Kilmichael Ambush

The Kilmichael Ambush ( ga, Luíochán Chill Mhichíl) was an ambush near the village of Kilmichael in County Cork on 28 November 1920 carried out by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence. Thirty-six local IRA volunteers commanded by Tom Barry killed sixteen members of the Royal Irish Constabulary's Auxiliary Division."The Truth About the Boys of Kilmichael"
, ''Sunday Business Post'', 26 November 2000 The Kilmichael ambush was politically as well as militarily significant. It occurred one week after Bloody Sunday and marked an escalation in the IRA's campaign.

Background

The Auxiliaries were recruited from former commissioned officers in the British Army. The force was raised in July 1920 and were promoted as a highly trained elite force by the British media. In common with most of their colleagues, the Auxiliaries engaged at Kilmichael were World War I veterans.

The Auxiliaries and the previously introduced Black and Tans rapidly became highly unpopular in Ireland due to intimidation of the civilian population and arbitrary reprisals after IRA actions – including burnings of businesses and homes, beatings and killings. A week before the Kilmichael ambush, after IRA assassinations of British intelligence operatives in Dublin on Bloody Sunday, Auxiliaries fired on players and spectators at a Gaelic football match in Croke Park Dublin, killing fourteen civilians (thirteen spectators and one player).

The Auxiliaries in Cork were based in the town of Macroom, and in November 1920 they carried out a number of raids on the villages in the surrounding area, including Dunmanway, Coppeen and Castletown-Kinneigh, to intimidate the local population away from supporting the IRA. They shot dead one civilian James Lehane (Séamus Ó Liatháin) at Ballymakeera on 17 October 1920. In his memoir, ''Guerilla Days in Ireland'', Tom Barry noted that before Kilmichael the IRA hardly fired a shot at the Auxiliaries, which "had a very serious effect on the morale of the whole people as well as on the IRA". Barry's assessment was that the West Cork IRA needed a successful action against the Auxiliaries in order to be effective.

On 21 November, Barry assembled a flying column of 36 riflemen at Clogher. The column had 35 rounds for each rifle as well as a handful of revolvers and two Mills bombs (hand grenades). Barry scouted possible ambush sites with Volunteer Michael McCarthy on horseback and selected one on the Macroom–Dunmanway road, on the section between Kilmichael and Gleann, which the Auxiliaries coming out of Macroom used every day. The flying column marched there on foot and reached the ambush site on the night of 27 November. The IRA volunteers took up positions in the low rocky hills on either side of the road. Unlike most IRA ambush positions, there was no obvious escape route for the guerrillas should the fighting go against them.

The ambush

As dusk fell between 4:05 and 4:20 pm on 28 November, the ambush took place on a road at Dus a' Bharraigh in the townland of Shanacashel, Kilmichael Parish, near Macroom.

Just before the Auxiliaries in two lorries came into view, two armed IRA volunteers, responding late to Barry's mobilisation order, drove unwittingly into the ambush position in a horse and side-car, almost shielding the British forces behind them. Barry managed to avert disaster by directing the car up a side road and out of the way.

The first Auxiliary lorry was persuaded to slow down by Barry standing on the road in plain sight in front of a concealed Command Post (with three riflemen). He was wearing an IRA officer's tunic given to him by Paddy O'Brien. The British later claimed Barry was wearing a British uniform. This confusion was part of a ruse by Barry to ensure that his adversaries in both lorries halted beside two IRA ambush positions on the north side of the road, where Sections One (10 riflemen) and Two (10 riflemen) lay concealed. Hidden on the opposite (south) side of the road was half of Section Three (six riflemen), whose instructions were to prevent the enemy from taking up positions on that side. The other half (six riflemen) was positioned before the ambush position as an insurance group, should a third Auxiliary lorry appear. The British later alleged that over 100 IRA fighters were present wearing British uniforms and steel trench helmets. Barry, however, insisted that, excepting himself, the ambush party were in civilian attire, though they used captured British weapons and equipment.

The first lorry, containing nine Auxiliaries, slowed almost to a halt close to the intended ambush position, at which point Barry blew a whistle and threw a Mills bomb that exploded in the open cab of the first lorry killing the driver and District Inspector Francis Crake. The whistle was the signal to open fire. A savage close-quarters fight ensued between surviving Auxiliaries and a combination of IRA Section One and Barry's three person Command Post group. According to Barry's account, some of the British were killed using rifle butts and bayonets in a brutal and bloody encounter. This close-quarters part of the engagement was over relatively quickly, with all nine Auxiliaries dead or dying. The British later claimed that the dead had been mutilated with axes, although Barry dismissed this as atrocity propaganda.

Fire was opened simultaneously at the second Auxiliary lorry, also containing nine Auxiliaries, in the ambush position close to IRA Section Two. This lorry's occupants were in a more advantageous position than Auxiliaries in the first lorry because further away from the ambushing group. Reportedly, they dismounted to the road and exchanged fire with the IRA, killing Michael McCarthy. Barry then brought the Command Post soldiers who had completed the attack on the first lorry to bear on this group. Barry reported that surviving Auxiliaries called out a surrender and that some dropped their rifles. They then reportedly opened fire again with revolvers when three IRA men emerged from cover, killing one volunteer instantly, Jim O'Sullivan, and mortally wounding Pat Deasy. Barry then said he ordered, "Rapid fire and do not stop until I tell you!" Barry stated that he ignored a subsequent attempt by remaining Auxiliaries to surrender, and kept his men firing at a range of only ten yards (8 m) or less until he believed all the Auxiliaries were dead. Barry said of the Auxiliaries who tried to surrender a second time, "soldiers who had cheated in war deserved to die." Barry referred to this episode as the Auxiliaries' " false surrender".

Barry's account in 1949 can be compared with other IRA veteran testimony. In 1937 Section Three commander Stephen O'Neill published a first participant account of an Auxiliary false surrender, though without using that actual term. O'Neil wrote:

Some Bureau of Military History (BMH) accounts do not mention a false surrender, for example Section Three volunteer Ned Young's (WS 1,402). However, Young stated he had left his position to individually pursue an escaping Auxiliary when the false surrender incident took place. Nevertheless, in a 1970 audio interview Young reported that other veterans told him afterwards of an Auxiliary false surrender. Tim Keohane, who claimed controversially in his BMH statement (WS 1,295) to have participated in the ambush, described a false surrender event. He recalled that when Section Two and the Command Post group engaged the second lorry that:

Barry stated that two of the IRA dead, Pat Deasy and Jim O'Sullivan, were shot after the false surrender but Keohane reported that O'Sullivan had been hit earlier, and that Jack Hennessy and John Lordan were wounded after they stood to take the surrender. Ambush veteran Ned Young reported (see above) being told afterwards that Lordon bayonetted an Auxiliary he believed had surrendered falsely. Hennessy described in his BMH statement (WS 1,234) an incident in which, after Michael McCarthy was shot dead, he stood and shouted "hands up" to an auxiliary who had "thrown down his rifle". Hennessy reported the auxiliary then "drew his revolver", causing Hennessy to "shoot him dead".

IRA veterans reported variously that wounded Auxiliaries, finished off after the firefight, were killed with close range shots, blows from rifle butts and bayonet thrusts. Ambush participant Jack O'Sullivan told historian Meda Ryan that, after he disarmed an Auxiliary, "He was walking him up the road as a prisoner when a shot dropped him at his feet". Barry did not engage in this level of detail in his account of the first lorry confrontation, or after the false surrender event. They are consistent with his order to continue fighting to the finish after the false surrender attempt, refusing further surrender attempts.

After fighting ceased it was observed that two IRA volunteers – Michael McCarthy and Jim O'Sullivan – were dead and that Pat Deasy (brother of Liam Deasy) was mortally wounded. The IRA fighters thought they had killed all of the Auxiliaries. In fact two survived, one very badly injured, while another who escaped was later captured and shot dead. Among the 16 British dead on the road at Kilmichael was Francis Crake, commander of the Auxiliaries in Macroom, probably killed at the start of the action by Barry's Mills bomb.

The severity of his injuries probably saved Frederick Henry Forde (also referred to as H.F. Forde). He was left for dead at the ambush site with, amongst other injuries, a bullet wound to his head. Forde was picked up by British forces the following day and taken to hospital in Cork. He was later awarded £10,000 in compensation. The other surviving Auxiliary, Cecil Guthrie (ex Royal Air Force), was badly wounded but escaped from the ambush site. He asked for help at a nearby house. However, unknown to him, two IRA men were staying there. They killed him with his own gun and dumped his body in Annahala bog. In 1926, on behalf of the Guthrie family, Kevin O'Higgins, Irish Free State Minister for Home Affairs, interceded with the local IRA, after which Guthrie's remains were disinterred and buried in the Church of Ireland graveyard at Macroom.

Many IRA volunteers were deeply shaken by the severity of the action, referred to by Barry as "the bloodiest in Ireland", and some were physically sick. Barry attempted to restore discipline by making them form up and perform drill before marching away. Barry himself collapsed with severe chest pains on 3 December and was secretly hospitalized in Cork City. It is possible that the ongoing stress of being on the run and commander of the flying column, along with a poor diet as well as the intense combat at Kilmichael, contributed to his illness, diagnosed as heart displacement.

Aftermath

Soon after the ambush, ''The Times'' published describing the engagement as a "brutal massacre" of the Auxiliary Division. This, along with other reports in the British media, "had a chilling effect on all members of the crown forces"; claims of the killings of surrendered Auxiliaries indicated to the British that the IRA "had descended to a new level of brutality." On the day after the ambush, IRA volunteers from the Cork No. 1 Brigade abducted and killed civilians James and Frederick Blemens, believing them to be British spies. Four days later on 2 December, 3 volunteers were ambushed and killed by soldiers from the Essex Regiment after contacting a British deserter.

In response to news of the ambush and Bloody Sunday, barriers were installed on both ends of Downing Street in London to protect 10 Downing Street from IRA attacks. The Chief Secretary of Ireland, Sir Hamar Greenwood, reported the ambush to the British Parliament; historians Gerry White and Brendan O'Shea noted that Greenwood's actions failed to prevent a Labour Party delegation from travelling to Ireland to ascertain the reality of the ongoing conflict.

The bodies of the killed Auxiliaries were sent to England after being given a lavish funeral procession through Cork on 2 December, which was provided with a military and police escort and attended by numerous prominent dignitaries from the British Army, Catholic Church and Royal Irish Constabulary. After the procession, the Auxiliary Division increased their mistreatment of the County Cork population to the extent that "no person was safe from their molestations." On 10 December, martial law was declared in response to the ambush in the counties of Cork, Kerry, Limerick and Tipperary. The next day, angered British forces burnt sections of the city centre of Cork, preventing the city's fire brigade from putting out the fires for a period of time. Two IRA volunteers were killed while asleep, with their killers most likely being Auxiliaries.

Controversy

Accounts from the British press alleged that the search party that found the Auxiliary casualties the following morning believed that many of them had been "butchered". Local Coroner Dr Jeremiah Kelleher told the military Court of Inquiry at Macroom on 30 November 1920 that he carried out a "superfical examination" on the bodies. He found that one of the dead, an Auxiliary named William Pallister, had a "wound ... inflicted after death by an axe or some similar heavy weapon". He stated that three suffered shotgun wounds at close range. The subsequently publicised term "butchered" was derived from a military witness, Lieutenant H.G. Hampshire, who said, "From my experience as a soldier I should imagine that about four had been killed instantaneously and the others butchered".

The principal published source for what happened at the Kilmichael Ambush is Tom Barry's '' Guerrilla Days in Ireland''. The first by a participant, Stephen O'Neill (reported above), appeared in 1937 (republished in ''Rebel Cork's Fighting Story'', 1947, 2009). The first account of a false surrender event at Kilmichael appeared seven months later in June 1921, in the British Empire journal '' Round Table'' by Lionel Curtis, citing a "trustworthy" source in the area. Curtis was British Prime Minister Lloyd George's secretary during Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations. In ''Ireland Forever'' another British source, former Auxiliary commander F.P. Crozier, also gave a brief account of the same event. Piaras Beaslai mentioned it in ''Michael Collins and the Making of a New Ireland'' in 1926 while Ernie O'Malley's 1936 memoir, ''On Another Man's Wound'', noted the incident also. A 1924 letter to Free State Army headquarters released in 2021 by the Bureau of Military History, concerning IRA casualty Michael McCarthy, confirmed the contemporary perception of a false surrender event.

In ''The IRA And Its Enemies,'' historian Professor Peter Hart took issue with Tom Barry's false surrender account. He mistakenly claimed that Crozier's in 1932 was the first published account (and a concoction). Hart asserted that the false surrender claim was invented: surviving Auxiliary officers were killed after surrendering. As a result of the debate Hart's claims generated, the ambush is quite often considered synonymously with those claims.

Hart's use of anonymous interviews with ambush veterans was regarded as particularly controversial. Meda Ryan disputed his claim to have personally interviewed two IRA veterans in 1988–89, a rifleman and a scout. Ryan stated that just one veteran was alive then. She maintained that the last surviving IRA Kilmichael veteran, Ned Young, died on 13 November 1989, aged 97. The second last reported surviving veteran of Kilmichael, Jack O'Sullivan, died in December 1986. Ned Young's son, John Young, stated in addition that his father was also not capable of giving Hart an interview in 1988, as Ned Young suffered a debilitating stroke in late 1986. John Young swore an affidavit to this effect in December 2007, published in ''Troubled History'' a critique of Hart's research that reproduced on its cover an 18 November 1989 ''Southern Star'' report on the death of "Ned Young – last of the boys of Kilmichael". In 2011, Niall Meehan reported on the deaths of the last surviving Kilmichael veterans as follows:

The 3rd December 1983 Southern Star report of that year's Kilmichael Ambush Commemoration noted three surviving veterans, Tim O'Connell, Jack O'Sullivan and Ned Young. The event was widely reported ... The following 24th December 1983 Southern Star reported, "One of the three surviving members of the famous KiImichael Ambush has died. He was lieutenant Timothy O'Connell". The newspaper referred, as did the 7th December 1985 Southern Star, to "two survivors, Ned Young and Jack O'Sullivan". One year later, the 20th December 1986 edition reported the death of "one of the last two Survivors of the Kilmichael Ambush Jack O'Sullivan". The 26th November 1988 Southern Star subsequently referred to "The sole Survivor of the volunteers who performed so well under the leadership of general Tom Barry, namely Ned Young".

Hart stated that he interviewed an unarmed scout, his second ambush participant, on 19 November 1989, six days after Ned Young died and one after his death was reported (see above). This claim intensified the debate, as the last ambush and dispatch scouts reportedly died in 1967 and 1971. In a 2011 television documentary on Tom Barry, Hart considered whether he had been the victim of "some sort of hoax" and of a "fantasist", but concluded "that seems extremely unlikely". D.R. O'Connor Lysaght observed that "it is possible that Dr Hart was the victim of one or more aged chancer".

Niall Meehan suggested in ''Troubled History'' (2008) and subsequently that Hart may have based his interview with the scout partly on Jack Hennessy's BMH testimony (reported above). Though Hennessy died in 1970, Hart had a copy of his BMH statement. In his book, Hart paraphrased the scout reporting "a sort of false surrender". Hennessy was not unarmed or a scout. However, in Hart's 1992 TCD PhD thesis, this particular interviewee was not described as either a scout or as unarmed. Further anomalies surround this individual. For instance, Hart's PhD thesis reported him giving the author a tour of the ambush site, a claim the book withdrew. Eve Morrison, who argues in a 2012 essay on Kilmichael that Hart did not deliberately falsify evidence, but pointed out that one quote ascribed by Hart to the scout were actually from remarks recorded in 1970 from ambush participant Jack O'Sullivan (who also was not an unarmed scout). Meehan and Eve Morrison debated the significance of these points in 2012, 2017 and 2020.Eve Morrison, Kilmichael Revisited (in David Fitzpatrick Ed. ''Terror in Ireland, 1916-1923'', 2012).

Hart's 1998 book cited a further three ambush participant accounts, again anonymously. His source was audio taped interviews a Father John Chisholm conducted in 1970 for Liam Deasy's memoir ''Toward Ireland Free'' (1973). However, Morrison stated in her 2012 Kilmichael essay that Chisholm recorded two (not three) Kilmichael participants speaking on Kilmichael. One was Ned Young the other being Jack O'Sullivan, reportedly the last and second last ambush veterans to die, in 1986 and 1989. In other words, without informing his readers, Hart counted an anonymous Young interview twice, in 1970 (Chisholm interview) and in 1988–9 (claimed Hart interview), while giving the impression he was citing separate individuals.

In addition to his anonymous interviews, Hart cited a captured unsigned typed "rebel commandant's report" of the ambush from the Imperial War Museum, which does not mention a false surrender, as Barry's after-action report to his superiors. Meda Ryan and Brian Murphy challenged the authenticity of the document. They suggest that it contains factual errors Barry would not have written and also accurate information unknown to Barry. For instance: stating that two IRA volunteers had been mortally wounded and one killed outright, when the reverse was the case; getting British losses right, attesting to "sixteen of the enemy ... being killed", when Barry thought 17 (including Forde) were dead after the ambush. The document stated that IRA fighters had 100 rounds each when the correct figure reportedly was 36. Barry did not know that Guthrie, the Auxiliary who escaped, was, as the "report" put it, "now missing", or even that he had escaped. In other words, the document contained correct information known only to the British authorities but unknown to Barry, and incorrect information known by Barry but unknown to the British.

In her book ''Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter'', Ryan argues that the "rebel commandant's report" was forged by Castle officials and Auxiliaries during the Truce in order to help ensure that the families of those Auxiliaries who were killed at Kilmichael received compensation payments. Ryan's argument was queried by American historian W. H. Kautt, who discovered that the report had been included in a collection of captured IRA documents that was published by the British Army's Irish Command in June 1921 before the Truce. In ''Ambushes and Armour: The Irish Rebellion 1919-1921'', Kautt concluded that the report could be authentic.

Hart continued to stand by his account until his death in 2010. In 2012, Eve Morrison published ''Kilmichael Revisited'', an essay based partly on IRA veteran testimony. She had access to an unpublished draft by Hart, dated 2004, responding to the controversy surrounding his claims. The essay's defence of Hart was reviewed by John Borgonovo, Niall Meehan, Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc and John Regan (in ''Irish Historical Studies'', ''Reviews in History'', ''History Ireland'' and ''Dublin Review of Books''). Morrison cited six participant statements to the Bureau of Military History (including the controversial Timothy Keohane) that were published in 2003. She listened to two conducted by Father John Chisholm in 1970 for Liam Deasy's ''Toward Ireland Free'', with Jack O'Sullivan and Ned Young (who also contributed a BMH account). Morrison's 2022 book on the ambush, ''Kilmichael: the Life and Afterlife of an Ambush'', discusses the Kilmichael debate at length. Morrison consulted Hart's original interview notes as well as those he made while listening to Chisholm's recorded interviews. These notes identified all of Hart's Kilmichael interviewees including Ned Young and Willie Chambers, the unarmed scout. Hart's papers have been available for consultation in Memorial University Newfoundland since April 2016. Morrison also makes extensive use of a long account of the ambush by West Cork native and local historian Flor Crowley published in ''The Kerryman'' in December 1947. It does not support Barry's Guerilla Days version of events.

All of the ambush participants in Hart's unpublished response, bar Ned Young and the alleged "scout", were dead when Hart conducted his research in the late 1980s. Six were named: Paddy O'Brien, Jim "Spud" Murphy, Jack Hennessy, Ned Young, Michael O'Driscoll and Jack O'Sullivan. Significantly, Hart did not name the seventh, the "scout" allegedly interviewed after Ned Young died. Morrison stated that Hart had heard or read ten accounts in total by these seven veterans (five witness statements and five other interviews). But this was in 2004, six years after publication of ''The IRA and its Enemies'' in 1998. Morrison stated she identified in Hart's book Chisholm interview utterances in all but two of the anonymous quotes (though without identifying these two). Morrison pointed out that one of the quotes Hart ascribed to the 'scout' were in fact said by Jack O'Sullivan to Fr Chisholm. Ned Young's son, John Young, afterwards continued to dispute the claim that Hart interviewed his father in 1988. In April 2013, Marion O'Driscoll took issue with John Young's claims. She stated that Hart had interviewed Ned Young and that her late husband Jim O'Driscoll had introduced Hart to him. In May 2014, ''Irish Historical Studies'' acknowledged in a published apology that John Borgonovo's review of ''Terror in Ireland'' misconstrued some of Morrison's arguments.

Commemoration

In 1929, an iron cross commemorating the engagement was erected on the site by Barry and a few IRA men who had taken part in the ambush. In 1966, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising, it was decided that a roadside monument was to erected in commemoration of the volunteers. The monument (pictured in infobox) was designed by Terry McCarthy, a stone cutter from Cork, with funds being raised by donations. The monument was unveiled on 10 July. During the ceremony, Barry and surviving volunteers paraded in a guard of honour.

In popular culture

* A one-act play in the Irish language, ''Gleann an Mhacalla'' (The Echoing Glen) was written by an t-Athair Pádraig Ó hArgáin in 1970, the 50th anniversary of the ambush. It centres on the youngest of the three volunteers killed, 16-and-a-half year old Pat Deasy.
* Ken Loach's 2006 film '' The Wind That Shakes the Barley'' features an IRA ambush scene that is partly inspired by Kilmichael.

Centenary documentaries

* In late 2020, film makers Brendan Hayes and Jerry O'Mullane along with David Sullivan and Bernie O'Regan announced that they were currently working on a documentary called "''Forget not the boys".'' Hayes has already produced work on Sam Maguire, another prominent figure in the war of independence. The documentary premiered on 28 November 2021 and featured interviews from the children of some of the volunteers who fought in the ambush as well as Barry biographer Meda Ryan and former Fine Gael leader Alan Dukes.
* As the COVID-19 pandemic prevented a public commemoration of the ambush from taking place, local historians of the Coppeen Archeological, Historical and Cultural Society produced a documentary titled ''Kilmichael – A Story of a Century''.

See also

* Crossbarry Ambush
* Carrowkennedy ambush
* Timeline of the Irish War of Independence

Footnotes

Sources

* Tom Barry, '' Guerrilla Days in Ireland''
* Richard Bennet, ''The Black and Tans''
* Peter Hart, ''The IRA and its Enemies''
* Michael Hopkinson, ''The Irish War of Independence''

Peter Hart, Meda Ryan, et al., in ''History Ireland'', 2005, Vol 13, Numbers 2,3,4,5

Niall Meehan, Brian Murphy, ''Troubled History - a tenth anniversary critique of Peter Hart's 'The IRA and its Enemies

Niall Meehan, 'Examining Peter Hart', ''Field Day Review'' 10, 2014

David Miller, ''British Propaganda in Ireland and its significance today''
(foreword to Murphy)
* Eve Morrison, 'Kilmichael Revisited', in David Fitzpatrick, Ed. ''Terror in Ireland, 1916-1923''
* Brian Murphy, ''The Origin and Organisation of British Propaganda in Ireland in 1920''.
* Meda Ryan, ''Tom Barry, IRA Freedom Fighter'' () (Blackrock: Mercier Press, 2003)
* Eve Morrison, Kilmichael: the Life and Afterlife of an Ambush (Newbridge: Irish Academic Press, 2022)

External links

NY Times, 30 November 1920, Sinn Feiners kill 16 Cadets


* ttp://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/bloody-fable-of-kilmichaels-dead-517091.html Irish Independent, 26 November 2000, Bloody fable of Kilmichael's dead
The Kilmichael Ambush - A Review of Background, Controversies and Effects

Distorting Irish History (One), the stubborn facts of Kilmichael: Peter Hart and Irish Historiography

''Terror in Ireland 1916-23'', David Fitzpatrick (ed) - Niall Meehan review (including David Fitzpatrick, Eve Morrison, responses)


Niall Meehan reply to Professor David Fitzpatrick and to Dr Eve Morrison’s response to criticism of ''Terror in Ireland 1916-1923''

The History of the Last Atrocity

Eve Morrison, Reply to John Regan

West Cork and The Writing of History

Why Spinwatch is publishing John Young’s Statement


Kilmichael: a 1920 battle that is still being fought.] A Q&A with Eve Morrison, author of Kilmichael: The Life and Afterlife of an Ambush

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1920 in Ireland
History of County Cork
Military actions and engagements during the Irish War of Independence
Royal Irish Constabulary
November 1920 events
Ambushes in Europe