chapter I
shall describe that new campaign.)
* * * * *
Before dealing with the events which followed my return to Tipperary I must tell of an incident that almost ended my career as a gunman.
Seumas Robinson and I had been spending a few days with Vincent Purfield at Balbriggan, where I had often had such a happy time. That was during Holy Week, 1920, and we decided to go to Dublin for Easter. We started from Balbriggan in a motor driven by Vincent himself on Good Friday, April 2nd, 1920.
Now the British authorities in Ireland were always under the impression that the Sinn Feiners would always do something every Easter to celebrate the anniversary of the 1916 Insurrection. As a matter of fact we usually did, but we were always disobliging enough to do just the thing they never expected, and at that time they were taken most by surprise. Anyhow, in preparation for the “annual rising,” as people sarcastically spoke of the thing which the Government expected, the military always let us know that they were not to be taken by surprise. For years they used to erect barricades at all the roads leading into Dublin, and place military outposts who searched every car and pedestrian passing in or out of the city during the few days before and after Easter. Having thus done their duty by the Empire they usually removed their barricades after a few days.
When we left Balbriggan that morning we forgot all about this annual manœuvre of the British, otherwise I need hardly say we should have spent Easter with Vincent in Balbriggan. We had a pleasant journey until we arrived within a few miles of the city, about half a mile beyond the tram terminus at Whitehall. On rounding a corner we suddenly came face to face with a military lorry travelling towards us. The lorry slowed down apparently to pull up and search our car, but we looked so innocent and harmless that the officer ordered his car to proceed. We proceeded on our way and laughed heartily, while congratulating ourselves on our good luck. But our good fortune was short-lived. The noise of the military lorry had scarcely died away when half a mile further on towards the city we heard a sharp order to “Halt!”
Straight ahead of us, just at the tramway terminus was a military barricade, a score of soldiers, with their rifles gripped in a business-like way, while an officer was stepping towards us, dangling his revolver. Now, I thought, my hour had come. There is no escape this time.
Vincent kept as cool as a cucumber; not one of us betrayed the slightest concern and the car drove right to the barricade before it slowed down.
I stepped out of the car and walked straight to the officer with an angry scowl and demanded the meaning of this.
“I must search your car,” was the curt reply.
Then I thought it was better to try civility. I told him we had no objection to being searched, but assured him that any delay would be serious to us, as we were in a hurry to reach the city on important business. He hesitated for a moment. Then he waved to the soldiers to clear the way.
“Very well!” he said, “you may go ahead.”
“Thank you,” I nodded to him, entered the car and we drove on.
I could not have afforded to allow either the car or ourselves to be searched. Had he attempted to do so, it would have been his last piece of military activity. Probably we would never have escaped ourselves had he forced me to pull my gun, but there was no other way out of it.
Our motor car was the only vehicle that entered or left Dublin without being searched during those five days.
The same bluff as had carried Sean Hogan and myself out of a similar difficulty near Limerick a year before now proved successful at Whitehall, within a few hundred yards of the house where, seven months later, I was to have my biggest fight for life—at Drumcondra.
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