British Voices (21 page)

In Youghal, a middle-aged married policeman of the Royal Irish Constabulary was shot in the back as he came out of Catholic Mass in the town. I happened to be near at the time, and though as the shot rang out the streets were full of people, they all hurriedly left. The man was just left to die on the street. I and one or two with me were left to carry him, a dying man, into a local chemist's shop.

Our NCOs and men, and indeed some of our young officers, felt that we should be allowed to take much sterner action with the rebels. Many cases had arisen of obvious Sinn Féiners having been arrested and tried, but if they had managed to hide or dispose of their arms and automatics, they were as often as not acquitted and released. On the other hand if the troops fired on and wounded a civilian, or killed him, whatever were the circumstances, a dozen civilian witnesses were always ready to come forward and state that the man concerned was invariably one of the most loyal inhabitants in all County Cork, and as often as not the unfortunate officer or NCO in charge of the army party concerned would then receive an official reprimand, while the local Irish press fulminated over the action of the brutal and licentious Cameron Highlanders.

Matters came more and more to a head, and the troops became more and more restive, and chafed at the restraints they were invariably subjected to. Finally, one night, a report came to the CO, while we officers were all dining in Mess, that the Camerons were loose in the town of Queenstown breaking the windows of all the shops. By this time I was Assistant Adjutant and, as such, I was sent out in a great hurry to investigate.

It was true enough, I soon ran into a party of some 50 NCOs and men, under the RSM himself. They were armed only with tools' wooden handles, and they were systematically and deliberately breaking every shop window as they passed by.They were all quite sober, but the Jocks had felt that they were not being allowed to deal properly with their enemies, and they sensed, and rightly, that many of the inhabitants of Queenstown were reporting their every movement to the local Sinn Féin bands, and they had therefore decided they would retaliate. I sternly ordered them to return to camp at once, and back they came with me now at their head, but still, I fear, rather pleased with themselves and they rather reminded me of a pack of naughty dogs caught out in forbidden rabbit hunting.

Well, there was, of course, the ‘father and mother' of a row over the incident. The Divisional General, Sir Peter Strickland, ‘Old Hungry Face' as the soldiers called him, I believe, had the whole Battalion paraded, and what the Army calls ‘told us off to no uncertain tune'. In his eyes we were indisciplined and insubordinate, and I believe our CO, Sorel Cameron, was nearly removed from commanding us.

However, the Jocks had let off steam, and in point of fact their indisciplined action really did a lot of good, for the military authorities were forced to realise that the troops were not prepared to stand, any more, a policy of never being supported, whatever politicians in London might be advocating.

After that unfortunate incident we officers took care whenever what was called an ‘Incident', as skirmishes were then called, or when policemen were murdered, which involved Cameron Highlanders, we at once worked the troops off their legs for the next 48 hours, searching and patrolling for the culprits for miles into the countryside, until all our soldiers wanted to do was a chance to sleep; and by this time tempers had cooled.

Of all duties we were called upon to do, I think, the searching of houses was the most distasteful and unpleasant. To start with most of them were literally swarming with fleas, which we then invariably picked up, and as soon as I got back to camp I used to bathe and change my clothes. In one house, which I was searching I myself found in the floor, under a loose floor board, a cavity in which a revolver was probably hidden.The rebel and his pistol was not at home, but in the hiding place was a real hymn of hate poem. I have still a copy of it and it ran for many verses. The first verse began:

God curse the British Empire.
May he wither the flag that flies
May he shatter the strength that still remains
Of that father of sin and lies
May he strengthen the hands of its enemies
May he hasten its dying gasp
May Satan rise from the depths of Hell
That ulcer of earth to grasp.

And so on in the same strain for six more verses.

About this time, we, as a Battalion, started in Queenstown an unjust collective measure, which from our point of view, however, soon bore good results. One day, without any warning, we rounding up and brought compulsorily into Camp at Belmont, which was surrounded with barbed wire, all the males whom we found anywhere in the streets of the town. They amounted to several hundred men. We made no exceptions whatever, and so those collected, much to their fury, were well known loyalists as well as suspected Sinn Féiners and included several retired officers of the British Army.

Once safely shepherded inside our camp and our sentries, we paraded them all together, and took the names and addresses of every man, using local Royal Irish Constabulary policemen, as necessary, to help identification when we thought any individual might be giving a false name. We then and there detailed them haphazardly, in small groups of five and six, as being ‘on duty' for every night of the next month or two.

We explained to them through a megaphone, as the present loudspeakers had not been invented then or at any rate were not yet in use, as to what being on duty entailed. It meant, we explained, that if a hostile incident occurred within the town boundaries of Queenstown, whereby any member of the Camerons, or the police, were killed or wounded, we would at once arrest and hold and incarcerate in a cage of wire in our camp, all those half dozen civilians that we had detailed for duty for that 24 hours.

Now this meant that those concerned had either to leave their homes and ‘go on the run', as it was then called, in a hurry, or else wait in their homes till we collected them and then incarcerated them. By this arrangement, we calculated, that it was now probable that in the five or six men concerned, in any 24 hours, at least one of them would probably have some influence with the local town Sinn Féin leaders, and he would do his best to dissuade his friends from carrying out an incident against us during the period we had arbitrarily detailed his for duty and possible arrest. I may say this plan worked, so far as the town of Queenstown was concerned, surprisingly well.

Nevertheless, as the months passed by, more and more of the unfortunate policemen of the Royal Irish Constabulary were killed in action, or more often shot down and murdered.The survivors naturally became very nervous, and the morale of the force quite disappeared. Soon they would no longer identify suspicious rebels we produced before them, as they knew that to do so meant revenge, and generally death later for them, as, living as they were in little isolated police stations in the various towns and villages, there was no way in which we could arrange to protect them adequately.

We therefore used to arrange to parade our prisoners in the courtyard of our guard room, and we secreted a local RIC constable where he could see the prisoners through a small peep hole, but the prisoners did not know they were being so watched.

It was by this method that we were able to get identified the local ‘Robin Hood', a man named Henry O'Mahony who had, on capture, given us a false name. He was a colourful character, and the local Sinn Féin leader in our area. We had him imprisoned in a fort on Spike Island, a small island in the Cork Harbour, but he soon escaped by means of a disused passage into the fort's moat. I think we had a sneaking admiration for him, for though very ruthless, there rebels were certainly brave, and, according to their beliefs, patriotic men.

One way in which we tried to obtain information of rebel activities was by using our Gaelic speakers. Some of the rebels knew Irish Gaelic, and those that did used it for reasons of secrecy. We accordingly sent our west coast Highlanders into public houses to listen, but the Irish Gaelic was so different to the Highland Gaelic that I do not think anything was achieved.

We knew that every telephone conversation was invariably tapped, as most of the post office workers were Sinn Féin sympathisers, but over this we were sometimes able to turn the situation to our advantage, as we deliberately reported in conversations by telephone, small troop movements well in advance, which we hoped thereby would be ambushed on route, and we, in our turn laid ambushed for the expected ambushers.

As the months went by matters seemed to get worse and worse in Ireland, and there was little relaxation for either officers or men. We officers were able to play golf on the local links, but it was an order that we had to play in two foursomes one behind the other, and all eight of us armed with revolvers in our pockets. At first some officers used to go out hunting with the local foxhounds, but soon this was at an end.

During the Troubles lost ammunition usually meant ammunition stolen by the rebels, and accordingly to lose ammunition was a serious offence. Before I went into the orderly room, one of the Jocks in my company lost five rounds of rifle ammunition, and in consequence our Brigadier, Higginson, not only had him punished, but also ordered my leave, as the OC Company, to be stopped! Later all leave for officers, was stopped for a time; I think it was after a lot of officers had been murdered one night in Dublin. This hit me hard as my father arranged to go with me to Shetland to fish, and fishing and accommodation was all booked.

As Assistant Adjutant, one of my duties was to help the Adjutant, Donald Cameron, to keep the Secret Files and documents. One of these files was called ‘Prominent Sinn Féiners', and in it were photos and dossiers and descriptions of such men as de Valera, Michael Collins and the like; men whom at the time we were trying to capture. This was regarded as a very secret file, and, as such, when not in use had to be kept in the orderly room safe.

One day in September 1920, Donald went off to the mess for luncheon before me, and took with him the safe key, the file was not locked up, as I had been studying it, and as I did not like to leave it in the orderly room untended I decided to take it with me to the mess.

In the middle of lunch, a signal message was suddenly delivered to the CO, or more likely the Adjutant on his behalf, with the welcome news that leave had been reopened. I had already lost several days of my fishing, and I did not waste time. I changed into plain clothes and caught the night train to Dublin that afternoon.

I frankly found it a frightening journey. I travelled with my .45 Colt automatic in one pocket, and another .32 automatic in the other. Not long before some British officers had been pulled out of a train, in cold blood and shot. Every time the train stopped I felt nervous and alone. Every time a ticket collector came to the compartment, while I showed him my ticket with one hand, I kept the other in my pocket on the butt of one or other pistol. Nothing happened at all, and soon I was safely on the boat travelling from Dublin to Holyhead, but I decided I was not cut out for lone intelligence work, I was too frightened.

From Holyhead, I travelled by train north to Perth and then to Aberdeen. Here I caught the Lerwick steamer, and there I changed into a very small steamer called the
Earl of Zetland
which went to the Northern Isles. It deposited me at Balta Sound on the Isle of Unst, the most northerly island of all, in the early hours of one morning. I had been travelling for about three days and nights.

My father met me, and in his hand was a telegram already waiting for me. It was short and to the point: ‘Report whereabouts of File SX 40 or return forthwith'. I knew the file of course, but for some minutes I could not, for the life of me, remember what I had done with it.Then it all came back to me, and I wired back: ‘Quartermaster's Stores, search fleabag'. I had pushed the secret file down to the bottom of my bedding role to hide it, in the mess, while I lunched, as I slept in the small mess building. Then, in my excitement at getting way on leave, I had forgotten all about it and told my soldier servant to roll up my bedding and to put it in the Stores.

I had a splendid fishing holiday, mainly in Loch Cliff, for sea trout, fishing almost under the shadow of the Muckle Flugga Lighthouse, the most northerly building in Great Britain. When not fishing we picniced with Mother, and spent hours watching all the sea birds, and in particular the Great Skuas, the boldest birds in Britain, so far as man is concerned. From Unst we moved to Bridge of Walls on the main island, here the actual sea trout fishing was better than further north, so we went back there in September 1922, and as my fishing skill improved, I got several fine sea trout of three or so pounds.

Soon after I got back from my leave, Donald Cameron left us for six months leave to his home at Forden in Tasmania, and so I became acting Adjutant. I think, as it was, our Brigadier, Higginson, knew his job well enough, but he was certainly well served, for his Brigade Major was Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Montgomery, ‘Monty' now to all Britain, and his Staff Captain was the brother of ‘Bimbo' Dempsey later to command the whole British Army in Normandy and Germany in the Second World War.

In September, 1921 they decided to hold a Brigade Sports meeting in Cork, and at that time there were about eight infantry regiments in the 17th Cork Brigade. Travelling to and from sports meetings and and from in old fashioned motor vehicles, covered with rabbit netting to keep out any Sinn Féin grenades thrown at us, and all armed, to the teeth, with Lewis guns, rifles and grenades.