I Signed My Death Warrant Read Free Page A

with the Black and Tan and Auxiliaries reeking havoc around the country, sacking towns like Balbriggan, Carrick-on-Shannon, Tuam, Ennistymon, Miltown-Malby and Tralee, which was closed down for the first ten days of November 1920. No businesses or schools were allowed to open and people were warned to keep off the streets.
    The British had infiltrated many intelligence agents into Dublin, and some of those closest to Collins had very narrow escapes. Lloyd George proudly proclaimed that he had ‘murder by the throat’ during his address at the annual Lord Mayor’s ban­­quet at the Guildhall on 9 November. The IRA decided to kill simultaneously as many of those agents as they could at nine o’clock on the morning of Sunday, 21 November 1920. Members of the Squad, backed up the various battalions of the Dublin IRA, targeted as many as thirty-five agents. Sixteen of the agents were shot – eleven fatally. Another officer who was killed a result of a mistaken identity and two Auxiliaries were taken prisoner and then shot dead, bringing the total dead for the morning to fourteen.
    That afternoon the Auxiliaries retaliated blindly, raiding a football game and firing into the crowd, killing fifteen innocent civilians, including one of the footballers on the field. The dead included, a ten-year-old boy who was shot in the head, a fourteen-year-old boy, and a young woman who had gone to the game with her fiancée. They were due to marry five days later. Over sixty people required hospital treatment, and eleven of those were detained in hospital.
    The day was remembered as Bloody Sunday. The following Sunday seventeen Auxiliaries were killed in the famous Kil­michael ambush in Cork, and another was taken prisoner and killed a couple of days later. Arthur Griffith, the acting president of the Dáil, was arrested, and Collins became acting president.
    Lloyd George asked Archbishop Patrick J. Clune of Perth, Australia, to contact IRA leaders in Dublin to sound out the prospects for a settlement. The archbishop met Griffith in jail and Collins in a private house. Terms for a ceasefire were agreed but the whole thing fell through, because Dublin Castle contended that the IRA was about to collapse, and Sinn Féin vice president Fr Michael O’Flanagan made some intemperate remarks that were seen as defeatist. The British also learned that de Valera was secretly returning to Ireland. He had planned to stay in the United States for at least another six months, but on hearing that Collins had taken over at home, he decided to return to Ireland immediately. Upon his return he promptly complained to IRA chief of staff Richard Mulcahy that the war was being waged in the wrong way.
    â€˜Ye are going too fast,’ he told Mulcahy. ‘This odd shooting of a policeman here and there is having a very bad effect, from the propaganda point of view, on us in America. What we want is one good battle about once a month with about 500 men on each side.’
    It was insensitive to criticise the way the campaign had been run without, at least, waiting to consult a few people. In the fol­lowing days, de Valera tried to send Collins to the United States, but the Big Fellow refused to go. ‘That Long Whoor won’t get rid of me as easy as that,’ he complained.
    But Collins had lost some of his clout at home, not only with the return of de Valera, but also with the uncovering of his main police spies. Kavanagh had died of natural causes, McNamara had been dismissed on suspicion of leaking material, and Ned Broy was arrested after the carbon copies of some of his reports were found among captured documents.
    While Collins had targeted selected individuals, de Valera called for battles in which numbers became more important. A distinct rift widened between Collins and Minister for Defence Cathal Brugha, who revived an old plan to target members of the British cabinet.
    â€˜This is madness,’ Collins