Tales of the R.I.C.

by Unknown

Here he found a gallant Lewis gunner, badly wounded in an arm and leg, firing his gun as fast as he could mount the magazines, and so preventing the Volunteers from leaving their cover at the top of the bank and attacking at close quarters.

So hot was the Lewis gunner’s fire that after five minutes the Volunteers broke off the action and simply vanished. Blake then turned his attention to the wounded civilians, and though he had grown indifferent to dreadful sights through years of war, the awful condition of the dead and wounded in that train made him physically sick.

The majority of the wounds were from flat-nosed bullets, with the most terrible results. In one carriage lay a young woman in a pool of blood, her chest literally blown away by one of these devilish bullets. In another, a middle-aged man was screaming like a mad wild animal, his arm and shoulder shattered, and at his feet lay an old countrywoman, the top of her head blown off.

Very few of the soldiers had been wounded, and under Blake’s command they at once started off in pursuit, only to catch a glimpse of the Volunteers disappearing down a road on bicycles.

After a long delay the train went on, and in order to try and forget the awful scenes he had just witnessed, Blake endeavoured to read two English papers. The first paper, in a long leading article, called for a policy of conciliation in Ireland, while the second (a threepenny edition of the first) recounted at great length a speech made the previous day by a famous legal politician calling loudly upon the Government to withdraw all troops from Ireland, and demanding that the R.I.C. and Auxiliary Cadets should be severely dealt with for their brutal reprisals on innocent people, but never a word about the savage attacks on these same R.I.C. and Cadets by these “innocent people,” or a single thought for the widows and orphans of the murdered policemen. In disgust he threw both papers out of the carriage windows, and consigned all politicians to the bottomless pit.

On arriving at Esker, Blake found that his chief duty was to act as liaison officer between the military and police, and that he would be attached to the staff of the G.O.C. of the district.

He quickly realised that the bad reports of the state of the south had not been exaggerated, and that it was in a far worse state than the west. Ambushes of police and military, attacks on trains, shootings of unarmed soldiers and police in the streets at all hours of the day and night, the finding of dead men riddled with bullets in every kind of place, from an open field to an empty house, and the robbery of mails occurred daily with monotonous regularity; and so accustomed had people of all classes become to this saturnalia of crime, that they thought no more about the murder of a human being than the usual man thinks of killing a rat.

Blake’s principal work consisted of investigating these crimes in company with police and soldiers, and afterwards in making out a report for the General. In addition, he accompanied the General when making tours through the district.

One morning they received news of a terrible ambush of Cadets, and on arriving at the scene of the ambush Blake found the dead bodies of the Cadets still lying on the road. All their equipment and personal effects had been stolen, and their faces smashed in with an axe. Probably in several cases this barbarous mutilation had been committed before the unfortunate Cadets were dead.

Two days afterwards the bodies of the murdered Cadets passed through Esker en route for England. All shops were closed, and great crowds collected in the streets. Blake was greatly struck by the different attitudes of sections of the crowd, some taking their hats off with every mark of reverence and sympathy when the coffins passed, while others kept their hats on until ordered by the officers to uncover, and many showed plainly by their faces that they were in full sympathy with the murderers.