemy, for their deceptive tactics in this military engagement, was his and his alone. He never evaded responsibility for the final actions of the ambush.
[5]

He told Kenneth Griffith that ‘having seen the false surrender I told the men to keep firing and we did until the last of them was dead. I blame myself of course for our own losses, because I should have seen through the false surrender trick. It is as old as war itself. It was in the Boer War in South Africa'.
[6]
In an RTÉ/TV interview in 1966 at the Kilmichael ambush site Barry gave details of the ambush. Having spoken of the false surrender and his order to continue firing, he said, ‘I want here and now publicly to take full responsibility that we wouldn't take prisoners after their false surrender and after killing two of our men'.
[7]
Furthermore, in a lecture to history students in University College, Galway, he outlined the ambushes, describing his own position as ‘The Commander'. He mentioned the false surrender, and said that three of the men stood up. ‘They were green and weren't properly advised by their commander'.
[8]

But, if there was no false surrender, ‘if there was no trick, the Auxiliaries were gunned down “for no reason”,' and Barry's account is ‘riddled with lies and evasions', then according to Kevin Myers in an
Irish Times
piece on Peter Hart's book, ‘Tom Barry systematically slaughtered disarmed RIC Auxiliaries after they had surrendered. Barry's story that they had resumed firing under a false flag of surrender is a fiction concocted by Barry himself.'
[9]

On 2 December 1920,
The Times
published ‘an official report' issued by ‘a senior officer of police in the Cork neighbourhood':

District Inspector Crake took out a patrol ... in search of a man ... When dusk was falling about 5 p.m. ... It is surmised from an examination of the site and from inquiries that the attackers, who were all clad in khaki and trench coats, and wore steel helmets, had drawn their motor lorry across the road and were mistaken by the first car of cadets for military … Something had aroused the suspicion of the cadets who had got out of the first car. Shooting began and three were killed instantaneously ... The cadets in the second car ran along the road to the help of their comrades. Then from a depression in the hillside behind the second car came a devastating fire at close range. The cadets were shot down by concealed men from the stone walls, and all around a direct fire from the ambushers' lorry also swept down the road. After firing had continued for some time, and many men were wounded, overwhelming forces of the ambushers came out and forcibly disarmed the survivors.

There followed a brutal massacre, the policy of the murder gang … The dead and wounded were hacked about the head with axes, shot guns were fired into their bodies, and they were savagely mutilated. The one survivor, who was wounded, was hit about the head and left for dead ... The ambushing party departed in lorries ... Cadet C. J. Guthrie … is missing.'
[10]

The foregoing ‘official report' written just after the ambush differs from an official typewritten report later compiled by the general staff of the 6th Division under General Sir Peter Strickland. The typewritten report states:

As the Auxiliaries approached, they were confronted by a man in British soldier's uniform, and wearing a steel helmet. He stated he was a soldier that his lorry had broken down ... the alleged troops, many of whom were dressed as British soldiers and wore steel helmets. A fierce fire was at once opened on them [Auxiliaries] ... the overwhelming forces of the assassins came out of hiding and disarmed the survivors, and the most brutal massacre of the whole rebellion followed ... they were indiscriminately hacked with axes and bayonets.
[11]

In the initial report the lorry ‘drawn' across the road brought the patrol to a halt. In the second, ‘the soldier' spoke to them because he was in trouble. But, in neither of the military reports is there a mention of a surrender. Nor is there a mention of it in the report by British propagandist, Major C. J. C. Street (intelligence officer).
[12]
In each case it is an outright fight until all are dead, or appeared dead!

It is difficult to agree with Peter Hart that much of the British ‘information' has been ‘remarkably accurate'.
[13]
He says, ‘some of them [Volunteers] were wearing steel helmets.'
[14]
I have failed to find any reliable evidence to support the British reports. They did not have any lorry transport to barricade the road, to carry axes or to depart. Nor is there any other evidence that the Auxiliaries ‘unsuspecting' got ‘out' of their own transport to ‘approach the motor lorry'.
[15]
Barry, having thrown a Mills bomb, made sure they would stop.

When the second lorry came round the bend into No. 2 section's firing range, the driver halted, jumped out and escaped. No. 2 section opened fire. They were stretched behind rocks, close above their targets.
[16]

Peter Hart stated that ‘Jim O'Sullivan and Michael McCarthy, were hit in the head and killed where they lay.' In a footnote he wrote: ‘All of the men interviewed agree on this point: McCarthy and O'Sullivan did not stand up and did not die because of a fake surrender. Two of these veterans considered Barry's account to be an insult to the memory of these men.'
[17]

Dan Hourihane, who was beside Jim O'Sullivan told me, ‘I'll never forget it – same as 'twas only yesterday. After they shouted that surrender, it was silence! Jim lifted himself. Thought it was over. God rest his soul!' He paused for a silent memory. (Dan was captured afterwards while ‘on the run'. He was imprisoned in Spike Island, and was severely beaten several times. His fingernails and toenails were pulled out, part of the index finger of his left hand was snapped off.)
[18]

Michael McCarthy was beside Jack Hennessy. Hennessy claimed he ‘almost' got up around the same time as McCarthy when ‘the Auxies shouted'. He thought ‘it was all over' but ducked, and was wounded in the scalp. Hennessy and Hourihane went over this many times, and often wondered if there was something they could have done. ‘McCarthy had got a bullet through the head and lay dead. I continued to load and fire, but the blood dripped from my forehead and blocked the breach of my rifle. I dropped the rifle and took up McCarthy's.'
[19]

Peter Hart gives an account of an interview he conducted with AF, a scout:

One I.R.A. man came upon a wounded Auxiliary ‘crying after me', and told Barry. He said, ‘finish him', placed his revolver to the man's head and pulled the trigger
[footnote inserted here]
. ‘Barry made us', said another. ‘He shot one, then we shot one.' Eventually each man was shot in the head. Some of the Volunteers apparently refused to take part and several ‘were getting hysterical' from the shock of so much death on both sides.

This interview is puzzling. (It's unclear as to whether AF engaged in some shooting, yet as a scout, he would have been unarmed and positioned at a distance from the ambush site.) In a footnote he wrote that the ‘quotations are from the interview with AF'. A previous footnote states:

One witness (AF – a scout [19 November, 1989] rather than a rifleman, and therefore further away from the ambush site than the other interviewees) saw several Auxiliaries surrender
after
the three Volunteers were hit, but then heard further firing, some of which he believed came from the Englishmen. Because of this, he says there was a sort of false surrender, but that no I.R.A. men died as a result.
[20]

According to records available, the last of the three unarmed scouts Dan O'Driscoll died in 1967. Scouts were not ‘small fry' as described by Peter Hart.
[21]
A scout's job during an ambush was onerous – mainly to alert the men to the arrival of any enemy help. Tom O'Neill (referring to scouts in another context) wrote, ‘it was often even harder and more dangerous for them than the men who had to go into action.' Barry wrote that ‘no one worried if he fought as a rifle-man, a section commander, or in any other rank during an action with the enemy … to them nothing mattered but the pursuit of the movement for freedom.'
[22]
The three scouts and two dispatch scouts
[all unarmed]
at Kilmichael were too far away from the ambuscade to know if, or when, a Volunteer stood up, was injured or killed during the ambush. One scout at the nortern side was over 200 yards away, signalling to the second scout. The third scout was south of the command post – at the other side of the ambuscade. While audibility could be possible at this distance in the existing terrain, visibility (by scouts) of detailed military action would be most unlikely. Furthermore, the scouts had to remain in their positions until the ambush was over – until the ‘ceasefire'. Dispatch scouts moved from the ambuscade once action began. Peter Hart mentions ‘ten scouts' at Kilmichael. Just three scouts were on ambush location. After-ambush helpers assisted with the wounded and the dead, but did not participate in the ambush and were not engaged in scouting duty or any other related tasks during the ambush.
[23]

Furthermore, according to autobiographical details all the scouts and after-ambush helpers, who were in Kilmichael that day, were dead by the late 1970s. All rifle-men at Kilmichael were dead by 19 November 1989.
[24]

Peter Hart wrote that ‘interviewees were extremely nervous about discussing Kilmichael in detail.' Therefore, he wrote, ‘Names have been withheld to protect confidentiality'.
[25]
Arising out of interviews, he states that: ‘as a large number of these interviewees requested that part or all of their testimony be quoted anonymously, I refer to them using initials only. The republican activists' initials begin with “A”' (i.e., AA, 3 April & 25 June 1988; AB, 2 April 1988; AC, 6 April 1990; AD, 2 April 1988 & 28 April 1989; AE, 28 April 1989 & 19 Nov. 1989; AF a scout, 19 November 1989).
[26]

In a radio programme when queried on the names of interviewees, Peter Hart responded: ‘Actually, I'd prefer not to say because I did it under condition of anonymity and certainly the two men I talked to who were there were rather concerned and actually their children were rather concerned about what they were saying.'
[27]
Furthermore, Peter Hart has written: ‘I was also fortunate enough to be given a tour of the ambush site by one of my interviewees.'
[28]

If, including scouts and helpers, records show the last Kilmichael ambush survivor Ned Young (whose faculties were impaired during his final years) died on 13 November 1989 aged ninety-seven; the second last, Jack O'Sullivan in 1986; Tim O'Connell 1983, Patrick (Pat) O'Donovan 1981 (all rifle-men) then who are these people who could not stand over their names and the information that they gave regarding the Kilmichael ambush when Peter Hart interviewed them in 1988, 1989? Who were, ‘all of the men interviewed [who] agree on this point: McCarthy and O'Sullivan did not stand up and did not die because of a fake surrender'? Who were the, ‘Two of these veterans' who ‘considered Barry's account to be an insult to the memory of these men' who were killed?
[29]

Scouts were John Kelly (d. 1959), Tim O'Sullivan (d. 1965), Dan O'Driscoll (d. 1967) and dispatch scouts Neilus Cotter (d. 1952) and Seán Falvey (d. 1971).
[30]
(For my research, I consulted the published (1938) list plus previous and subsequent records of those involved in the Kilmichael ambush. But, Peter Hart wrote that he interviewed two people – ‘AA, 3 Apr., 25 June 1988; AF, 19 Nov. 1989'. Perhaps if Peter Hart revealed their names, the credibility of these two witnesses who claim to give a first-hand account could be examined. Their version of events to Peter Hart contradicts so many others, and while they remain anonymous, the story of the Kilmichael ambush will remain clouded in controversy.) Peter Hart's tour of the ambush site (1988 – 1989) creates a logistical problem, which only he can solve as autobiographical details from evidence available shows that all scouts and dispatch scouts were dead by 1971. Ninety-seven year old Ned Young (rifleman), the sole Kimichael survivor (since O'Sullivan's death 1986) died on 13 November 1989. However, if Peter Hart revealed the name of his anonymous source the dilemma could be solved.

Who was Scout AF who gave Peter Hart, on 19 November 1989, the graphic account of Tom Barry placing the revolver to the ‘crying' man's head to ‘finish him' then ‘pulled the trigger' and of Barry's ‘procedure' after ‘the surrendered Englishmen had been executed'?
[31]