Chapter 23
The following days were filled with immeasurable pain for far too many.
And not just the friends and families of the fifteen—not fifty, as first reported—officers who had been shot and were ultimately killed or the approximately dozen more who had been injured but would survive the rebels’ bullets.
It was also painful for the members of the Secret Intelligence Service, the military, the Dublin Castle administration, and the British government as a whole, as they were forced to confront how misled they’d been, and how mistaken they’d been in their arrogance and superiority.
They had egg on their faces, and it wasn’t just messy. It was hot and it burned.
But that didn’t mean they’d learned any lessons.
Not when Bloody Sunday, as they’d taken to calling it, turned even bloodier when it ended in reprisal at Croke Park.
A crowd of spectators had gathered there to watch a Gaelic football match between Dublin and Tipperary.
Why, for the love of God, it had not been called off, I would never understand!
But a force of RIC, Auxiliaries, and military descended on the field for a raid en masse and ended up opening fire.
Chaos ensued as players and spectators scrambled for cover from the machine gun and rifle fire.
Fifteen people were killed—men, women, and children—and over sixty sent to the hospital.
Dublin Castle denied it was in revenge for the morning’s shootings.
They claimed that members of Sinn Féin began shooting first, though all the witnesses who were not members of the Crown Forces said the Auxiliaries had started it.
And nobody with the least bit of impartiality who knew the first thing about what had really been happening in Ireland believed the Castle’s claim.
Nor did anyone fail to note that the tally of dead amounted to fifteen each.
The IRA also had to contend with two more losses.
Dick McKee and Peadar Clancy had been arrested along with an innocent bystander, Conor Clune, and taken to the Castle just hours before the shootings on Sunday morning.
The full truth of what followed might never be known, but by Monday midday, all three men were dead.
The Auxiliaries who had them in custody in the same Exchange Court guardroom where I’d been held on my first night at the Castle, claimed that the men had been shot while trying to escape.
However, the republicans reported that when their bodies were handed over for burial that they showed signs of battering and torture.
Torture that had likely been committed during interrogation by King and Hardy, who had been marked for assassination by Collins, but managed to escape that fate by not being where they were supposed to be.
Considering what I’d experienced at the hands of King and Hardy, I had mixed feelings about them being the ones, out of all the SIS agents targeted, who had survived.
I also didn’t have any trouble believing the republicans’ claims about the states of McKee’s and Clancy’s bodies.
Especially since they’d had the misfortune of being apprehended just hours before the assassinations occurred.
King and Hardy, like many of the Crown Forces that day, would have been out for blood.
I shuddered at the thought of what the prisoners might have endured.
Two SIS officers who did not escape their assassins’ bullets were Captain Bennett and Lieutenant Ames.
Their deaths struck me harder than any of the others.
Perhaps because I’d worked with Bennett in Holland during the war.
Or because I’d known the IRA were aware of who they were.
Or because I’d spoken with them at the Curragh Racecourse just three days prior.
Yes, I’d believed they were in over their heads. Yes, they’d betrayed me and Sidney in regard to the phosgene. Yes, I suspected they were working for Ardmore. But that didn’t mean they deserved to die. There were less lethal ways they could have been held to account.
The specter of Ardmore’s involvement in the operation continued to haunt us until Alec showed up in our back garden again the evening following Bloody Sunday. Not that I’d gotten the truth from him. Not when I hadn’t even given him time to speak.
Nimble had been the one to make us aware of Alec’s presence, and I hadn’t even paused to put on a coat before striding directly outside and slapping him across the face as hard as I could.
I’d passed Sidney and Max standing stone-faced just outside the door as I returned inside.
They had spoken with him and asked the necessary questions.
I was too angry, too hurt, and too guilt-ridden about my complicity to utter a single word to him.
Dublin remained largely quiet during the week that followed—meekly submitting to searches and the extended curfew, though it meant returning home by ten o’clock at night or risking detainment—as if it were the Dubliners due for allowing such shameful acts of violence to occur.
There were a number of arrests made, though no “treasures,” as Sturgis liked to refer to them.
Collins and the other most-coveted rebels remained elusive, and whatever guilt or disgust the Irish nationalists might have felt, it didn’t compel them to inform on their republican neighbors.
On Thursday morning, Sidney, Max, and I took our places among the crowds gathered to watch the funeral procession of some of the slain officers.
We’d been invited to stand alongside the contingency from Dublin Castle, including Undersecretary Anderson and Assistant Undersecretary Cope, at O’Connell Bridge, and we didn’t dare decline.
Sturgis had gone to London. Flags were flown at half-mast and businesses closed—or were forced to do so—from ten until one.
The procession began at King George V Hospital and marched through the city down the quays to the North Wall where the destroyer HMS Seawolf waited to carry the bodies back to England.
It was an impressive show of military might, clearly meant to cow the Dublin populace.
Ranks of detachments from the Royal Air Force, DMP, RIC, regular army, and RIC Auxiliary Division lined the route.
The advance party leading the ten gun carriages bearing the bodies were made up of men from the regiments of the dead officers.
Military bands kept everyone in unison as they marched down the quays toward the sea, a thousand soldiers following along with calvary units and a rearguard of armored cars.
For the most part, reverence reined among the crowd, though the Auxiliaries were quick to snatch off the hats of any who weren’t quick enough to remove them when ordered and toss them in the River Liffey.
Judging from the number of caps floating on the tide, almost no one’s reactions had been swift enough for their liking.
However, the lack of disruption might have also been chalked up to the fact that a number of other funerals had purposely been scheduled throughout the city for the same time.
While the Crown Forces were employed elsewhere, funeral Masses took place for the civilians killed at Croke Park, as well as the former commandant of the Dublin Brigade of the IRA, Dick McKee, and his deputy, Peadar Clancy.
These men had been tortured and died, apparently never sharing what they knew about the assassinations, and were laid to rest defiantly in their Volunteers uniforms. Because of the British’s distraction, Collins even dared to attend the Requiem Mass, delivered a brief oration, and helped carry one of the caskets to Glasnevin Cemetery while hundreds of members of the IRA marched in formation behind.
When I heard about it later, I couldn’t believe the audacity Collins and the members of the IRA had shown.
At any moment, a company of Auxiliaries might have appeared and arrested or slaughtered them all.
Having seen the wounds McKee and Clancy had endured during interrogation, Collins must have recognized that his fate if he was captured would be even worse.
He and the others couldn’t have known how the day would turn out, and yet they’d risked it anyway.
But I supposed that nerve, that bold recalcitrance and willingness to endure sacrifice was why they were holding their own against the might of the British Empire.
The past week, the past month, had been difficult for me, and I found myself deeply affected by the officers’ funeral procession.
Even though it was far too ostentatious and overdone, there was no need to feign distress or manufacturer tears.
They flowed freely down my face, soaking both my handkerchief and Sidney’s when he passed it to me midway through.
Even in the midst of my grief, I was fully aware that I wasn’t mourning only the deaths of these men and the civilians at Croke Park.
I was also mourning my own mistreatment.
I was mourning the failure of justice. And I was mourning my own unwavering belief in my country, its motives and ideals, and the inherent goodness of any organization of men.
All of this was such a waste! At least during the Great War there had been some purpose in preserving freedom and sovereignty for countries like brave little Belgium and defending Britain, even if in the end, too many lives had been forfeited to the vanities of others.
But here, there was no great cause, no higher resolve.
At least none that didn’t expose our blatant hypocrisy.