Twelve Apostles by Tim Pat Coogan

Author:Tim Pat Coogan [Coogan, Tim Pat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Bloody Sunday

The infamous Cairo Gang, a group of British Intelligence operatives active in Dublin during the War of Independence. Several of these men were killed on ‘Bloody Sunday’, 21 November 1920, in an operation planned by Michael Collins.

AS THAT DREADFUL YEAR OF 1920 WORE ON, SO EVENTS IN Ireland became ever more harrowing. October saw the death of Seán Treacy, who with Dan Breen had fired the first shot in the war at Soloheadbeg. The two, as we have seen, had been attached to the Squad by Collins, both because of their deadly expertise and because their activities had made their native Tipperary unsafe for them. Being on the run in unfamiliar Dublin, the two men lived on short commons and found shelter where they could. One such home was that of Professor John Carolan in Drumcondra in north Dublin. This hiding place, however, became known and the house was raided in the early hours of 20 October. One of the leading members of the raiding party was Major Gerald Smyth: he had been seconded from his army posting in the Middle East to join the RIC, so that he could avenge the death of his brother Bruce Smyth, killed at Cork following his address to mutinous RIC officers at Listowel.

As the Drumcondra operation began, members of the raiding party unwisely announced their presence by calling out for Breen and Treacy to show themselves. Breen instead replied by shooting and killing Smyth and another RIC inspector, while Treacy escaped out of their bedroom window. Breen suffered seven bullet wounds but managed to wound another RIC man before also escaping through the bedroom window and running along a roof until he managed to find a skylight and drop down. Incredibly, he managed to shoot his way through a police cordon and somehow make his way to a sympathiser’s home – a procedure which involved completing a distance of several miles while suffering from severe blood loss. At his refuge, Dick McKee was alerted and came with a car to bring Breen to the Mater Hospital, where he was treated under an alias.

Treacy now made a decision that proved to be fatal for him. He had a formidable reputation: I remember as a boy comic-book stories describing the strange arrangement of buttons he sported on his coat and waistcoat that supposedly enabled him to draw and fire faster than any Wild West gunman. But despite such myths, Treacy was in fact a sensitive person who once rebuked Collins for cursing in front of a woman, and who did not take to killing lightly. He had deliberately advocated the shooting of the two RIC men at Soloheadbeg and would have in fact preferred to have shot six policemen, according to Breen, because the deaths would have had a greater impact on public opinion, showing that the Volunteers meant business. Yet he always prayed for his victims, and he attended the funeral of the two inspectors who had been shot in the Carolan raid.

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