The Old RIC Barracks

 The execution of sixteen rebel leaders of the Easter Rising, the arrest of over 3,000 suspects, many of whom were innocent of any involvement in the rising, and the internment of over 2,000 men and women ensured that the atmosphere in Ireland toward the rebels gradually changed. Initially taunted and spat at on the streets of Dublin, the hostility of the public turned to public sympathy for the rebels and their cause. In the aftermath of the Rising, men were deported to various prisons in England. Some of these were sentenced to terms of penal servitude at Lewes, Dartmoor, Portland and Aylesbury prisons. Others were sent to Knutsford, Stafford, Wakefield and Wandsworth jails. A select group of prisoners, including Arthur Griffith, were interned at Reading Gaol. Women, including Winifred Carney and Helena Molony, were interned at Aylesbury prison. The majority of the prisoners eventually ended up in Frongoch, a former German prisoner-of-war camp in north Wales. By the end of July 1916 large numbers of prisoners had been released, leaving 600 in Frongoch and the rest still spread across the more secure prisons in England.

The concentration of military men in one place in Frongoch led to a reassessment of Irish revolutionary methods and the realisation of exactly what it would take for Ireland to win her independence - a realisation that saw the evolution of a twin political and military strategy. The importance of intelligence to any military campaign against the forces of the Crown was understood by the leaders of the Volunteers and was taught to the other prisoners. The forthcoming war, prisoners were taught, would not be a conventional war, but would be a guerrilla war characterised by hit and run tactics, carried out by small armed groups with the object being harassment and close fighting rather than open battle. These tactics were the result of analysis of the Easter Rising where it was felt that the weaker Irish forces were easy targets for a British force stronger and better armed than any force Ireland could muster. The military blunders made, such as the taking of indefensible and very vulnerable positions that had no route of escape and were impossible to supply, were also discussed.

It was also understood that this War of Independence was to be fought over a long period, with very tight discipline, strong organisation, clandestine communication networks and a ruthlessness in attacking the enemy, both English soldiers and the  Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), that had not been seen before in the Irish struggle for Independence. If the war in Dublin could be described as an intelligence war, then the war outside of Dublin could best be described as a guerrilla war. Indeed Michael Collins discussed this very same topic at his first meeting with Ned Broy, in Spring 1919. Broy, a member of G division of the Dublin Metropolitan Police and a vital agent for Collins in the intelligence war, agreed with Collins that a violent campaign must be conducted against the RIC. This would involve physical violence such as attacking RIC barracks and burning out rural barracks, thus forcing the RIC to withdraw to larger towns and losing their position on the ground as the eyes and ears of the Government. It would also be accompanied by psychological pressure such as boycotting the RIC in towns and communities while encouraging family members of RIC men to undermine their loyalty to the police. These tactics, Collins and others felt, would also differentiate between a “soft core” and a “hard core” RIC and the latter would face a war targeted specifically at them.  In 1919 the IRA began a country wide assault on the RIC in rural areas. IRA General Headquarters  (GHQ) also recommended the idea of a “Flying Column” in August 1920, and of having a standing group of men in the field, with a column in each Brigade area. This development, credited to Dick McKee, also allowed for the more efficient use of weapons. The IRA, at all stages of the war and throughout the country, suffered from a lack of weapons, and once a flying column was formed the fact that all Brigade weapons were pooled meant  that a compact unit, as a flying column was, could make efficient use of weapons that had previously been stored in dumps. In September 1920 GHQ ordered each unit to form a Flying Column.

 As the year 1920 progressed, proposed IRA attacks in County Mayo became more frequent, but police activity and searches for arms, together with arrests and beatings, made military actions increasingly difficult for Brigade members. Those men prominent in the IRA began to feel it was unsafe to sleep at home and so a flying column, based mainly in Cahir and Clooneneagh, came into existence. Pat Kennedy spoke of how 'they often stayed in Cahir and Mellet's of Cloonenagh, and indeed anywhere they might be safe and welcome’. Michael Mellet of Cloonenagh remembers being awakened at home in bed by police prodding him with rifles. ‘The house was surrounded. At the time a man from the mountains was employed as a helper on the farm. This man wore a bainin and when the police saw this they thought they had a capture. After a while he said he should go out to look at the sheep, and the police let him go. It was a ruse to go across to Cahir and warn the flying column' .

The establishment of Flying Columns increased the number and scale of IRA attacks across the country. However a downside of the large numbers of IRA men involved in these incidents was that inexperienced men were thrown into military action unprepared, resulting in errors and casualties.

 In raiding RIC barracks the IRA had two aims. Firstly to carry the fight to the door of the RIC and drive them out of the countryside,  but secondly to gather arms from the Barracks. In carrying out these attacks the IRA learned the hard way that failing to cover their rear and their flanks led to casualties. Through the practice of placing firstly scouts, and later armed guards as a cordon around the site of attack, the IRA discovered the vulnerability of British Army/RIC relief forces arriving to relieve the besieged RIC. This lead to some Brigades mounting dummy attacks on RIC Barracks to draw unsuspecting relieving forces into an ambush. This tactic proved so successful that it lead to the widespread use of the ambush as an IRA tactic. As each Brigade was responsible for arming themselves, the lack of arms became an issue that was a constant source of contention between Brigades and GHQ. Sean O’Casey’s point in The Plough and The Stars was not far off the mark when it came to the IRA and weapons, “ A few hundred scrawls o’ chaps with a couple o’ guns and rosary beads, again a hundred thousand trained men with horse, fut an artillery…..and he wants us to fight fair”. 

The essence of an ambush is to wait upon an identified target on a known route and attack that target when it appears. However this does not take into account the planning and preparation required. Planning for an ambush entails gathering intelligence on the movements and schedules of the proposed target, reconnaissance of the proposed area of attack, identification of lines of retreat and the cover required to allow these lines of retreat to be successfully followed. Preparation involves gathering arms, ammunition, men, resources such as food and first aid and finally transport to get the attacking forces in place. All of this to be carried out without alerting the enemy. Planning also involved securing the proposed site of attack, blocking access roads together with removing any civilians and others hostile to the IRA from the site of attack. It also required that the IRA section charged with firing on the target were secure enough to carry out the assault. Finally all lines of communication needed to be cut, so that information about the attack could not be communicated to the enemy.

 The Mayo Brigades increased their activity thanks to urgings from IRA GHQ. At a Mayo Brigade conference held in January 1921, the staffs of the four Mayo Brigades agreed that each brigade should mount a major operation against the Crown forces as soon as possible. The urgency of this decision was reinforced by the realisation that until then no major operation against the Crown forces had been undertaken in the south of the county.

 As a result the Ballyglass and Srah Companies drew up plans for an ambush in March 1921. Ballinrobe was then garrisoned by the Border Regiment, and a lorry of these troops routinely journeyed to Castlebar.

On 7 March 1921, men from both companies went into position on the Partry road at the townland of Kilfaul, just north of Portroyal. As the lorry, under the command of Captain Chatfield, approached the ambush, fire was opened and the driver hit and the lorry stopped. Tom Maguire, Brigade Commander, in his account mentions a Martin Conway from Gortnacoille near Srah as being a good shot, and Maguire chose him to 'bring down the driver of the lorry. If you had him, you had the rest of them copped . . . To make sure however I placed three men . . . Martin, then another and then another. '

He also speaks of a volunteer who 'was a good hefty lad . . placed at the rear. He had been in the R.I.C but came out and brought a supply of Mills bombs with him (Mills bombs were the name given to British Army fragmentation grenades). The leading lorry appeared and with that my marksmen's shots rang out. The fight was on with a few short bursts, and the ex-R.I.C. man, I could see, was busy throwing his little grenades. But he must not have known to remove the pin because they were rolling down the road like pebbles and not exploding. '

Maguire also mentions 'an ex-Irish Guards man with us that day, a man by the name of Michael Costello. Picking up one of our unexploded grenades, I saw him pull the pin out. "What are you doing with that?" said I. "I am going to lob it into the middle of these bastards." "Now, none of that," said l, holding his hand. Reluctantly he held his thumb upon the spring. "You don't know the . . . as long as I do." I succeeded in taking the grenade from him' Many of the soldiers got out through the back of the lorry and returned fire. After a short sharp engagement they retreated towards Ballinrobe, leaving their lorry and its contents behind. One member of the British Forces was killed and two were injured.  Four soldiers were said to have fled, one was wounded and the rest surrendered to Volunteers armed with shotguns using buckshot. Six to eight service rifles were now in their possession'.  Intense police and army activity followed this ambush, and a man in Srah, Thomas Horan, who had nothing to do with the ambush, was shot while sitting by his own fireside.

 This was said to be the first engagement against British military forces in south Mayo since 1798. Significant actions had taken place in East and North Mayo in 1920. These included attacks on the British Forces at Swinford in July and Ballyhaunis in August (resulting in five wounded) and the Royal Irish Constabulary at Ballina. The latter attack occurred on 22 July and resulted in one RIC death and one wounded. Maguire also mentions providing protection for two members of the First Dail Éireann Land Courts to be held in Ballinrobe in May 1920. Art O'Connor, B.L. and Kevin Shiels were there constituting the court. The purpose of the court was to decide on the ownership of lands that had been cleared, sometimes falsely, in the name of the I.R.A.

As the year 1921 progressed, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) in outlying rural stations began to feel unsafe and isolated and some barracks were actually closed. This was a result of IRA policy espoused by Michael Collins and spread to all IRA units through the newspaper an tOglach.

 One isolated station was at Derrypark where the barracks was a strongly-built house under the cliffs of Buckaun Mountain. It had been built in the 1880s. The post looked down on Lough Mask and across to the wooded eastern shore of the lake towards the town of Ballinrobe. The  local police headquarters was situated in the town, about eight miles away as the crow flies — though by road nearly twenty miles. It had been built on an elevated piece of land, commanded the approaches on all sides, and was almost impossible to attack with the weapons then in the possession of the IRA. There was a garrison of twelve RIC in Derrypark but by mid 1921 it was isolated, as two barracks, in Partry and Ballyglass, had withdrawn their garrisons for safety. Other smaller barracks in the area had also been cleared, namely, Cross, Cong and Clonbur.

Derrypark barracks was supplied from Ballinrobe by the RIC and Black and Tans, who brought resident RIC men pay and provisions. The IRA watched the convoy, which varied in strength from a motor car and a Crossley tender to a car in front and two lorries following, and when their reports had been forwarded through the Battalion, the Brigade decided to deal with this force. However, the exact day was not known, and it was not clear whether this was to be the first, second or third of the month.