Massacre in West Cork (10 page)

In Clonakilty the telegrams and letters were delivered to Intelligence Officer Ted Hayes ‘by — Heaphy, who was a sorter in the local post office and who collected all items due for delivery from me each evening. He was working in co-operation with C. Allcock, who was an assistant in the post office.’
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In Macroom the intelligence officers proved how effective the system was:

On June 1st our two Intelligence Officers at Macroom Post Office, Mr. Curtin and Miss Rice, succeeded in deciphering enemy messages pertaining to a large scale round-up of the Macroom-Ballyvourney area … Confirmation was received from [Auxiliary] Cadet [Patrick] Carroll at Macroom Castle … and this big enemy round-up, wherein over two thousand men took part and which lasted over five days, proved abortive. Not even one active Volunteer was arrested.
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While everyone knew that the IRA was getting much of its information from stealing and censoring the mails, nobody seems to have seriously suspected the staff in the post office. Even more impressively, in Dunmanway, K Company messages were being read and passed along by Flor Crowley, the clerk of the workhouse, in whose office the intelligence officer had his desk.
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Finally, in Ballincollig, according to Tim Herlihy: ‘there was an Intelligence System in operation in the Barracks, carried out by the local Volunteers, which nipped them in the bud, by sending out word prior to their moving out of Barracks’.
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If people were passing information to the British in secret, it was getting to the IRA. In many cases as soon as this information was passed on through the encrypted telegraph service, the IRA would have that information before the British intelligence officers, and this allowed the IRA to avoid trouble. In a way, it is hardly surprising that Collins was able to infect the British post office network so completely with his intelligence officers. After all, as an ex-post office clerk he had more experience of the post office system than most and was intelligent enough to recognise its potential.

Another intelligence stream were the British forces. Auxiliary Cadet Carroll was a prime asset in Macroom. The local RIC officer, Cahill, in Dunmanway is regularly mentioned in the witness statements of IRA men from the area as being an excellent source of information about the raiding plans of the Auxiliaries. On one occasion a planned attack on an intelligence officer was called off, as the IRA would have hit that RIC officer as well.

As information gathered in 1921 was apparently used to target people during the 1922 Dunmanway killings, it is important to examine how the IRA gathered the information to provide a context for these later killings. To put it simply: could the IRA have drawn up a list of names containing the members of an Anti-Sinn Féin Society or a Protestant Action Group? If the IRA had such a list, how likely was it to use it after the War of Independence was over? There is sufficient evidence to suggest strongly that one of these groups existed, so the identification of spies and informers by the IRA during the War of Independence is central to the story at the heart of this book.

If a proper judgement is to be made about whether the April 1922 killings were random or targeted, then a close examination of the West Cork IRA’s professionalism as spy hunters is necessary. If their evidence gathering against suspects is shown to have been poor, then it is more likely that the Dunmanway killings were sectarian; the reader will have to make up their own minds on this.
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The IRA was convinced that some members of the loyalist community were actively supporting the British attempt to quash the revolution by giving information to the authorities.
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According to the British Lord Chancellor, Lord Birkenhead, in April 1921, there was truth in this.
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This is supported by the county inspector of Bandon, who reported in January 1921 that information was being ‘given freely’.
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The early months of 1921 proved the most deadly for the locals during the war in West Cork. Thirty men were shot and killed. Eleven of these casualties were IRA members, killed by the British Army and Auxiliaries in the first twelve days of February 1921. Not one enemy soldier was shot. This was almost a third of all 3rd Brigade losses in the entire war.
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The IRA shot some of the civilian casualties as spies; Tom Barry put the figure at thirteen in a month.
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Most of the deaths occurred within ten kilometres of Bandon, with a few in Skibbereen and Clonakilty. At the same time houses of nationalists and unionists across the area were burned, either as reprisals for other burnings or to prevent them from being used as barracks by the British.
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On 21 January 1921 the local IRA accidentally discovered a spy at Cahoo named Denis Dwyer, from Castletown-Kinneigh. He was an ex-soldier and a Roman Catholic. Dwyer was waiting on the road to meet the British forces and mistook the IRA soldiers for them. He started giving them information about the local IRA. Having questioned him, the IRA shot him there and then, leaving his body exposed to lure the Essex Regiment out of their barracks three kilometres away in Bandon to investigate. As the Essex had failed to take the bait by the following evening, the flying column decided to billet with local farmers while they waited. All BMH witness statements make it clear that while a hostile reception might be expected in some loyalist houses, a refusal to assist would be ignored.
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When some of the column members called to Thomas J. Bradfield, he mistook them for Black and Tans and started telling them about an IRA hideout nearby. Denis Lordan describes what happened next. He records Bradfield as saying, ‘I’m not like the rest of them round here at all. The Reverend Mr Lord is my man, and I give him the information. You fellows should come round at night I’d show you round.’
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Lordan says that he was ‘used as a football by the lads’ while they waited for orders from Tom Barry. He was shot on 24 January as the column departed for their next rendezvous. The Essex Regiment arrived shortly after the column had left, having travelled to the area by a roundabout route.
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Thomas J. Bradfield’s admission is significant as, according to the IRA, he confessed that he was involved in a conspiracy with, at least, Rev. John Charles Lord, Church of Ireland rector of Kilbrogan (Bandon North). This suggests a sort of Anti-Sinn Féin Society gathering and passing information to the Black and Tans and Essex Regiment in Bandon. There may have been only two people in this group, but surely its existence cannot be in doubt.
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Any competent IRA intelligence officers would immediately have been looking at the known associates of the dead men. On 1 February, a week after discovering Thomas J. Bradfield’s activities, the IRA called to the house of his cousin (also named Thomas Bradfield). There was suspicion that he too was providing information to the Essex Regiment. Having accidently tricked Thomas J. Bradfield, they tried the same strategy – dressing like the Auxiliaries – on his cousin. James ‘Spud’ Murphy recalled what happened next:

The remainder of the column, under Tom Barry, moved into Clonakilty battalion area. We were in the Ahiohill district on the night of 31st January 1921, when the column O/C asked Dan Corcoran and myself to accompany him to the house of Thomas Bradfield, Desertserges. We were driven there in a horse and trap by Tim Coffey, Breaghanna, Enniskeane [sic]. Tom Barry approached the house and asked the maid whether Mr. Bradfield was at home. She said that he was out in the fields. Dan Corcoran accompanied the maid to the field to call Bradfield and to inform him that the officer wanted him. We were all wearing Sam Browne belts outside our trench coats and Bradfield assumed that we were members of the British forces. When Bradfield came in he welcomed us and invited us into the sitting-room where he gave us some refreshments. He sat down and began to talk to Tom Barry about the activities of the I.R.A. in the area, giving a number of names of prominent officers. At this stage I had taken up position at the front door and Dan Corcoran was likewise at the back door. When Bradfield had given sufficient information, Tom Barry disclosed his identity and Bradfield was certainly shocked. We immediately placed him under arrest and removed him on foot to Ahiohill area. He was tried that night and when we were moving from Ahiohill to Burgatia House on the night of 1st Feb. 1921, Bradfield was executed. His body was labelled as that of a spy and was left on the roadside.
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Denis Lordan also notes the execution took place on Tuesday 1 February while the column was marching to take over Burgatia House in Rosscarbery, where they tried and deported Tom Kingston for informing on the IRA in the district. This was also the scene of a pitched battle between the column and the army, who surprised them. During the fight the IRA placed Kingston, his family and servants in the safest part of the house after his trial.
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The
Cork Constitution
blamed General Strickland’s new order (that loyalists had to hand up information on pain of arrest and punishment) for the killing of Thomas Bradfield. It asked, ‘In short, is it an offence to remain neutral?’
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Given its strident unionism since its foundation 100 years before, this is an extraordinary comment.

Retaliation was swift and merciless. On 15 February the
Cork Constitution
noted the killing of brothers Timothy (Tim) and James Coffey in Breaghna, Desertserges (Enniskean). It noted that Thomas Bradfield had been shot in the same locality two weeks previously and suggested that the Coffey brothers were shot in response. The
Cork & County Eagle
was not so coy. It gave many more details in its report of the family’s compensation claim in April.
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According to the brothers’ parents: ‘The head was nearly shot off one of them, and the other was shot in the neck. On a card on one body was written Revenge. On the other body was –
Convicted Vide Bradfield Anti-Sinn Féin – of murder
.’
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It is possible that Tim Coffey had been recognised driving Tom Barry and the others to the Bradfield house, as they were neighbours.

According to Thomas Bradfield’s wife, Elizabeth, in her compensation claim on 25 June 1921, armed men had come to his home at Knockmacool House near Desert(serges) railway station, taken him away and shot him three miles away. His farm and goods were confiscated as a spy’s. Bradfield’s daughter had married a Mr (Joseph) Stokes a few days before the killing. When the family attempted to sell the farm with the help of Mr Stokes on 10 March, the IRA had warned off all prospective purchasers. One of the warnings posted around the farm stated, ‘Take notice that any person or persons having dealings or holding any communication with spies or the relatives of spies do so at their own risk.’
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The IRA confiscated the contents of the farm and stated that the lands were confiscated in 1921, but on 29 May 1926 Elizabeth sued Cork County Council for charging her rates after the land was sold. The judge’s decree makes clear that the Bradfields were the legal owners of the farm until they sold it in February 1925 for £600 for the seventy-one acres, and that they were liable for the rates from 1921 to March 1924.
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Elizabeth Bradfield was a sister of John Good, of Barry’s Hall, Timoleague, who was shot as a spy on 10 March. His son William – who returned from Trinity College in Dublin to settle his father’s estate – was shot on 28 March. He was a reserve officer in the British Army and a note was left on his body warning spies that they would be shot.

The killings of John and William Good were related to the shooting dead of IRA man Denis Hegarty, who worked for the Goods, by unknown masked men some time before. He had been taken from his house in the Goods’ farmyard and shot at the end of their lane.
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John Good told Hegarty’s inquest that he had heard movement on the night but understandably had not gone out. Whether the IRA suspected or knew he was in any way involved in the killing of Hegarty, or he was shot simply because he looked the other way, is never made clear in any of the BMH witness statements. The Good family killings are unique in the Cork statements as no explanation or evidence is given, other than that John was a spy. His son William was also labelled a spy, but no evidence is presented.

A
Southern Star
report on 25 June mentioning the Good killings reported that Tom (aka William) Connell and Mathew Sweetnam of Skibbereen were also shot for giving evidence against IRA men who were collecting the IRA levy. Connell was a cousin of the Bradfields. William Kingston, in his memoir, recalls that Skibbereen loyalists and Protestants took the Connell and Sweetnam killings as a warning not to get involved in the war by taking sides.
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However, he makes it clear that he felt that as the War of Independence was a much less savage affair in the western part of County Cork, there was little need to take sides.
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It is also notable that the Mizen and Durrus peninsulas had the greatest percentage concentration of Protestants in West Cork, but there is much less evidence of informing or IRA attacks on suspected informers west of Dunmanway.