Massacre in West Cork (22 page)

Once again, as had happened with the IRA levy in the War of Independence, the people of the town were being asked to choose sides, and it is likely that if people refused to support the anti-Treaty party they would have been called Free Staters. As we know from William Jagoe’s evidence, the causes that people supported (or did not support) were apparently used to target them. It would be more than surprising, given their known politics, if any of Francis Fitzmaurice, David Gray or James Buttimer had subscribed to the republican collection. Would this have marked them out for death? It would explain the comments about David Gray being a Free Stater.

It has been suggested that all of the Protestants attacked during the War of Independence and Civil War period had little in common. But Colonel Warren Peacocke, Fred Stennings (another 1921 Inishannon Protestant shooting victim) and David Gray knew each other through angling.
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Another link between the 1921 British spy ring and the later killings is cricket.
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The Southern Star carried reports on cricket matches in the area until the outbreak of the Great War. The Ballineen team consisted mostly of the Cotters and the Bennetts. It has also been established that the Bennetts worked for the Cotters and that Robert and James Bennett fled Ballineen. Another member of the Ballineen team, William Daunt, was also shot at through the window of his bedroom on the night Alexander Gerald McKinley was shot. The Clonakilty team included the Bennetts, the Fitzpatricks, a Fitzmaurice and R. J. Helen, so these men would have known each other well.
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There is no doubt that there was a breakdown in discipline by some members of the IRA in Bandon at this time. Michael O’Donoghue returned to Bandon from his home in Lismore, along with Lismore man William Healy, at the end of May 1922, and Tom Hales asked him to take one of the local IRA officers back to the north with him. O’Donoghue stated that Tom Hales:

… asked me, as a great favour and relief, to take Conneen Crowley back along with me to Ulster, away from West Cork altogether.
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Conneen was a tough little gunman, always in trouble, always fighting. When in drink, he was dangerous, merciless and irresponsible. He was a holy terror when he got going on his mad escapades, and Brigadier Hales was at his wits’ end to restrain him. Conneen, a much-wanted man by the R.I.C. and Tans for his deadly shooting prowess, was captured by the Macroom Auxiliaries a few days before the Kilmichael ambush … Since his return to his West Cork home in Kilbrittain, he had become notorious for quarrelling and brawling and acting the ‘Wild West desperado’ and now Tom Hales was much perturbed at how to handle such a fierce little warrior. I agreed to bring Conneen along to Donegal, to the Brigadier’s great relief.
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The Kilbrittain IRA BMH statement shows Crowley had been a neighbour, colleague and very close friend of Michael O’Neill throughout the War of Independence, and in many ways their careers mirrored each other. Crowley guarded O’Neill for three weeks after he was injured at the first raid on Howe’s Strand Coastguard Station, and both were arrested and interned at Ballykinlar before Kilmichael. It is noticeable that Con Crowley’s name is often next to Michael O’Neill or Jack O’Neill on lists of participant in ambushes and attacks, suggesting they were always associated with each other in the minds of the company.
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Whether Con Crowley was involved in the spate of killings after O’Neill was killed is a matter of conjecture but the Hales request does show that he had serious worries about losing control. O’Donoghue left Bandon on about 12 June with John Donovan, Jim Lane, Con Crowley and Willie Healy, and they reported to the Four Courts garrison before continuing to Donegal to rejoin Peadar O’Donnell’s anti-Treaty forces.

At least thirty individuals, mostly, but not exclusively, Protestant, were attacked over these few days, and it has been possible to discover a likely cause for their targeting in the case of many of the victims. What most likely happened is that a small number of the anti-Treaty IRA decided to take unauthorised retaliation on ‘known’ loyalists in revenge for the killing of Michael O’Neill. The evidence of the ‘trial’ of the love-struck Black and Tan shows that strict control was needed in Bandon, and when Tom Hales returned this strict control was put back in place. In some cases it seems that the people attacked had provided information to the police about the IRA during the War of Independence, which should not have been surprising given that they were loyal subjects of the crown.

It is probable that the full details of what happened over these four days will never be confirmed. The most likely scenario has been presented in this chapter, but even this has to base most of its analysis on second-hand sources. As nobody ever came forward to admit guilt, nobody can prove beyond reasonable doubt who committed the killings. However, the weight of circumstantial evidence points in the direction of elements within the Bandon Brigade of the IRA. Michael O’Donoghue’s information suggests a motive, but we will never really know unless a direct confession from one of the killers is found. We can all speculate as much as we like, but without a confession it will never be more than speculation. By no stretch of the imagination can it be suggested that these murders were justified. After all, even if these men had been ‘hostile’ during the War of Independence their side had lost: they were the defeated ‘enemy’ if they were the enemy at all. The reader will have to decide for themselves.

There is one final event which must be considered in relation to the killings: the execution of three British intelligence officers and their driver in Macroom between 26 and 29 April.

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The Macroom Killings

While evidence has been discovered connecting the events at Ballygroman and the Dunmanway killings, no such connection has yet been made with the Macroom killings which happened at the same time. On the morning of the 26 April 1922 three British Army intelligence officers – Ronald Hendy, George Dove and Kenneth Henderson – and their driver, Private J. Brooks, left Ballincollig Barracks in Cork ostensibly on a fishing expedition. It is likely that they called to an old friend of theirs, Major Thomas Clarke at Farran, halfway to Macroom, for lunch.
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Later they drove to Macroom, arriving after 4 p.m., where the local IRA became suspicious of the strange car without plates parked outside Dick William’s hotel and went to investigate. Apparently, the responses of the driver made them even more suspicious and Hendy, Dove and Henderson were arrested in the snug of the hotel and interrogated. Their cover story was quickly exposed as they had no fishing equipment with them. They were definitely shot, along with Brooks, some time between 26 and 29 April, and were buried at Clondrohid, six kilometres north-west of Macroom.

John Regan, in his examination of the Macroom killings, suggests that the officers may have been sent west in response to the events of the morning, and according to him they called to Farran, which is eight kilometres from Ballygroman. Certainly, if Herbert Woods was a ‘British Secret Service agent’ as suggested by Michael O’Donoghue, then this would have prompted an immediate investigation by his colleagues in the service; hence the strange decision to go into the heart of enemy territory without permission from either the Free State authorities or the anti-Treaty IRA, which was a clear breach of the Treaty. Regan further speculates that information taken from the officers at Macroom led to the death of those killed in Dunmanway and Ballineen. He makes clear that this is speculation and there is no direct evidence to link the two events.
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In his BMH statement, James Murphy, who was a member of the Macroom garrison, states that after the British officers were captured, they were held in the RIC barracks while the garrison asked Brigade headquarters in Cork by telephone for instructions. Headquarters ordered the killing of all four, and this was carried out that night (26 April): ‘Two of these officers (Hendy and Dore [sic]) were members of the British intelligence who had tortured and shot unarmed prisoners during the fight. They were wanted men and were taken prisoners by our forces …’.
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There are many other BMH statements (including those of Tim Buckley, Michael Brew, Dan Corkery and Nora Cunningham) that include the same information and state that the men were shot the night they were captured, after orders had been received from Cork IRA Brigade headquarters. Given that it was peacetime and that by their actions Hendy, Dove and Henderson clearly had little concern for their own safety, the officers could easily have had a notebook or list with them identifying who they intended to visit, which could have led to the targeting of the people on that list. However, the Mark Sturgis document discussed earlier, along with other unpublished material soon to be published by Andy Bielenberg, appears to show that the incidents in the Bandon Valley were of a more general nature, so it seems unlikely that a link between these Macroom killings and the others between 26 and 29 April can be convincingly established.

Unsurprisingly, on the morning of 27 April, General Strickland sent a senior officer, Major (later Field Marshal) Bernard Montgomery, with an army company to investigate the disappearance of the four soldiers and to rescue them if possible. This resulted a few days later in a tense stand-off between the IRA behind Macroom Castle’s walls and a British unit accompanied by at least one armoured car in the middle of the square outside, until a British officer was invited to inspect the IRA headquarters in the castle. As the officer found no evidence that the four soldiers had ever been in the castle, Montgomery retreated.

General Nevil Macready reported to the British cabinet on 6 May that neither side of the IRA was claiming responsibility for the disappearance of the four soldiers:

Efforts to discover trace of these British soldiers is [sic] now being carried out by the leaders of both parties of the I.R.A. who assure me, and I think in good faith, that they know nothing of the incident. This may be true as there are armed bands in existence who admit allegiance to no party. On the other hand it is difficult to believe that the Republican garrison of Macroom can be entirely ignorant.
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It is not surprising that the soldiers were not found in the castle if James Murphy is correct, as they were in the RIC barracks, which was 200 metres to the west on the other side of the bridge.

Austen Chamberlain, Lord Privy Seal, was forced to apologise to Captain Henderson’s father for suggesting that the men had gone off without leave, and to admit that intelligence officers are always on duty. As General Strickland had recorded their absence in his diary by saying ‘they had gone out on I. work and not returned’, it is clear that they had been allowed out by him or members of his staff.
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IRA officer Frank Busteed claimed that he had killed them after they had been abducted from a pub in Farnanes, ten kilometres to the east of Macroom. Given the wealth of evidence placing them in Macroom, it is most likely that Busteed is confused about this. He may have been involved in the killings, or he may have wanted to claim the killing of Hendy, who it is suggested had caused the death of Frank’s mother by throwing her down her stairs.
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Even in the Macroom killings, new evidence points to a somewhat more complex story than that currently accepted. Almost as an aside, Daniel McCarthy of Rylane records: ‘Early in 1922 I was instructed to take a section of men to Coachford to intercept and hold up some British officers who were expected to pass through. Although we spent two days in the area there was no appearance by the British officers.’
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This shows that the IRA intelligence service was still keeping an eye on the British and had enough prior information to organise the interception of some British Army officers. Combined with eyewitness testimony referenced by John Regan, that the IRA at Macroom was on alert on the morning of 26 April, it suggests that Hendy, Dove, Henderson and Brooks were expected.

In itself the information has no great significance unless the reader understands the geography of the Lee Valley. If someone was leaving Major Clarke’s house in Farran, for example, the journey to Coachford is about eight kilometres, and there are only two main roads through the valley to Macroom. In 1922 the Coachford road was better, and the only bridges across the river were at Coachford and Carrigadrohid a few kilometres to the west. To get to Macroom the officers would most probably have gone via Coachford. So how did the IRA know when these officers were travelling? How much advance warning did the Rylane Company get, or need, to mobilise? Why did the Rylane Company spend two days waiting for British officers who never came? Were these officers regarded as important? And were these the men who were eventually captured in Macroom, which would suggest that their trip may not have been connected to the killings earlier in the day?

Before yet another conspiracy theory is invented, it is necessary to point out that this still provides no link between the Macroom killings and the Dunmanway killings. What it does suggest is that it is still far too early to rule anything in or out in the telling of these stories. Ultimately, we have to keep digging.