Kerry's Month of Terror

Welcome to the History of Ireland. Before I start I just want to make a shout out to my awesome Patreon supporters. Thanks to you I’ve put together a little bit of an exciting project and I’m looking for a bit of feedback. If you’re interested go check out the Patreon page and fill out the form you’ll find there. That’s all I’ll say here for now, on with the show.

Before we start I should say that there are some pretty gory descriptions of some pretty horrible stuff in this show. So if you’re squeamish or maybe listening with kids this could be one to skip. You’ve been warned.

Anyone with a vague interest in history from the province of Munster has probably heard of the phrase the Munster Republic. We joke, some of us more earnestly than others, that Cork should be the capital of Ireland. And there can sometimes be a little bit of a chip on the shoulder of anyone from Cork or Kerry. A jocular animosity to Dublin and the Pale. That can’t just be explained away as a simple football rivalry or something like that. And arguably there is a reason for this.

As the civil war all but wrapped up across the country, by March 1923 it was still going strong in Cork and Kerry. As historian Owen O’Shea writes, the borderline of the so-called Munster Republic moved gradually south-westward as the National Army took control of the country, leaving the Kerry IRA as one of the last bastions of Republican activity into the early months of 1923. And this meant that in Kerry especially, as the civil war both intensified and came to its end, March became a truly horrible period.

Way back in August 1922, the Dublin Guard and the Free State Army, as you’ll remember, landed from the sea into Kerry. You can go back to season 2 episode 8 for a recap on that. Now the Free State Army successfully took control of most of the large towns in Kerry. But that just meant that the anti-treaty IRA were able to use the beautiful landscape of the county to wage a vicious guerrilla war.

Things got so out of hand that in January 1923 Paddy O’Dailey was put in charge of the Free State Army in Kerry. Born in Dublin, O’Dailey had fought in 1916 and was a member of Michael Collins’ squad. After 1916 he’d been locked up in Frongbrook along with Collins. And so it’s no surprise that the man was immensely loyal to Collins. So much so that when he arrived in Kerry he, quote, “…approached the war in Kerry with a particular ruthlessness and appetite for vengeance.” He was ready for any excuse to take the fight to the anti-treaty IRA.

And so March began with a push from the Free State Army. As historian Tim Horgan describes, “…in the early hours of the 5th of March, three Free State columns with several hundred troops converged on grain slopes, encircling the IRA column of about 40 riflemen. The scouts posted as sentries in the surrounding countryside failed to detect the arrival of the Free State forces. The house was surrounded before the sleeping IRA officers were made aware of the danger outside. A fierce gun battle ensued, stopping briefly to allow Mrs. O’Connell to take her infant son from her besieged home. But the men in the house eventually surrendered.

A few days later the anti-treaty forces retaliated to this. The Free State Army was given a tip-off about an arms dump in and around Knocknockoshal. And so eight men were sent off to investigate. At 2am, when the soldiers moved in on the area, they were blocked by a pile of stones. Now this was common, with anti-treaty IRA forces constantly blocking roads. But this was not a simple barricade. It was in fact a mine. A mine planted by the anti-treaty IRA who had lured the Free State Army to the location with a fake tip-off. The mine exploded, killing five soldiers, and leaving one man so badly injured both his legs had to be amputated. As O’Shea puts it, body parts were strewn in all directions.

It’s said that two of the men, both Dubliners, were close friends of Paddy O’Dailey. His initial response, a statement made to his troops, hums with barely contained rage. He said, The tragedy of Knocknockoshal must not be repeated, and serious disciplinary action will be taken against any officer who endangers the lives of his men in the removal of such barricades. He continued, The taking out of prisoners is not to be regarded as reprisal, but is the only alternative left, us to prevent the wholesale slaughter of our men. And that rage was not contained for long.

The next night, on March 7th, nine anti-treaty IRA prisoners were taken from Tralee to Ballyseedy, a small town nearby, now mostly famous for its garden centre. These prisoners had been arrested the weeks previous and interrogated by David Nelligan. Keen-eared listeners will remember Nelligan from way back in episode 19, The Spy in the Castle. He had been one of the lynchpins of the Irish Intelligence Network. Nelligan had been sent down to Kerry to break the anti-treaty IRA and uncover as much information as he could about the guerrilla fighters. He did this by having men quote, blindfolded and having their arms tied at their side as their body and limbs were smashed with hammers. As a side note, one of the saddest parts of telling the story of the Civil War is to have heroes from the War of Independence crop up as I suppose what you would call villains later on. Nelligan is kind of one of them.

So these nine prisoners had already been abused and mistreated horribly. But they were chosen and thrown into a van. Why these nine? Well, because as one officer at the time put it, they were all fairly anonymous. No priests or nuns in the family. Those that’ll make the least noise. That just goes to show what the Free State soldiers had in mind for these men.

Once at Ballyseedy, the prisoners were told to clear a pile of rubble blocking the road. The Free State Army tied the wrists and shoelaces of the prisoners to the rubble. Not something you do if you’re looking for people to actually clear rubble. No, sadly not. In a mirroring of what happened in Knocknagoshill, the Free State Army this time had planted a landmine in the rubble. With the men tied to the explosive, it was let off. Yeah, you heard that right. Nine men, for all intents and purposes, tied to a landmine that was then detonated. Eight of them were killed instantly. But amazingly, one man, Stephen Fuller, was blown far enough away that not only did he survive, he managed to escape. He would later testify that we were to be blown to atoms as a reprisal for the death of the Free State officers killed in Knocknagoshill.

But it’s the footage of him speaking in the 1980s that is the most heart-wrenching. You can see it as part of Orgy’s recent Civil War documentary. He speaks hesitantly, with a shake in his voice, saying, The Free State soldier gave us a cigarette, and he said, That’s the last cigarette you’ll ever again smoke. He said, We’re going to blow you up with a mine. We were marched out and made to lie down flat in a lorry and taken out to Ballyseedy. The language was abusive language. Wasn’t too good. One fella called us Irish bastards, and he was an Irishman himself. One of our lads asked to be left to say his prayers. He said, No prayers. Our fellas didn’t get any time for prayers. They tied us then, our hands behind our backs, and they tied us in a circle around the mine, and they tied our legs, then our knees with a rope, and they threw off our caps and said we could be praying away now as long as we liked. Goodbye, lads. And up it went. And I went up with it.

One anti-treaty writer described the scene in a rather macabre but poetic manner, saying, The birds were eating the flesh off the trees of Ballyseedy Cross. The Cork Examiner described how the prisoners were, quote, mangled almost beyond recognition. Portions of their limbs and flesh with pieces of clothing were found adhering to trees and strewn along the road and fields over a hundred yards. It should be said that Fuller actually went on to go into politics, becoming a TD in 1937. Historian Richard McElligot even writes that, quote, Fuller’s family recalls him being able to come to some level of forgiveness about what had been done to him. Which, I have to say, is commendable.

Now, the Free State Army didn’t stop at Ballyseedy. The next night, on the 8th of March, four more prisoners were blown up at a railway bridge near Killarney. And then a week later, five more men were blown up near Carrsiveen. In Carrsiveen, the men even had their legs shot first, so that none of them could escape like Stephen Fuller had. All in all, 17 men were blown up in retaliation for the five killed at Knocknagoshell. As O’Shea puts it, it was the darkest period in the war in Ireland.

O’Shea also tells the story of how Paddy O’Daley, when returning the bodies back to the families, ordered his soldiers to play, quote, ragtime music. Which obviously enraged them, as I’m sure was the intention, and the families threw stones at the soldiers in retaliation. When asked about what happened in Carrsiveen, a Free State soldier gave this explanation. We went back to the workhouse and got five civilian prisoners and brought them back to the barricade. They started work at the barricade, and there was an explosion when they were nearly finished removing it. All five were killed. I got a scratch on the hand and one on the head from flying stones.

You see, Paddy O’Daley and his men went with the story that the Anti-Treaty IRA prisoners were simply being used to clear rubble and had been blown up by mines planted by the Anti-Treaty IRA. But no one ever really believed this, and not all Free State soldiers stuck to this story. Some even resigned. Despite this, the Free State government was happy to back this version of events, basically ignoring these extrajudicial killings. They were happy to follow O’Daley’s telling of events which painted the deaths as accidental. Men injured while clearing rubble.

After an inquiry a month later, the government released this statement. The civilians in question lost their lives in explosions while removing obstructions on the road placed there by irregulars. The court further finds that the allegations contained in the irregular propaganda submitted to the court, particularly with reference to the maltreatment of prisoners, are untrue and without foundation, and that no blame is attached to any officer or soldier engaged in the operations in which these prisoners lost their lives. Richard Mulcahy went further, declaring in the Dáil that it was inconceivable that O’Daley and his men would be guilty of anything like the charges that are made against them. But everyone kind of knew what had happened. And in 2008, papers were released that pretty much proved that the government knew that the Free State Army had blown up these IRA men.

All in all, it was simply abhorrent. And in Kerry, 175 people died during the Civil War. I’ll give Owen O’Shea the last word. One, because I’m incredibly indebted to his hard work for this episode. But two, because he summed up the impact of the period very well. As he put it, Military pension applications testified to the fact there was no monopoly of suffering after the war. National Army families, as well as those of the IRA, often faced enormous misery, intimidation, ill health and nervous breakdown for decades afterwards. Many combatants’ families on both sides were left penniless. The scars lasted for decades in a county in which the horrors of the war remained unspoken about for so long.

Next episode, we’ll look at the death of Liam Lynch and how his death would lead to the end of the Civil War in this, the darkest chapter in Irish history. You can also get in touch through the website or on Facebook and Twitter. It’s always great hearing from you guys. And if I’ve made a mistake, please do let me know. The History of Ireland was written and produced by me, Kevin Dolan, with music by Liam Doyle and additional help from assistant producer Aoife Murphy. This podcast was recorded in the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. Sovereignty was never ceded.