To add to our troubles we suddenly saw another military car arrive on the scene from the Limerick direction also. We had not calculated on that. These reinforcements must have arrived by accident, but with our limited supplies we could not continue to engage the whole party. We decided to retire. As we were retiring, still checking the enemy with an odd volley from the fields we saw a half a dozen R.I.C. men with rifles coming up from the village to give further help to the military. If we had had enough men or enough ammunition in the first instance we could, of course, have detailed a few men to feign an attack on the barracks so as to keep these fellows indoors; but we could not afford that, and so our plans miscarried.
THE FLYING COLUMN IN TIPPERARY.
We retired without losing a man or receiving a wound. The enemy had three dead and three wounded.
Next morning we learned more than we knew while engaged in the attack. Brigadier-General Lucas was actually with the enemy forces. He had, as I said, escaped the previous night. He wandered all through the night through the fields not knowing exactly where he was and endeavouring in the first place to avoid any of our men who might have been sent in pursuit of him, and in the second place trying to get in touch with some of his own forces, police or military. On the morning of the ambush he arrived at the village of Pallas, three miles on the Limerick side of Oola, and evidently was picked up by the passing car.
We, of course, did not recognise him. As a matter of fact we were not even aware of his escape. The whole thing was a mere coincidence, though the English newspapers next day splashed the story as an “attempt to recapture the General.” Perhaps it is as well we did not recognise him. Anyhow, we wish him luck, now that all is past.
A few days after this engagement at Oola I returned to Dublin. For some time I was kept busy with minor activities. It was only then, too, that I found an opportunity of having removed from my body some of the bits of hand grenades with which I had been wounded at the attack on Rear Cross police barracks.
This was in the autumn of 1920. We had now been a year and a half on the run with a price on our heads. But I was becoming more reckless. The war was going on with greater intensity every day. I saw that the struggle of the Irish people was taking the shape I had always hoped. The British soldiers and police, particularly the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries—the latter were all ex-officers of the British Army, and were the garrison’s gentlemen murderers—were day and night looting shops, burning private houses, and murdering prisoners and torturing youths. But the more savage became their methods of repression the more determined the Irish people became to fight to the bitter end. Practically the whole country was now on our side, helping us with food and information when they could not give us more active assistance. Men who had not the same views as we had on active warfare were being driven into our ranks because if they stayed at home in their beds they would be murdered by the British in the dead of night. In fact, their only hope of safety was to get “on the run.”
If anybody not intimately acquainted with the events of that period thinks I am accusing the British too much I can only refer him to the Irish newspapers of the time. These newspapers were bitterly opposed to our policy and our methods, so they were not likely to exaggerate on our behalf. Moreover if they dared to suggest any charge that could not be sustained against the British they knew they would be at once suppressed. Yet, day after day for a year and a half these papers reported the murder of scores of prisoners, the shooting of men in their beds, the looting of towns and the burning of whole streets.