Tom Barry (14 page)

Out of the Kilmichael ambush was there an end to be justified, was a forged report a means to do so? Who wrote the ‘Rebel Commandant's report' that Peter Hart describes as Barry's ‘after-action report' and why the need?
[84]

Barry wrote in his memoirs:

The foulest of all British weapons has ever been ‘atrocity' propaganda. No axe was in possession of the I.R.A. and no corpse was interfered with. This mutilation allegation was a vicious and calumnious lie. Well may one ask where Lord French got his information ... To clinch this exposure of lying British propaganda, it is as well to state here that after the Truce with the British in July 1921, Sir Alfred Cope, then assistant British under-secretary for Ireland, called on me in Cork for a written statement that the I.R.A. had killed the Auxiliaries in Kilmichael, since this was essential before the British government could pay compensation to the dependents. He informed me that the British government had no evidence as to how these men had met their deaths, as there were no survivors to testify in court and the dying Auxiliary had never recovered consciousness. Incidentally, he was refused any statement.
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‘It was a vicious fight. There was no mutilation'. he told history students in UCG he wanted ‘to nail that propaganda. There was hand to hand fighting, butts of rifles were used.'
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It was incorrect to tell Tom Barry in 1921 that the survivor did not recover consciousness. Not conscious enough, perhaps, to swear to tell the truth about the false surrender. Was it in the hope of getting a statement from Barry that Cope did not give Barry the full facts? If the British establishment had already got ‘The Rebel Commandant's report' why were they still looking for one from ‘The Rebel Commandant'? Barry's refusal of Cope's request meant the invention of ‘an alternative', according to Stephen Brady.
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‘It was right to say,' the
Cork Examiner
reported in January 1921, that ‘as there was no living [British Military] witness to tell
exactly
what happened, it could only be conjectured.'
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A. J. S. (Stephen) Brady was an assistant in T. P. Grainger's solicitor's office – the firm that represented and processed the claims for the relatives of the Auxiliaries killed at Kilmichael. Mr Brady confirmed that Lieut H. F. Forde received £10,000, after the Truce had been called.
The Freeman's Journal
had a photograph of Forde in the Military Hospital, Cork on 17 January 1921. ‘He was confined to a wheelchair for some time, later he walked with a pronounced limp and lived until a few years ago', Mr Brady recalled in November 1980.
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Stephen Brady was aware that ‘the statement' of the castle men was ‘exaggerated'. The ‘more harrowing it [the ambush] was, the hacking of bodies and the cruelty of the engagement, the better the compensation.' Mr Brady was aware that Cope had called to Tom Barry ‘and he had refused to co-operate'. In the solicitor's office ‘Cope discussed the position with the chief [his boss] and then left for the castle. They wanted a statement – a report saying there was an ambush or attack and that they killed the Auxiliaries outright … Barry was liaison officer around that time.' Contact between the solicitors' office and the castle was ‘intense' after which the ‘reports from the two sides' were presented to the solicitor, which led to the final report (all seen by Brady). ‘I won't say how that came about, but it helped the families to get good compensation,' said Mr Brady. Wondering what he meant by ‘reports from the two sides', I queried it.

‘I'm not saying. It's just that the families needed good evidence for their compensation case. Naturally their comrades helped', Mr Brady said. (Cope and the castle Auxiliaries were obviously ‘the two sides'. I was unaware at that time of the existence of the
alleged
‘Commandant's' (Barry's) report and did not therefore pursue the issue.)
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Bill Munroe, an Auxiliary in the castle gives his exaggerated account of ‘the ambushers' in lorries and khaki uniforms. The official reports have echoes of this account. There is no mention of a false surrender. ‘Out of 21 men, 20 lay on the road dead' where ‘at least 3 took a long time to die', according to Munroe.

Auxiliary Munroe recorded that, ‘after the first shock had passed our immediate reaction was to hunt down as many of the ambushers as we could and exterminate them.'
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Percival found that, ‘Owing to the constant searches carried out by crown forces it was exceedingly difficult for the IRA to issue anything in the way of written orders, but they did succeed … largely by verbal instructions.'
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Referring to the ‘Rebel Commandant's report' Peter Hart has asked, ‘If it was a forgery, why was it kept secret? Why wasn't it written to support the British version?'
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It seems to have fulfilled the requirements for the establishment's purpose to propound the report as Barry's. This ‘Rebel Commandant's report' should have eliminated the necessity for secrecy, would have made great newspaper headlines, would have aided British propaganda, would have militated against Tom Barry, the IRA and GHQ, if it was a genuine document.

Dr Jeremiah Kelleher, Macroom coroner examined the bodies of the dead Auxiliaries. Since the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act became law on 9 August 1920, Secret Military Courts of Enquiry conducted coroners' inquests. Dr Kelleher had always been anti-Republican. Moreover, when the IRA shot his son, an RIC man in Longford, he became even more extreme in his views. However, ‘his code of honour has to be referred to, because when ever he treated IRA men it is believed that he kept it confidential.'
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On Tuesday 30 November, the day after the bodies were brought in, ‘A Military Inquiry in lieu of inquest was opened at Macroom Castle … into the cause of death of the victims of the ambush.' The injuries of sixteen Auxiliaries who were killed are listed. There is no mention of an axe or brutal beating. A. F. Poole died from ‘bullet wounds in chest and shoulder; fracture of bones of face, caused by heavy instrument'. He was in the first lorry, which was hit by the Mills bomb. Men had bullet wounds, lacerations, skull wounds and other severe injuries. Two, already dead of wounds, received a further wound as the fighting continued. It lists two of the men who had ‘explosive bullet' wounds.
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‘A “Mills bomb” (No. 36 Mk. 1 Grenade) exploded in the cab of the first lorry. The casing of the “Mills bomb” was made of cast iron and was deeply scored to facilitate fragmentation. When the grenade exploded in the confined space of the cab, those shrapnel fragments would have inflicted horrific jagged wounds on the driver and front seat passenger, and also on some of the furtherest forward of the Auxiliaries, who were in the rear of the open-top lorry, whether killed outright or not', according to Lieut Col Eamonn Moriarty. Furthermore, as Barry wrote, ‘a few [Volunteers] had revolvers'. These were captured from British sources. ‘The British Welbey revolver of the period fired a ·455 inch round-nosed, soft lead bullet … weighing 17 gram. It was a low velocity round … and did not have great penetrative power. On impact it would flatten and its cross-section area would increase significantly, thus causing gaping wounds with great internal damage'. In addition there were the captured, what the medical report called ‘explosive bullets'. These were ‘expanding bullets', Lieut Col Eamonn Moriarty explained, as, ‘at that time, there was no such thing as an explosive bullet'. Service bullets with the point cut (scored) and doctored to open on impact were used by the Auxiliaries. These bullets would expand on impact thus causing considerable damage, bone fragmentation and nasty wounds. When this type of bullet is discharged, ‘its destructive effect on bone and tissue is greater than that caused by an internal charge'.
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It is not known whether the bullets that Barry and his men picked up on that day or previously in the Toureen ambush or elsewhere were expanding bullets. What is known is that most of the arms and ammunition that the Volunteers used were captured from the British military. Moreover, there was close fighting as Barry described, with ‘rifle-butts replacing rifle-shots' with pressure, and ‘point blank' shots. On contact all would have created considerable body disfigurement. Barry wrote that the fight between the Volunteers and the Auxiliaries after the Mills bomb had been thrown was intense and even became ‘a hand-to-hand one. Revolvers were used at point blank range.'
[97]

Bill Munroe, one of the Auxiliaries who came to collect the bodies next day, said: ‘They [the Auxiliaries] had put up a tremendous fight as there were literally hundreds of empty [cartridge] cases beside them … They must have kept the enemy under cover for a comparatively long time.'
[98]

On 11 January 1921, at Macroom Courthouse, County Court Judge Hynes ‘took up the hearing of malicious injury applications'. ‘Huge' sums were sought. Concluding the compensation plea, counsel said that because of the severity of injuries ‘which these undoubtedly were' awards were sought ‘for compensation tempered with generosity rather than with justice.'
[99]

On Saturday 15 January at Macroom Quarter Sessions Judge Hynes delivered his judgement in connection with claims made by relatives of the ‘15 killed and one dangerously wounded.' (Some reports state 15 killed, with other reports state 16, but the judge here mentions 15.) ‘The wounded survivor was incapable of giving any evidence, so not one of the unhappy party was alive to give one any description of the ambush,' according to the report. But ‘there could be no doubt but that fifteen of the party were murdered. So the claim for compensation came within the Provisions of the Criminal Injuries Act 1919 as amended by the Criminal Injuries Act 1920.'

The families were awarded varying amounts. F. H. Forde's father sought compensation of £15,000. However, the judge withheld judgement for a sitting in Bandon at some further date, stating that compensation should be about £9,000, but he ‘would not say until he further considered the matter whether it should be £8,000 or £10,000.' It took some months before ‘the huge sums' were given to the victims after all the documentation was assembled.
[100]

There was a tendency towards exaggeration – Professor John A. Murphy, in a television documentary on the Kilmichael ambush said that ‘under the Malicious Injuries Act … the more horrific the account, the greater the compensation.'
[101]

On Monday 29 November 1920 in the House of Commons Sir Hamar Greenwood said he had received a telegram that fifteen ‘Auxiliary officers' under District Inspector Craik were killed and ‘one is missing and one was wounded'. They had been ‘ambushed by eighty to a hundred men'. The head of the police force sent him a further telegram that the ambushers were all dressed ‘in khaki, with steel helmets' fired ‘from both sides of the road … poor fellows were disarmed, and brutally murdered. The bodies were rifled …' Sir Hamar Greenwood said, ‘I do not think the House would care to pursue questions about some odd patrol in Ulster, or the burning of some farm, in the face of this challenge to the authority of this house and of civilisation (cheers).'
[102]

Propaganda aided the British military actions. In Dublin just a week previous to the Kilmichael ambush Volunteers Dick McKee, Peadar Clancy and Conor Clune (innocent civilian) were arrested in Dublin. Their bodies, recovered by relatives, contained ‘a mass of bruises and bayonet wounds'. McKee had ‘broken ribs' and all had bullet wounds. According to General Crozier, the Dublin Castle propaganda organ composed a story of ‘the men's ruse' to leave the room from ‘their kind hearted officers' and were then ‘killed while trying to escape'.
[103]

The
Irish Press,
26 November 1932, published a piece on the Kilmichael ambush. It accompanied ‘a list of the men of the Cork No. 3 Brigade who gave their lives for liberty, in the West Cork area.' The piece is presented as a summary. Tom Barry was extremely unhappy that his article was not published as written. In a letter to the editor he wrote:

... I know you mentioned that you have to omit any details that you feel would be libellous and also that space on your paper was a consideration, however important facts should not have been omitted. While you left other details in you crammed the ambush into one small paragraph. One of the most important facts of the Kilmichael ambush was the false surrender by the Auxies. Three of our lads thought it was all over and stood up. The Auxies began to shoot again after shouting ‘we surrender'. That is why I shouted, ‘Rapid Fire and do not stop until I tell you'.

It is important for the good men of West Cork who fought there, and those lads who were fatally shot there, that you print the story in full. I would like this done. If you felt you had to omit some part which you thought had to be omitted, you should have sent me the altered copy in advance. Because so much of it was cut out and altered there are other errors in the publication. But it is the omission of the false surrender that concerns me most.

You should print the full article, and give an explanation regarding that one on 26th. Would you kindly let me know what you are going to do about the matter.
[104]

So the omission of the false surrender in the
Irish Press
article was not the work of Tom Barry. When Tom Barry's
Guerilla Days
was being serialised in the
Irish Press
in 1948, he had further publication problems. Correspondence shows Barry's considerable annoyance with the editor for altering his instalments. He maintained the least he (Tom) could expect was the editor's agreement with the author. ‘People,' he wrote, ‘will not understand the pressure of space and all the other valid considerations.' It is obvious from his 1948 correspondence that he feared a repetition of the synopsising of his 1932 Kilmichael ambush article. This seemed to give him much heartache and shows that he was a stickler for facts. (The 1948 correspondence will be dealt with later in chronological order.)
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