An Cosantóir

www.military.ie THE DEFENCE FORCES MAGAZINE | 11 RIC, the 'Tans and Auxies were unrestrained in their retali- ations and response. It was the police, not the army, who burned Cork, who opened fire at Croke Park, who looted and burnt villages and towns, who took out suspects and mur- dered them in fields and barns and ditches. There are well-recorded instances of army retaliation, but they were of a lesser brutality and were not generally wide- spread or 'approved' or encouraged, or policy driven. One such incident took place in Fermoy as a result of an attack on a Sunday church parade. While most of the regiment involved, the King's Shropshire Light Infantry, were Church of Eng- land and attended the Garrison church, the Catholic troops marched to Mass in town, and the Methodists to the little chapel on Patrick Street. It was the Methodists who were at- tacked. As they entered the chapel an IRA team opened fire on them, shooting them in the back. The troops carried rifles but not ammunition and a Private Jones died on the chapel steps. A wave of revulsion ran through Fermoy Barracks, anger, bitter and vengeful. The town was attacked, but it was not of- ficial; it was organised by the NCOs, no officers were involved. They broke windows, tossed the stock of the shops into the Blackwater, smashed up the homes of those members of the coroner's jury who had declined to find the killing a murder. But no one was killed; there were assaults and no doubt great fear but no fatalities. Some of the soldiers were disciplined following a military enquiry, as there was a standing army order forbidding such retaliations and it was considered a breakdown in discipline. There were other retaliations by the army, but they were never of the scale or brutality of the Auxies and the 'Tans. After the assassination of an RIC officer in Lisotwel, Co Kerry, lorry loads of Auxies and 'Tans arrived intent on bloody revenge, but were stopped by a captain of the Loyal North Lan- cashire Regiment. But for the presence of the army, Listowel would have burned as had Cork and its streets would have run with blood. After a local 'Tan officer was ambushed and killed by the IRA on his way home after attending a dinner at the RAF aero- drome in Tallaght, officers at the aerodrome, fuming with out- rage, called out the RAF band and marched behind them to the village square, where they sang patriotic songs such as Rule Britannia, Land of Hope and Glory, and God Save the King. The only violence occurred when the commanding officer Brian Baker (later Air Marshall Sir Brian Baker) noticed that some of the locals had not taken off their hats when the band played the national anthem and proceeded to knock their hats off before the group marched back to their base, still singing their patriotic songs. Even this mild, almost comical retaliation was disapproved of by the military high command and a number of officers were reprimanded. Of course not all army retaliations were quite so benign and for the Irish victims of British brutality it would be hard to discriminate between the army and the 'Tans. And even if the army managed to retain its discipline and not indulge in widespread brutality, they must have turned the blind eye when, if they really wanted to, they could have put a stop to the undisciplined retaliations of the 'Tans and Auxies. By 1921 the army began to operate far more effectively and to play a more significant role in the fight against the IRA. Martial law gave then much wider powers and much wider scope to carry out real military operations; they also assumed command of the police. By this time ambushes had lost their edge as an IRA tactic after the army started tying captured IRA volunteers to the front of their vehicles. More significantly, in May 1921 they had taken delivery of a hundred armoured cars and the same number of armoured lorries, which provided good protection against small-arms fire and effective plat- forms for counter operations. New battalions were pouring in and the army deployed their own highly mobile flying columns, staying out in the field, able to travel fast by foot and bicycle, to be a real counter to the IRA's deadly effective flying columns, and severely disrupting the ability of the IRA to mount effective attacks. Besides, by now some 4,000 captured IRA volunteers were interned in the Curragh. By the time of the ceasefire in July 1921, the vast resources of the Empire were beginning to turn the war in the favour of the British and many senior figures in the military felt the politi- cal initiatives that brought the war to an end were premature. But for most, they were glad to get out and leave the dreadful place to the Irish. As an officer of the Essex Regiment put it: "We did not like ourselves in Ireland. I don't think anyone else did either." About the Author: John McGuiggan is a barrister practising out of the Law Library at Dublin's Four Courts. He was educat- ed at Ruskin College, Oxford, and University College Cork, and is a former British trade union official with NUPE. Two Crossley Tenders full of Black and Tans and Auxiliaries leaving Amiens Street Station. Handwritten caption 'Prior to this photo being taken an ambush had taken place'. Photo: South Dublin Libraries/ wm_ AD013

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