Burning Down The Barracks

Welcome to the History of Ireland. Last episode, we looked at the different phases of the war and the ever so exciting county council elections of 1920. Today, we’re going to dive good and proper into the conflict.

As discussed, by January 1920, we enter the second phase of the war as the IRA moved from smaller ambushes and the targeting of individuals to larger scale attacks on RIC strongholds around the country. There were 10 such barracks attacks in January alone, with another 9 in February. And these were widespread across the country in places like Longford, Wicklow, Monaghan, Cork and Tipperary. They involved a bigger concentration of IRA men than had really been used before and took a hell of a lot of organisation. Even the RIC were impressed. As the Inspector General put it, all the attacks showed careful preparation and good discipline. Though, admittedly, not all were successful.

But, we’re going to look at one of the successes, led by Owen O’Duffy. Remember the lad we introduced last week? We know in later life he goes down a bit of a fascist-y rabbit hole, but in 1920 he was simply running the Monaghan battalion of the IRA. O’Duffy was a meticulous planner and had been working with a man named Ernie O’Malley to put the Monaghan battalion to good use.

Ernie O’Malley is another interesting revolutionary, who I want to briefly introduce. Born in Mayo to pro-British middle class Catholic parents, O’Malley had nearly been convinced by Unionist friends of his to fight against the rebels in 1916. But, in a bit of a sliding doors moment, he actually went the other way and fought against the British. From there he dove into the Republican movement, keeping the whole thing a secret from his pro-British parents. He had been studying to be a doctor, but after repeatedly failing his exams, he dropped out, left home and became a full-time member of the IRA.

O’Malley was very well-read and had learned a lot about the British army from his brother who had fought in World War I. He was obsessed with organisation and discipline and at the age of 23 was chosen by the GHQ to train IRA battalions. He would travel around the country trying to drill some kind of military sense into the ragtag bunch of amateurs that made up the IRA. It’s said he wasn’t particularly loved by the rank and file. He was very much of the officer class and they had no time for his lectures on battle tactics. They believed in just getting out in the field and saw their lack of training as an advantage in this new kind of hit and run fighting that was slowly being developed. Some of the men looked down on the stiff, overly regimented British and saw O’Malley’s focus on military organisation as unnecessary and boring.

You can see their point, but at the same time O’Malley saw danger in the IRA not learning the basics of military tactics. He thought that some of the men dangerously underestimated the British. I think he just believed that you need to learn the rules before you can break them. His writings from the time give a really good insight into the military nature of the IRA and actually his autobiography On Another Man’s Wounds is a great read.

In December 1919 he reported the following to the GHQ. Quote, Officers and men have not the faintest idea, or at most only a very faint idea, of military work in general. Adding, that with rifles and machine guns there was a great deal of musketry theory to be taught. This was simply down to the fact that Ireland just didn’t have all that much experience with modern weapons or military tactics. As O’Malley put it, the Irish had been quote, disarmed since the time of Elizabeth. Most of them had never had rifles or revolvers in their hands. Hardly any had seen hand grenades. End quote.

That’s because the majority of the IRA had never fought in what you’d call a real army. There was no history of riflery in Ireland and bar a few farmer’s shotguns around the country no one had any real experience with guns. Especially not proper military grade rifles. Then this was further complicated by the fact that unlike a regular army the IRA didn’t have consistent equipment. O’Malley counted 15 different rifle types in one area alone. They were kind of just working with whatever the hell they could get their hands on. And to top it all off they had very very limited amounts of ammunition which forced altercations with the enemy to be short and sharp. The men would strike, fire off all their ammunition and then scatter.

So this is what Owen O’Duffy and Ernie O’Malley were working with. They made up for their lack of munitions and military training with excellent planning and a team of men eager to get stuck into the fight. They landed on the idea to attack the Bally train barracks in Monaghan. The attack would become one of the very first major IRA engagements in the northern more Unionist part of Ireland as well as one of the first attacks of this scale. The barracks was a large two story building at crossroads surrounded by a post office, a storehouse, a shop and a Unionist family home.

On February 14th 1920 O’Duffy gathered men from all over Monaghan and brought O’Malley to help with explosives which would prove vital to the success of the mission. O’Malley quote provided a demonstration of the correct method of throwing a hand grenade. Good on you O’Malley. Once the men had gathered and O’Malley had given his demonstration they then waited until well past midnight to make their move. First they scrambled up the telephone poles and cut the telegraph and phone lines. Next the entire brigade swooped in. It was a large contingency around twenty to thirty men with everyone wearing a mask. They took control of the post office and the shop and kicked the poor Unionist civilians out of their home. This meant that the barracks was now surrounded.

O’Duffy was in the post office and from there he led the attack with bags of undelivered post all around him. At this point it was around 2am and O’Duffy ordered for the men to start shooting. The sound of gunfire would have been deafening cutting through the damp cold quiet February night. The RIC men inside the barracks woke up with a start as windows began to be shot in. There was only six of them and from outside they could hear O’Duffy calling for their surrender.

And surrender really was the most sensible option at this point. They were outmanned and surrounded and there was no reinforcements to be found. But surrender wasn’t going to happen. You see there were two sergeants. One a Catholic and the other a Protestant. As O’Duffy’s offer of surrender carried through the night the two men looked at each other. Neither wanted to look like a coward in front of the other and so they continued to fight to save face. They quote had no notion of giving in till they had to.

But of course O’Duffy had planned for this eventuality. The gunfire was simply designed to occupy the RIC while his men laid down a mine. They managed to get it set up against a wall without the men inside the barracks noticing and then boom. The garrison’s second story collapsed a policeman was blown through a wall and the IRA rushed through the rubble. They captured the RIC men and surprisingly no one on either side ended up being all that badly wounded. The whole thing was a huge success for the IRA.

Afterwards the RIC started to abandon other posts in Monaghan leaving the county completely unpoliced. And attacks like this were happening all across the country. Throughout the year in places like Cork and Mayo the number of manned RIC barracks were more than halved. This was simply because the RIC were too weak to handle the onslaught. They were understrength and had only about 9000 men. Which look would probably have been fine for simple policing around the country but not nearly enough to be defending barracks and fighting off the IRA. Maybe you could fend them off once maybe even a second time but eventually you’d need reinforcements and there was just no men to spare anywhere.

To support the RIC the army was eventually brought in around the end of January 1920. They carried out a number of raids and in April arrested 250 men. But even the army itself described the raids as quote somewhat aimless and had very little effect on the IRA. Again this comes down to how completely and utterly Collins, Tobin and the intelligence department had crippled the British information gathering system. In their report the army pointed out that quote the police lists were out of date and to them every Sinn Féin club was a battalion. Basically the army had no idea which Sinn Féin clubs were merely political and which were active IRA units. And in fact the general ineffectiveness of the raids just spurred the IRA on.

Now with so many abandoned barracks the GHQ decided to commemorate the Easter Rising with a quote nationwide conflagration. Two things there. One I’m going to admit conflagration is one of those words I’ve only ever seen written down and didn’t know how to pronounce until just now. And two is how fun does a nationwide conflagration sound. The plan was to burn down 300 barracks across the country in one night.

The biggest issue with the plan was not the RIC but rather the petrol needed to burn down the buildings. First there was a problem of finding that much petrol and then secondly much like with rifles a lot of the men didn’t have all that much experience with petrol. They were used to paraffin which burns at a completely different manner. So yeah they ended up injuring themselves and causing a lot bigger fires than they actually intended. But irregardless the whole thing was a great publicity stunt. The public were impressed and so were the IRA themselves. As one soldier put it I was very nervous as I felt sure the details of a plan on such a large scale were nearly certain to reach the ears of the enemy. And then once it was carried out he knew the organisation was effective and water tight.

Yeah the IRA were organised, effective and controlled. While the British intelligence was solidly lacking and the British establishment was unsure how to handle the IRA. Were they just criminals to be arrested by the police? Well that approach hadn’t really been working. Or were the IRA a legitimate force that should be fought with the full brunt of her majesties army? Well the British establishment did not want to be seen waging a war in Ireland in their back garden. Even though in reality that’s kind of what was now occurring whether they liked it or not.

Despite the rest of the establishment’s confusion Lord French had a pretty clear view on the matter. He believed that quote either a large number of men must be arrested and deported or else we must have martial law. But neither really happened, not at this point anyway. Basically the British needed to get their act together and retaliate. But let’s wait for next time to dive into that.

Now recently one listener, Elise, suggested that a question and answer style episode might be of interest to some of you. So I was thinking maybe I could do it for the episode in the run up to Christmas. That and throw in some fun random Irish Christmas history or something. If that sounds interesting send on some questions to historyofirelandpodcast at gmail.com or jump on Facebook or Twitter and ask away. You can ask about the show, any facts from it, how I put the episodes together, me if you want. Anything at all really. If I get enough questions I’ll throw together a fun little episode. And if not, well, we’ll just keep plowing on. Anyway, look forward to hearing from you.

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The History of Ireland was written and produced by me, Kevin Dolan. Additional research and fact-checking by Robert Babington, music by Liam Doyle and production help from Aoife Murphy. This podcast was recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. Sovereignty was never ceded.