Michael Collins: Man Who Won The War by Dwyer Ryle T

Author:Dwyer, Ryle T [Dwyer, Ryle T]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: eamon de valera michael collins, michael collins ireland biography, ireland michael collins, michael collins ireland, irish author, Irish, Ireland, ryle dwyer, michael collins biography ireland, mercier press, mercier
Publisher: DirecteBooks Limited
Published: 2012-07-23T16:00:00+00:00

10

‘Spies Beware’

Collins opened new offices at 76 Harcourt Street. This time certain precautions were taken to ensure there was an escape route and a hiding place for important papers. Batt O’Connor built a small secret closet into a wall to store documents.

‘I also provided a means of escape for Collins,’ O’Connor wrote. ‘We had an alarm bell on the top landing, so that, when the caretaker saw the enemy coming, he could ring the alarm bell outside the room where Collins worked. I had also provided a light ladder on the top landing, hanging on two hooks, so that he could immediately get through a skylight. On the outside of the skylight we had bolts, so that it could be bolted from the outside after the ladder has been pulled up after him.’

O’Connor told Collins that the owner of the Standard Hotel, two doors away, was sympathetic. ‘It is not the friendship of the proprietor I want, but the friendship of the boots,’ Collins said.

‘So I approached the boots and we took him into our confidence. He promised to leave the skylight on their roof always unbolted.’1

On 8 November 1919 Collins was in his new Harcourt Street office when it was raided. The staff managed to get the important papers into the secret closet while he headed for the skylight with an attaché case, but his escape route and procedures was not nearly as carefully planned as they should have been. For one thing, Collins did not lift the ladder behind him and he obviously forgot to bolt the skylight from the outside. To make matters worse he found that while the skylight of the Standard Hotel was unlocked as arranged, it was directly above a stairwell, which meant that he had to make a dangerous jump across to the landing.

‘Just as I got through the hotel skylight I saw a khaki helmet appear out of the skylight of No. 76,’ he told colleagues that evening. ‘I flung my bag across, commended myself to Providence, and jumped.’2 Although he hurt himself a little in the process, he was in great spirits afterwards as he recounted what happened to Batt O’Connor and Joe O’Reilly, as well as Piaras Béaslaí, who had just arrived back in Dublin that day from his escape from Strangeways. The Big Fellow was in his element – he too had just had a daring escape.

Three members of the Dáil were arrested in the latest raid, along with three members of the Volunteer headquarters staff, but the police failed to find the secret closet. One of the uniformed policemen ordered to search the building was Constable David Neligan, who had no intention of trying to find anything. ‘I went upstairs and counted the roses on the wallpaper until the raid was over,’ he later explained.3

‘They got no document of importance, so that the only disorganisation is through the seizure of the staff,’ Collins wrote. ‘The enemy is certainly very keen at the moment in preventing the Dáil loan

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.