Tales of the R.I.C.

by Unknown

Patrick saw the mistake he had made, shrugged his shoulders, and started to return to the car with Sheila.

Now their whole attention had been centred on the direction from which the I.G.’s car was expected to come, and the last thing they expected was a counter-attack from the direction of Ballybor; but as Patrick and Sheila turned to leave the Volunteer captain, they found themselves covered by a party of R.I.C., with Blake at their head, and at the same time heavy firing burst out in the wood on both sides of the road.

Patrick and Sheila had no alternative but to put up their hands, but the Volunteer captain tried to escape, and was promptly shot by a constable. Blake asked what they were doing at such an hour on the highroad, and Patrick was starting his usual story of how he and his sister were on their way from Dublin to attend an urgent case in the country, but when he caught sight of his brother William standing behind Blake, he faltered and remained dumb.

Before Blake could ask any more questions they had to jump to one side to avoid a Crossley full of Auxiliaries, which dashed past, and stopped a few yards beyond them, the Cadets at once jumping out and taking up positions on each side of the car with Lewis guns trained to sweep the road as far as the big rock. Blake, after ordering William and a constable to take Patrick and Sheila down the Ballybor road out of the line of fire until he could deal with them, took command of the Auxiliaries, and waited for the action to develop.

By this time it was daylight, and the police, who had worked round the flanks of the ambushers, began to make it pretty hot for the men in the trenches. Now it is one thing to shoot an unfortunate policeman perched up in a stationary lorry in the middle of the road, and quite a different story when the policeman starts to shoot you in the back from behind a tree, and very soon the Volunteers broke from their trenches and started to stream down the Ballybor road.

There was a momentary lull in the firing, broken by two hurricane bursts of fire from the Cadets’ Lewis guns, and the Volunteers fell in little heaps on the grey limestone road; the remainder hesitated, and then ran for their trenches, to be met by a hail of bullets from the police, who had taken up positions commanding the trenches while the Volunteers were trying to escape by the road. Again they tried to escape along the road, and again the Lewis guns spat out a magazine of bullets whilst a man could count five, the noise of the guns being intensified by the dead wall of trees.

The few Volunteers now left threw down their arms, put up their hands, and the fight was over.

In the meantime William had taken his brother and sister down the Ballybor road until they came to the lane where the car was, and here he told them to wait. After a few minutes Sheila asked him to send the constable out of hearing, as she wished to talk to him.

After the constable had retired up the lane there was a terrible silence for several minutes. Patrick and Sheila both realised too late that William must have been in the house when they started on their journey to Dublin for the arms, and that he must have gone straight to Ballybor to warn the police of the impending ambuscade. They knew that, even if they were not sentenced to death, they could not escape a long term of imprisonment, and that they had been betrayed by their own brother, but would not—or could not—realise that William had only done his duty.

Suddenly Sheila burst into a passionate denouncement of William’s treachery to his country and his own flesh and blood, to be stopped by Patrick with great difficulty, who, controlling his rising passion and terror by a great effort, implored William for their mother’s sake to let them escape while there was yet time. At any rate to let Sheila go—surely the British Government did not wage war on women.