Dying for the Cause: Kerry's Republican Dead

Tim Horgan

• Publisher: Mercier Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781781172797
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: History

This book tells the story of the lives and deaths of 162 Kerrymen who died for the ideal of an independent Irish republic of 32 counties. Many were killed in action but others were executed or died while in captivity as a result of brutality or neglect. In telling their stories Tim Horgan has provided an intriguing social history of the county and a snapshot of life in Ireland.They range from the story of Thomas Ashe whose funeral was attended by over 100, 000 people to that of seventeen year old Tom Moriarty who was buried secretly by his comrades. They include people like the First World War marksman, Con Healy, who though dying of tuberculosis went on to become a hero fighting for his own country and the contrasting stories of Patrick Lynch who was shot dead at his doorstep and of Tim O'Sullivan who was executed in faraway Donegal, though they were born in neighbouring parishes in South Kerry.This book will certainly be a collectors item and will make a wonderful gift for anyone with Kerry connections.

1st and 9th (Tralee) Battalions,
Kerry No. 1 Brigade

The Irish Volunteers were established in Tralee on 10 December 1913 during a meeting of the weekly Gaelic League class. Matthew McMahon of Urban Terrace, Boherbue, had been at the inaugural meeting of the Volunteers at the Rotunda in Dublin fifteen days previously and at his instigation a company was formed in Tralee. Tralee had a been a centre of IRB activity in the preceding years and within a short time the Brotherhood had gained prominent positions within the fledgling Volunteer movement. Austin Stack, the head of the IRB, was appointed O/C of the Tralee Volunteers and Alf Cotton, a civil servant and fellow IRB member, was his deputy. In March 1916, weeks before the Rising, Cotton was expelled from Kerry by the authorities and Paddy Cahill became the second in command. Though well organised and drilled before the Rising, the unexpected arrival of Casement at Banna, the premature arrival and subsequent capture and scuttling of the arms ship Aud, and the arrest of Stack on Good Friday threw plans for a rising in Kerry into chaos. Within days, all senior members of the Irish Volunteers were under arrest and it would not be until 1917 that the movement would attempt to resurrect itself in Tralee.

During 1917 the Tralee Volunteers began reorganising, arms were collected and recruitment and drilling continued. Austin Stack remained O/C of the battalion and also the leader of the Irish Volunteers in the county. Paddy Cahill was V/C and Dan Sullivan, the chairman of the Tralee Urban Council, was the battalion adjutant. Billy Mullins served as the quartermaster. The election of 1918 resulted in Austin Stack being appointed Minister for Home Affairs in the first Dáil and following his departure to Dublin in January 1919, Cahill became the battalion O/C and Joe Melinn his deputy.

In the spring of 1919 the single Kerry Irish Volunteer command was divided into three brigades. Paddy Cahill, who had been O/C of the original Kerry Brigade and also of the Tralee (1st) Battalion, now became O/C of Kerry No. 1 Brigade, which consisted of the Tralee, North and West Kerry Battalions. The Tralee Battalion was composed of companies from Boherbue, Rock Street, Strand Street, Farmer’s Bridge, Ballyroe, Oakpark, Blennerville and Curraheen. Several of Cahill’s staff from Tralee joined him in the new brigade staff and as a result a new leadership was appointed to the 1st Battalion. Dan Healy was appointed battalion O/C with Michael Doyle as his deputy. Michael Fleming of Gas Terrace was the battalion adjutant and Paddy Barry of Rock Street was the new quartermaster, with Thomas Foley being appointed the intelligence officer.

On the orders of GHQ, following the death of Terence MacSwiney on hunger strike, the IRA was to engage the crown forces wherever they could be encountered during the last week of October 1920. The killing of several RIC men in North Kerry brought about a dramatic escalation of the conflict that forced Paddy Cahill and other active IRA men in his Tralee command to go into hiding. They set up a brigade headquarters at Fybough, near Keel, seventeen miles by road from Tralee. In this remote location Cahill also located his brigade active service unit, which was mainly composed of Tralee IRA Volunteers who could not return to the town. The exodus of so many fighting men hampered the activity of what remained of the 1st Battalion in Tralee. However, in March 1921 Brigade Adjutant Paddy Garvey was detailed to set up a battalion active service unit within the town. This was commanded by the ‘A’ Company officer, Captain John Joe Sheehy, and was composed of IRA Volunteers still living in Tralee. This battalion unit was soon taking the fight to the local RIC and Auxiliaries. Their most notable successes were the killings of Auxiliary commander Major John McKinnon on 15 April and Head Constable Francis Benson on 14 May 1921. By this time Paddy Cahill had been relieved of his command by GHQ, who had judged him to be ineffectual as a military leader.

While Cahill’s military leadership of the brigade could certainly be questioned, there was no doubt that he was a popular figure with many of the fighting men. He had a loyal following within the brigade staff and especially within the Strand Street area of Tralee in which ‘B’ Company was based, the district of Tralee where Cahill was from. His second in command, Tadhg Brosnan, refused to become the Kerry No. 1 Brigade O/C such was his loyalty to Cahill, with the result that GHQ was obliged to appoint Andy Cooney, an organiser who had been operating in South Kerry, as brigade commander. While Cahill withdrew from his position, his staff were defiant and refused to cooperate with Cooney in an attempt to isolate the new brigade O/C. Cooney’s orders were ignored, especially by ‘B’ Company. However, within the town John Joe Sheehy’s active service unit was now waging the fight against the crown forces and this unit remained aloof from the Cahill controversy. Dan Healy’s command as O/C of the Tralee-based 1st Battalion was transferred to Sheehy, though Cahill loyalists within the town refused to accept his leadership and they remained outside the battalion structure.

This situation whereby a significant section of the town’s IRA Volunteers refused to accept the command of the local 1st Battalion was to remain a source of contention for nearly fourteen months. Eventually IRA Chief of Staff Liam Lynch brokered a deal in the summer of 1922 whereby the Cahill loyalists would form a separate battalion in the Tralee district and this was to be termed the 9th Battalion. This new battalion was composed of companies from Strand Street, Blennerville, Ballyroe, Churchill and Curraheen. Its O/C was Paddy Paul Fitzgerald and in theory it was not to be under the direct command of the brigade O/C, who by that time was Humphrey Murphy. However, although the outbreak of Civil War saw both the 1st and 9th Battalions united in their opposition to the Treaty, the personality differences that arose from GHQ’s ill-considered removal of Paddy Cahill remained simmering under the surface until well after the war ended.

Following the withdrawal of the British Army in January 1922, the 1st Battalion used its barracks in Ballymullen as their new headquarters. The outbreak of the Civil War saw many of the town’s experienced fighters in action in the Limerick and Tipperary area, but the Free State’s seaborne invasion at Fenit on 2 August 1922 caught the battalion unaware, as most of the active Volunteers were engaged in the faltering defence of the Limerick to Waterford line. After some bloody fighting, General Paddy Daly and his Dublin Guard captured Tralee on that summer’s day and went on to establish garrisons in the towns of Kerry. However, the rural areas remained in Republican hands and within days Sheehy’s battalion was waging a guerrilla war against the Free State Army, which had its headquarters in Ballymullen Barracks. The next nine months of fighting would see the deaths of many of the 1st and 9th Battalion’s Volunteers, some of whom would be summarily executed following capture. Others would die in captivity due to poor prison conditions, while hundreds were interned in prison camps in the Curragh, Newbridge and Gormanston, and in Mountjoy and Limerick Gaols and women’s prisons at the South Dublin Union and Kilmainham Gaol. The suffering of the bereaved, imprisoned, exiled and brutalised unfortunately cannot be measured, but the following pages contain the stories of those of the Tralee battalions who paid the ultimate price in the search for an independent Irish Republic.

John Conway

Seán Ó Conbuiḋe

John ‘Sonny’ Conway was born in Abbey Street, Tralee, in 1894 into a large family. His younger brother, Dan Joe, gained fame as an All-Ireland-winning Kerry footballer. John, like his father, worked as a general labourer. He was married and lived at 61 Caherina, Strand Street, Tralee. As a young man he had emigrated to the United States and had enlisted in the American Army under the name John Rundle.¹ During the Great War he served with the American forces in Europe. On demobilisation following the end of the war he returned to Tralee. On doing so, he joined the Irish Volunteers in the town. Conway was attached to ‘A’ Company, 1st Battalion, Kerry No. 1 Brigade and later was part of the 9th Battalion formed in 1922.

In February 1923 he was in custody in what was called the Workhouse Barracks in Tralee. This was the town’s workhouse, which had been occupied by the Free State Army to be used as a barracks to supplement their main garrison in Ballymullen and is now the County Council offices. Free State Army reports at the time of the inquest into John Conway’s death indicate that he was a civilian prisoner when he was killed. However, the IRA lists him amongst those Volunteers killed during the Civil War. While his status as a prisoner may be in doubt, the circumstances of his death are not.

On 24 February 1923 Captain Patrick Byrne shot John Conway dead while a prisoner in the barracks.² Byrne was an officer in the Dublin Guard and was from Gardiner Street in Dublin. Conway was brought by the officer to a place on the main road opposite the town’s Rath Cemetery. There he was shot. Initially the Free State officer claimed that he had shot the prisoner as he was attempting to escape, but later confessed that he had summarily executed him for no apparent reason.

A coroner’s court investigated the death in custody of John Conway and the medical evidence revealed that he had been shot six times and died as a result of shock and haemorrhage. General Paddy Daly gave evidence at the inquest and said that Byrne had confessed to him that he had shot the prisoner and that he could give no explanation for the killing. Daly said that he had known Byrne for fifteen years and that the officer had fought in the Tan War. Daly went on to say that Captain Byrne had been captured and badly beaten by the IRA some months previously. He gave evidence that his mind had become ‘unhinged’ as a result and that he had attempted suicide. Despite his unstable character Byrne was left on active duty in the barracks. The court held that Captain Patrick Byrne was responsible for the killing, but General Daly’s evidence ensured that he was not held accountable.

John Conway was buried in the family grave in Rath Cemetery, Tralee and his name is inscribed on the Republican monument there.

Daniel Daly

Doṁnall Ó Dálaiġ¹

Dan Daly was thirty-seven when he was shot dead by Free State forces near Tralee’s railway station. He was a native of Killorglin and was employed by the Great Southern and Western Railway in Tralee. He joined the company as an engine fireman and when single he lived in Rock Street in Tralee, close to the station. He was promoted to the position of engine driver and drove trains on the rail network in the Tralee area, which was then far more extensive than now. By 1923 he was married to Julia O’Connor, whose family had a business in Upper Bridge Street in Killorglin. The couple had five children and were expecting a sixth child when he was killed.²

While in Tralee Dan enlisted in the 1st Battalion of the Irish Volunteers and played an active part in the conflict with the crown forces in his adopted town. In July 1920 he used his train to carry a detachment of his fellow Tralee Volunteers for a surprise attack on the British Army post in the Tralee railway station. Daly and his engine fireman, named Mulchinock, stopped their train at Ballyroe as it was coming to Tralee from Fenit. There they allowed a large contingent of IRA Volunteers to board. The train then arrived shortly afterwards on the lightly guarded platform at Tralee. The Volunteers got off and quickly disarmed the surprised British Army picket who had a post at the station. The military offered no resistance and the IRA unit disarmed the soldiers and escaped with a valuable haul of Lee Enfield rifles.

During the Civil War, on the evening of 23 January 1923, several armed men left the Free State barracks which was situated in Tralee’s workhouse. Arriving near the house in Railway Terrace where Dan was living, they waited on the street outside. Dan Lynch of Cork, a colleague of Dan Daly’s at the nearby railway station, arrived at the house as he and Dan Daly were to go together to the local Do...

Table of contents

• Dedications
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1st and 9th (Tralee) Battalions, Kerry No. 1 Brigade
• 2nd (Ardfert) and 3rd (Lixnaw) Battalions, Kerry No. 1 Brigade
• 4th (Castlegregory) and 5th (Dingle) Battalions, Kerry No. 1 Brigade
• 6th (Listowel) and 8th (Ballylongford) Battalions, Kerry No. 1 Brigade
• 1st (Castleisland) Battalion, Kerry No. 2 Brigade
• 2nd (Firies) Battalion, Kerry No. 2 Brigade, and Ballymacelligott Company
• 3rd (Kenmare) Battalion, Kerry No. 2 Brigade
• 4th (Killarney) Battalion, Kerry No. 2 Brigade
• 5th (Rathmore) Battalion, Kerry No. 2 Brigade
• 6th (Killorglin) Battalion, Kerry No. 2 Brigade
• Kerry No. 3 Brigade
• Dying for the Cause Elsewhere
• ‘The Others’
• Timeline of Events in Kerry
• Bibliography
• Endnotes
• About the Author
• About the Publisher