Thirteen
1921
The window pane clattered fit to break as a cluster of grit collided with it. Seventeen year old Sean, already out of bed and dressed, crossed his ice-cold bedroom and lifted the flimsy curtain to peer out into the impenetrable dark of the County Cork . He saw a match flare and he knew that Eamonn was outside in the yard. Tiptoeing to his door he pulled it open a crack and listened. There was the sound of his father snoring, and that meant his Ma was asleep too, for if she had not been he would have heard her ordering her noisy spouse to rollover off his back and give over that terrible row.
Noiselessly, he closed his bedroom door and went back to the window. Pulling aside the curtain, he slid the sash upwards and climbed astride the sill. Standing on the outhouse roof he slid his window closed again and then jumped down into the yard.
“Over here ya big eejit,” he heard Eamonn call in his famous clandestine whisper.
As Sean reached Eamonn’s side he said, “Will you shut your gob before you wake up every Black and Tan between here and Galway Bay!”
“Enough o’ that,” said Eamonn, suddenly business-like. “Come on, lead the way. You know where the artillery is.”
Sean picked his way faultlessly across the yard, despite the thick black of the night. He led Eamonn to the barn and once inside they were able to light an oil lamp. Beneath a bed of hay Sean lifted a set of boards and brought out two rifles and a package wrapped loosely in sacking. He handed one of the rifles to Eamonn and then reached into the gap once more and pulled out a leather satchel.
“Here,” he whispered. He gave Eamonn several rounds of ammunition and Eamon immediately loaded his rifle. Sean did the same and then, with rifles broken, they stashed the sacking parcel into the satchel. Sean threw the strap of the satchel around his shoulder and they hurried away from the barn yard into the night.
They moved in silence over the fields away from the roads until they came to a cluster of houses, a pub and a tiny church. On the far side of the church from the houses, about a quarter of a mile from the centre of the village, they could distinguish a black outline informing them that they had reached their objective. It was the Royal Irish Constabulary barracks where they knew a small detachment of Black and Tans were billeted this week.
News of the Tans arrival in the village of Ballyslevin had sent a wave of fear around the immediate area. The Tans always arrived in a location when the Crown demanded revenge for some deed perpetrated by the patriots. Three weeks earlier, a squaddie in the British Army, a local lad who had joined up to beat the dole queue, had returned home to see his mother, father and family members. His father was recovering from a mild heart attack and the lad had been obliged to come home. Unfortunately, the local Republican battalion had got wind of this and on the evening before his planned return to his barracks in North Yorkshire he had been abducted on his way home from the local pub and summarily executed as a traitor to Ireland.
Sean, a veteran of the Anglo-Irish guerrilla war, had been angry about the execution, although he had to accept that the presence of a serving member of His Majesty’s Armed Forces did constitute an insult and a provocation. It just seemed a pointless waste of a young Irish life to prove a bleak point. However, when the Tans had arrived three nights ago and rounded up all of the men from the families who lived nearest to the scene of the execution and murdered all eight of them, he was in no doubt about what action should be taken.
So here he was with Eamonn to carry out his part of the night’s action. Their unit had planned three separate actions and each depended on the other for their timing.
Eamonn and Sean crept to the edge of the field and emerged onto the road beside a large personnel truck in front of the tiny barracks. It belonged to the Tans and was used for carrying them to and from the scenes of their atrocities. With silent expertise they set about booby trapping the truck. Sean taped the gelignite to the chassis of the truck and inserted a detonator. They then backed away into the field, playing out a line of cord as they went. Now the action depended upon unit one completing their mission.
Just when it seemed that time would stretch into an eternity they were jolted from their thoughts by a massive explosion coming from the direction of the pub. The crashing of glass and slate roof ripped apart the silence of the night and the flash of light illuminated the sky. Then came the sounds of screaming, crying and groaning as men stumbled out of the bar into the night.
The only villagers were those who had not received the warning not to fraternise with the enemy. The rest of the casualties were Tans and coppers. They had no idea haw many lay dead and wounded inside. Unit one had successfully completed. Now Sean and Eamonn, unit two, were about to go into action. Within seconds of the explosion the barracks door burst open and the rapid sound of orders being barked could be heard across the black silhouetted night. As they had anticipated, the officer considered the distance to the pub necessitated the use of the truck. He screamed at the men to get on board.
As Sean put his hand on the detonator Eamonn crept swiftly to the right, slightly ahead of the truck. When Sean considered that the last man was on board and he heard the sound of the engine starting up he plunged the detonator with a swift, smooth push. There was an agonising instant of silence just long enough for Sean to think, “It’s not worked”. It happened every time. But then the night was ripped apart for the second time. Screams and cries; the roaring of flames; the splintering of glass; the clatter of metal crashing to the ground. All of these sounds in a chaotic maelstrom echoed the earlier explosion that had sliced through the infinite peace that had reigned over the village.
Sean immediately crept to the left of his position and crouched behind a hillock. Tattered and bloody, survivors began to fall out of the burning truck, some with their clothes on fire. At that moment Sean and Eamonn, from their different angles, began to pour bullets into the wreckage. The stumbling survivors were riddled with the incoming fire and they fell, some still consumed by flames.
After several long bursts of fire, Sean and Eamonn stilled their guns. They lay in the flickering night and listened and watched. There was no movement. Still they listened and watched. Then one of the Tans, the officer who had been barking orders started to lift himself from the ground. He got onto all fours, and then pushed himself up into a kneeling position. Just as he moved to put one foot on the floor to begin the painful effort of getting to his feet, first Eamonn and then Sean, let loose one round each. The officer jerked one way, then the other before falling forward onto his face. Just then the petrol tank succumbed to the intense temperature engulfing the vehicle and exploded, spewing flaming liquid into the air and onto the dead and dying, ensuring a one hundred percent fatality achievement. Sean ran back to the detonator, disconnected the leads, stowed it into his shoulder bag and slung it across his back. Eamonn was by his side now. The nervousness was gone and a glow of excitement suffused his expression as Sean caught flickering glimpses of it in the light of the burning truck.
“Okay Sean, me bucko. Let’s make ourselves scarce.”
They turned and ran back across the fields they had come over. After a two mile scramble they saw a gate ahead of them, which stood about five hundred yards from a farmhouse. They stopped and crouched low. Eamonn lifted his head and whistled. He had a good strong whistle and it pierced the night. The tune he whistled was The Camptown Races. They lay back down and stared into the blanket of night. Then a confident whistle came back. The Camptown Races. They jumped to their feet and ran to the gate. “The Camptown ladies sing dis song,” was going round in Sean’s head. As they approached the gate a car drew up and a man stepped out of the shadows beside the gate and came towards them.
“Mission accomplished, Michael,” said Eamonn as they met.
“Well done, boys,” came the reply from Michael, a small man with a black crombie and a trilby hat. “Get in the car and we’ll have you in a place of safety before the empire can get its dreaded claws into you.”
As they pulled away there came the distant sounds of more explosions; one, two, and then three.
“Unit three are making sure the roads are impassable. We’ll have you in Dublin by daylight. When the bastards have finished their reprisals in this part of the world we’ll have you back home with your families.”
And they drove across the broad plain of central Ireland to Dublin, where they would remain in hiding until the heat died down and they could begin planning for their next operation.