"We haven't had a real sleep since Easter," said Rory as an excuse for his prodigious yawns.
"Couldn't you sleep in Richmond Barracks?" asked my sister Moira.
"Sleep," he cried. "The room we were in had marked on the door "Accommodation for eleven men" and they put eighty-three of us into it. There was hardly room to stand. We couldn't sit down, we couldn't lie down, we couldn't wash, we couldn't do anything there," he broke off.
We asked him if he knew many of the men in the room with him.
"Yes," he said. "Tom Clarke was in the room with me, and Sean MacDermott, and Major MacBride. But they were removed later."
"How did they come to let you out?"
"O, they were releasing all boys under sixteen."
"Did they ask you anything about your father?" asked Mamma.
"O," said Rory, "I didn't give them my right name. I'm down as Robert Carney, of Bangor, Co. Down."