It’s time to put names on ambush story sources

IN his letter (Irish Examiner, May 6), Jack Lane drew attention to John Regan’s review of my book, Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter (Mercier Press) where the reviewer stated that Peter Hart was “fortunate in finding survivors of the ambush alive and lucid nearly 70 years after the event… one of whom, he notes, visited the site with him”.

Logistically, this creates a problem that only Mr Hart can solve. He says he interviewed two of the Kilmichael participants — ‘Rifleman AA’ in 1988 and ‘Scout AF’ in 1989.

But according to biographical details, all scouts were dead by 1967, all dispatch scouts by 1971, and all after-ambush helpers and riflemen by November 19, 1989.

Rifleman Jack O’Sullivan, the second last survivor, died in December, 1986.

Rifleman Ned Young, the last and only known survivor alive in the late 1980s, was 97 when he died on November 13, 1989.

Ned Young’s faculties were impaired in his last years, so it would not have been possible for him to travel to or relate events at the site without the knowledge of his family, among whom he lived for the last eight years of his life. They are unable to throw any light on this.

However, if Mr Hart revealed the names of ‘AA’ and ‘AF’, the dilemma could be resolved. Keeping the names anonymous, as Jack Lane has pointed out, “makes the unravelling of the issue difficult”. Relatives of participants of the Kilmichael ambush (listed in my book), people in the locality and others would welcome the revelation of AA’s and AF’s identity now, more than 85 years after the ambush.

Mr Hart needed interviews with these (anonymous) sources to back up his contention that there was a surrender, but no false surrender, at Kilmichael. In taking this stance, he accuses Barry of ordering the shooting of prisoners.

Research shows that after the Volunteers accepted the surrender call and when the Auxiliaries reactivated the fight, fatally wounding Volunteers, Barry, the commander, took up the challenge. “We had to; if three or four more of our lads stood up, they’d have got it, too. I couldn’t take the chance they wouldn’t grab a gun”, said Barry, who never evaded accepting responsibility and spent a lifetime regretting not warning his men of “the old trick of a false surrender”. Because the Auxiliaries falsified their surrender call, they forfeited their position as prisoners, so it was a fight to the finish.

In the recently released collection from the Bureau of Military History, Jack Hennessy (who was in Section 2 located near the three fatally wounded Volunteers) does not give relevant details or sequence of events, but states that when the Auxies got out of the lorries and into positions, he was one of the men “engaging them on the road”.

Then, he says, “we heard three blasts of the O/C’s (Barry’s) whistle. I heard the three blasts and got up from my position, shouting ‘Hands up’. At the same time one of the Auxies about five yards from me drew his revolver. He had thrown down his rifle. I pulled on him and shot him dead. I got back to cover where I remained for a few minutes firing at living and dead Auxies on the road. The column O/C sounded his whistle again. Nearly all the Auxies had been wiped out”.

This is a false surrender — after the ceasefire whistle was blown, an Auxie who had thrown down his rifle “drew his revolver”.

Jack Hennessy’s recently released statement supports Barry’s false surrender account and the accounts from Crozier (Auxiliary O/C) and Curtis (adviser to Lloyd George), plus contemporary Irish writers, Beaslaí, O’Malley and McCann.

Therefore, Mr Hart’s conclusion that Barry’s ‘history’ of the Kilmichael ambush is “riddled with lies and evasions” requires much more secure props than the support of anonymous sources.

Tom Barry’s record of achievement stands, despite Mr Hart’s insistence that he was (a) “a minor character” and (b) “contributed little to the development of the IRA”.

Meda Ryan

Ennis

Co Clare