Courtney McGrail“The men will talk to me”: West Cork interviews by Ernie O’Malley
ed. Andy Bielenberg, John Borgonovo and Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc
(Mercier Press, €16.99)
J. Anthony Gaughan
Ernie O’Malley was born in Castlebar, Co. Mayo, on May 26, 1897. After the family settled in Dublin he was educated at O’Connell’s CBS and spent a few years at UCD attempting to qualify in medicine. He joined the Irish Volunteers after the 1916 Rising and was active during the War of Independence, at the end of which he was in command of the IRA’s 2nd Southern Division.
Opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty, he was one of the leaders of the Anti-Treatyites during the Civil War and in November 1922 was captured and imprisoned by the Irish Free State army. Following his release in 1924 he emigrated to the US. While living there he wrote of his experiences during the War of Independence in the much admired memoir On Another Man’s Wound (London, 1936).
O’Malley intended to publish a similar account of his experiences during the Civil War. To his end after his return to Ireland he travelled about the country in the 1940s and early 1950s, interviewed veterans of the two wars and recorded their recollections. This volume includes eight of these interviews, covering the activities of the IRA’s Cork No 3 Brigade in west Cork and Donegal during the War of Independence, the truce, and the Civil War. One of these interviewees remained neutral during the Civil War the others were active in the field against the Free State army.
Interviews
The interviews cast light on ambushes, close escapes, the ‘execution of spies’ and the hardship suffered by members of the flying column who were constantly on the move around the countryside. There are descriptions of life in the internment camps of Frongoch, Ballykinlar and the Curragh and the numerous attempts to break out of them.
The interviewees were at one in condemning members of the Essex regiment for the abuse and torture of prisoners. In this regard they harboured a particular animus towards Major Edward Percival, intelligence officer with the 1st battalion of the regiment, who led his own mobile column in west Cork. There are revealing references to the chaos and uncertainties surrounding the IRA conventions which were held to discuss the terms of the treaty and the collapse during the Civil War of the ‘Limerick front’ which was formed to defend the ‘Munster Republic’.
During his interview Liam Deasy claimed that Archbishop Clune of Perth almost succeeded in brokering a truce in December 1920. At the last stage of the negotiations it was vetoed by General Nevil Macready, commander of the British forces in Ireland.
During the Civil War Fr Tom Duggan made a number of efforts to facilitate an end to hostilities.
He had a distinguished career as a chaplain with the British forces during World War I, but later was supportive of the IRA during the war of independence. He also enjoyed a friendly relationship with Tom Barry.
O’Malley’s notes of the interviews are carefully edited. However, there is at least one inaccurate footnote. Paudeen O’Keeffe (1881-1973), deputy governor of Mountjoy jail during the Civil War, was never secretary-general of the GAA.
That post was held by Pádraig Ó Caoimh (1897-1964), another IRA veteran from Cork.