because the entire factory was an old timber construction and any bullets entering the front of the building could easily have gone right through and emerged through the back thereby greatly endangering our own men as we had attacked, simultaneously, from the front and the rear. We billeted in the New Barracks in limerick City, which was the headquarters of the IRA, while the Free State troops had their headquarters in William Street Barracks. Liam Lynch, Sean Moylan, and other members of the H.Q. and Divisional staffs left soon afterwards for Tipperary. In Limerick City there existed a truce between the IRA and the Free State Army forces. One day, a very unfortunate incident happened between one member of the Limerick IRA and a man of the Limerick Free State troops. The latter called on the former to surrender and pulled back the bolt of his rifle; the IRA man, seeing this, fired from the hip killing the Free State soldier right out. The dead man came from a nice limerick family, and no one regretted the incident more than the IRA lad who had shot him. A priest who called to the New Barracks, asked to see Dan Donovan, 0.C., and immediately launched into an intemperate attack against our man who had fired the shot, calling him a “ruthless murderer and a communist”. Dan stopped the tirade, emphatically telling the priest that our man was very decent and had an excellent record, and then proceeded to explain in detail how the whole unfortunate incident had happened. The priest withdrew but did not have the grace to express any satisfaction with the explanation. This was no surprise to us since, at that time as well as later, most of the Clergy, in their statements, gave the impression that all the “devils” were in the IRA and all the “angels” in the Free State Army. Even now, it is almost impossible to believe that men who [92] who had never changed their ideals and who were such splendid and courageous soldiers in the fight against England were suddenly looked upon as outcasts just because so many of our Cleargy and the newspapers wanted it that way. Some days after the Priest’s visit to the New Barracks, the Free State forces arrested a number of our men at Ballyneety, Co. Limerick. Together with another one of our officers I was sent to meet two Free State Army officers at Geary’s Hotel (they had changed the venue at the last minute from William Street) and there we went to negotiate the release of our men. The talks with Free State Capt. Tim Murphy and another officer were quite friendly, but on leaving to wend our way back to the New Barracks, via O’Connell Street, I could not help observing a great deal of Free State Army activities. On my return, Dan Donovan and Mick Murphy told me that Dick Mulcahy and Eoin O’Duffy had just arrived from Dublin and were holding a conference with Free State Army forces in William Street. They insisted on terminating our “private truce”. War broke out that very same evening and when it did, our troops took over Mattersons and other factories. Personally, I felt very lucky that I got away safely from the meeting with the Free State officers as they could have easily had me arrested. It would have been a very small incident to them but it would have put me totally out of action. We had Cork and Kerry troops, drawn from their respective Brigades, in our company controlling Mattersons and the surrounding area. Spud Murphy, Cork 3 Brig., together with Flyher Nyhan, Peter Kearney, and several others spent some days with us participating in the local fighting. With us too were Johnny O’Connor, a tower of strength, Tom McEllistrum, Danny Allman, Tom O’Connor, and Jack Shanahan all of them representing truly the cream of the Kerry IRA forces. Then, there were also some lads from Tralee with us whose names escape me but I must mention Paddy Norton of Limerick who was [93] such a great asset to us in every respect. One day, when I was in a small draper’s shop on Gerald Griffin Street, together with Paddy Norton and some three or four others, a Free State Army armoured car suddenly drove up. Ordering the unit to fall flat on the floor, their machine gun opened fire and, with bullets whistling over our heads and flying in all directions, the contents of the little shop were completely destroyed. The walls were lined solid with big bolts of cloth which probably saved us, still, I felt very worried in case the Free Staters should decide to hurl any bombs our way. At this time our forces were using some Tracer bullets. We bad overrated and wrong ideas as to their value and after trying them out in every possible way, without finding them especially effective, we ceased using them. By this time too we had had our first casualties, yet, our losses were comparatively minor and, seen proportionally, our actions seemed to be most effective.
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