The Real Chief - Liam Lynch Read Free Page B

death of a true friend

    In mid-1920 the British army of occupation in Ireland exceeded in strength the first British expeditionary forces sent to France to fight the Germans in 1914. At this time in Ireland the British army were experiencing difficulty in combating guerrilla warfare.
    Liam Lynch set about organising a two weeks’ training course for the volunteers of No. 2 brigade. He outlined to his staff and members of the brigade column his intention of creating an active service unit in each battalion so that a column of eighteen to thirty men could, with the available arms, be capable of com­bined action for larger operations. At the conclusion of the train­­­­ing course, battalion officers with the column would return to their own commands.
    Lynch next planned the capture of the barracks at Mallow, which was housed by the Seventeenth Lancers. At the time two volunteers, Richard Willis and John Bolster, were employed on the maintenance staff, so they kept an eye on their routine move­­ments. The garrison consisted of non-commissioned officers and men, and an officer who normally left the barracks each morning to exercise the horses. From the reports by Willis and Bolster, Lynch and his staff were able to draw up sketch maps of the bar­racks.
    Owen Harold, who had been billeted in a house facing the barracks helped by giving details of the troops’ movements. As the barracks was situated in a narrow street it was difficult for the volunteers to carry out the attack, but they assembled under cover of darkness in the nearby town hall the night before the attack was to take place. On 28 September 1920 Bolster and Wil­lis ar­rived for work at the usual time, bringing Patrick Mc­Carthy with them as a contractor’s overseer. McCarthy was to hold up the guardroom when the attacking party arrived at the gate. Mc­Carthy, Willis and Bolster were armed with revolvers.
    The routine garrison left at the usual time and the ‘con­trac­tor’s overseer’ went through the routine of measuring the doors and windows while he waited for his comrades outside to begin the operation. At around 9.30 a.m. Ernie O’Malley knocked on the door beside the main gate. When the sentry pushed back the slide over the peephole O’Malley pushed in an envelope saying, ‘this is for the barrack warden’. The sentry had to open the door in order to take the envelope but O’Malley said that he would personally like to give it to the barrack warden. The sentry hesi­tated at this unusual request giving O’Malley the opportunity of moving closer to him; he grabbed the sentry’s rifle and wrestled it out of his hands. Paddy O’Brien and another volunteer, imme­diately behind O’Malley, pushed the door open. Liam Lynch and a small party were on their heels. They made for the guardroom, which was situated about thirty yards from the entrance gate and midway in the block of buildings. On the pretext of examining some defects, McCarthy, Willis and Bolster had been waiting be­side the guardroom. They rushed into the room and held up the guard. Inside the main entrance there was an open shed where the senior NCO, Sergeant Gibbs, was super­vising the showing of a horse. When he saw the first man of the raiding party he rushed towards the guardroom. One of the volun­teers ordered him to halt. He ignored the order and a shot was fired over his head, but still he did not stop. A bullet hit him leaving him mortally wound­ed at the door. The rest of the people in the guardroom were then marched out on to the square and held there until the remainder of the garrison was collected. First aid was given, under super­vision, to the wounded sergeant; the remainder was locked into one of the stables. While this was happening Lynch had given the pre-arranged signal to the three waiting cars which were driven into the yard; all the arms, am­mu­nition and