The operation was one of the most successful carried out in Dublin. The I.R.A., however, suffered some losses. Frank Teeling was captured and sentenced to death, but escaped from Kilmainham Jail before the sentence was carried out. Paddy Moran was later captured and tried for taking part in one of these executions although he was four miles from the scene. He was hanged in Mountjoy early in 1921. I knew poor Paddy well. I first met him at the home of my friend Mrs. O’Doherty in Connaught Street, Dublin. He was a lovable character, and a faithful soldier of Ireland.
There were two terrible reprisals that day for the execution of the fourteen spies.
In broad daylight the same afternoon hundreds of soldiers and Black and Tans drove to Croke Park where 10,000 people, who had not even heard of the shootings that morning, were witnessing a football match between Tipperary and Dublin.
Surrounding the grounds the British without warning poured volley after volley into the crowd, killing seventeen people and wounding about fifty. That crime was, perhaps, the most diabolical of which England had been guilty.
Another incident of “Bloody Sunday” had, however, a sadder personal touch for me. That was the murder of Peadar Clancy and Dick McKee. They had been captured by the enemy shortly before, and were murdered in Dublin Castle as a reprisal for the shooting of the officers. Of course, Sir Hamar Greenwood, or his chief manufacturer of lies at the Castle, invented one of their usual explanations that they attacked the guard and attempted to escape. Fancy two highly intelligent officers attempting to attack an armed guard in the heart of a fortress from which a mouse could not escape! An independent medical examination showed that the two I.R.A. men were subjected to the most incredible tortures before they were done to death.
Mick Collins and Tom Cullen (later A.D.C. to the new Free State Governor-General) arranged for this medical examination, and also for the lying-in-state of the two bodies at the Pro-Cathedral. I mention this to their credit, for few members of G.H.Q. staff would have ventured so much in public at that time of danger and uncertainty.
Poor Dick and Peadar! They were two of our bravest officers and two of our staunchest supporters of the intensive war policy. They lived only five weeks after Sean, and did not even get a chance of dying fighting like him. A County Clare Volunteer named Conor Clune was murdered on the same occasion in the Castle.
CHAPTER XXIV.
MY RETURN TO TIPPERARY.
From Dun Laoghaire I was taken in a motor car by Eamonn Fleming across the mountains into Wicklow. At one place Eamonn introduced me under an assumed name, but the man of the house laughed heartily and assured him that he knew me well as Dan Breen, for he was a patient in the same part of the Mater Hospital when I was there some weeks before.