We danced all through the night, and in the early hours of the morning I returned with a few of the boys to Rossmore. The other three did not come with me; they stayed on for a few more dances, but we had arranged to meet at O’Keeffe’s, of Glenough, where we would have a right good sleep. Shortly after I arrived there Sean Treacy and Seamus Robinson put in an appearance. Sean Hogan did not come with them, but none of us felt a bit uneasy. He had two days to go before he reached his eighteenth birthday, but we knew he was well able to look after himself.
The three of us were about as tired as we could be. What with our five nights without sleep, and the fatigue of a night’s dancing, we could have slept, as Sean said, on a bed of briars. The sight of the cosy bed that had been made ready for us almost made us sleep before we turned into it.
I think Sean Treacy had not finished his rosary before I fell asleep. The next sound I heard was the voice of Patrick Kinnane. It seemed very far off. He was speaking to me I knew, but my eyes refused to open. Then I was brought to my senses. His words lifted me clean out of the bed; I realised the full meaning of his early intrusion: Hogan had been captured by the Peelers!
It would have been very easy for us to believe that “J.J.,” as we called him—his name was John Joseph—had been shot. But to think he was arrested! I would not believe it. Was Kinnane joking? I turned to Sean Treacy, for he too was on his feet by now, and I read the truth in his face.
I would have given a fortune for a few hours more of sleep. I never felt so tired and weary in my life. Robinson and Treacy were just as bad. But the thought of “J.J.” in the enemy’s clutches brought us quickly to our senses. Without a moment’s hesitation we made our decision. Our faces rather than our words conveyed to one another what was in our minds. We must rescue Hogan, or die in the attempt, and we knew that had any one of us been in Hogan’s position his decision would have been the same.
Quickly we got what information there was of his capture. He left the dance soon after us. Before he had gone far he was surrounded by ten stalwart policemen. He carried his gun, of course, as we all did, but he never got a chance to use it. It was not until a year later that the British invented the happy trick of shooting prisoners “while attempting to escape.” If that fashion had then existed “J.J.” would not be with us to-day, nor would there have been much use in planning to rescue him that night.
Our first trouble was to locate him. At that time murders of innocent people had not yet come into fashion, but Martial Law made people more careful, and few ventured out late at night or early in the morning because of the certainty of being held up and questioned and probably arrested by the British, who patrolled the roads at all hours of the night and day. Hence we found on our first enquiry that no one had seen whither Hogan’s escort had departed. They might have faced for any one of half a dozen garrisons—Thurles, Tipperary, or Cashel, for instance. To be thus left in ignorance of where to lay our plans was almost maddening, and we knew that every hour that passed made the danger greater, and that he would soon be removed to a place beyond our reach. Gladly, I believe, would any one of the three of us have taken the place of our youngest comrade. Now that he was gone from us we suddenly discovered all his excellent points of character, though we were never in the habit of paying him compliments while he was with us.
We searched and enquired everywhere. We sent messengers on bicycles in all likely directions to endeavour to pick up a trail. But his captors had got too big a start. We were almost in despair when at last we got on the scent: we traced him to Thurles police barracks.
To attempt to rescue him from that place would have been worse than madness. It would have been as easy to storm the gates of hell. Thurles is a fairly large town, and had a big garrison of both police and military. The barrack was strongly fortified, and the peelers were always on the alert. Their positions made alertness essential. They were in the middle of an area that was soon to become the centre of active warfare, and they were on the main road from Dublin to Cork. There was never the slightest hope of rushing the barracks or of effecting an entrance by a ruse, and besides, we knew that the presence of Sean Hogan in their stronghold would make them all the more careful, for they knew he was one of the four men wanted for the attack at Soloheadbeg. The bits of information they had picked up, and our disappearance from the locality made it certain to them from the first day that we were in that adventure.
But there was one gleam of hope. We knew he would not be kept long in Thurles. Prisoners were only kept in these local stations for a day or two while the preliminary enquiries and remands were being gone through. Then they were transferred to one of the largest prisons—Mountjoy, Cork, Maryboro’, Dundalk or Belfast. In the case of Tipperary men, and indeed men from all over Munster, Cork was generally the destination. The odds were ten to one that in a day or two Sean Hogan would be taken by train from Thurles to Cork.