Volunteer and officer in command of ‘D’ Company, Glenrue
They were all very disappointed.
After two years of training and drilling, the local volunteers felt they were going nowhere and achieving less. In fact, two further years were to pass before their hopes were again to be raised.
The success of Sinn Féin in the 1918 General Election, resulted in a rejuvenated push for Irish freedom. At the time, the volunteer movement in East Limerick was composed of a number of independent battalions. One battalion in particular - the Galtee Battalion - was one of the first in the country to be founded. It was also the most active. It operated where the Limerick-Tipperary and Cork borders meet. It roughly encompassed Galbally, Ballylanders, Glenrue, Ballyorgan, Kilfinane, Knocklong, Anglesborough, Ardpatrick and adjoining townlands. Because of its strength and status, it was selected by GHQ, in 1915, for its first volunteer training camp under Colonel J.J. O’Connell.
However, its proudest claim to fame rests on it having come up with the idea of a ‘flying column’ or ASU (Active Service Unit), whereby the men became fulltime volunteer soldiers - it was to be the first of its kind in the IRA organisation! For the first time, in nearly 250 years, Ireland had the beginnings here of a full time army - and it was the main reason later for the military successes of the Volunteers from 1918-1921.
Much credit for the idea of a ‘flying column’ must go to the highly competent ‘Boro Road’, Anglesborough man, Donnchadh O’Hannigan. He, himself, was to become an inspirational leader as the struggle developed.
Everybody, young and old, was enthused and young men and women joined what became very quickly a mass movement. Equally quickly too, it became apparent that intelligence gathering would be very important for the future success of any struggle - that resulted in the need for countless dispatches to be carried from one group of volunteers to another, which created a need for brave and daring young recruits.
In Glenrue, two early such recruits came from the Lyons and Lee family in Tully. Séan Lyons’ future wife, Nell Lee (Tully), often talked, later in life, about taking such dispatches and she was only about twelve or thirteen years of age at the time when she was first used! Séan’s brother, Fr. Bob Lyons, then a clerical student, was searched and roughly handled by the ‘Tans’ while coming home from Kilfinane, but nothing was found. He was fortunate, as he had the dispatches in the lining of his black hat.
Nell Lee’s brother, Seán Lee, then a boy, rode from Glenbrohane to Glanworth on horseback to deliver dispatches. When Séan Lyons’ mother was visited, in her home by the ‘Tans’ and asked for tea, she risked a beating by throwing the tea into the fire before she would give it to them and tea was in very short supply back then!
However, there was a ‘great spirit’ in everyone and everywhere during those times. In May 1919, Glenosheen Barracks was destroyed and Séan Lyons with the Glenrue Company, did the outpost duty. In April 1920, Ballylanders Barracks was attacked and again the Glenrue lads were involved, six of them with rifles and the rest of them knocking trees, trenching roads and erecting barricades, all intended to block the local road network so that British troops or the ‘Tans’ could not be deployed to re-enforce the Ballylanders RIC during the attack on the barracks.
In May 1920, Séan and the whole Glenrue company was involved in the attack on Kilmallock Barracks, the same six men taking part with rifles and the rest, guarding the ‘High Bridge’ at Barrabenocka on the road to Kilfinane, to prevent any enemy forces coming from Mitchelstown.
FR ROBERT AMBROSE
What the Glenrue Company lacked in numbers they made up for with skill and determination but most importantly, with fidelity! They were always ‘ready, willing and able’ to turn out to support every action requiring back-up support. They were fortunate to have at the time in Glenrue, a parish priest, Fr. Robert Ambrose, who was sympathetic to the cause of Irish freedom. Before any action would take place, Fr. Ambrose would call the volunteers together, the evening before, and meeting them behind his church in Glenrue, he’d hear confessions and proceed to lecture them on fighting, in a ‘just, fair and Christian manner’! However, just before they’d depart after his admonitions, Fr Ambrose would give his blessing to all and wish them well, while raising the tempo by always saying at the very end ‘Farewell, now lads and remember ‘Give ’em hell!’’
Fr Robert Ambrose, we must remember, was himself a Fenian and a man whose family, in his youth in Ardagh, Co. Limerick, suffered much during the ‘Great Famine’ under British rule. Fr. Bob grew up with no great love for the British Empire. At just 16, Robert himself was involved in the Fenian attack on the RIC Barracks in Ardagh, West Limerick with his brother Stephen, in 1867 and had to go ‘on the run’ afterwards. He was a fluent Gaelic speaker and is buried in Glenrue churchyard, where his memorial is suitably inscribed in Irish!
During the War of Independence (1919-21), volunteers came to Glenrue from far and wide, as Fr. Ambrose PP was one of the few priests who would hear their confessions and understood the ‘struggle’ was to ‘right ancient wrongs’ and ‘replace oppression and domination with freedom’!
In June 1920, the Glenrue Volunteers took part in the arrest and detention of two men arrested for the wounding of an IRA soldier in Effin. The Glenrue Company had to mount an armed guard each night for fourteen nights, other companies doing the day-guard. The trial of these men was held in the area and they were heavily fined. Séan’s son, Richard, remembers the fine to have been in the region of £400, a huge sum for that time. When that was paid, the prisoners were all released. Here, we see Séan Lyons’ influence - in many other areas those men might well have been sentenced to death, but clemency was the password in Glenrue!
A much-used detention centre at the time was up in Leaba Molaige, in the old farmstead of the O’Flynn’s (ancestral home today of the great community man, T O’Flynn of T.O. Park). It was an ideal location, off the beaten track, high in the hill, off the main road. As I write, T.O. is, in actual fact, carrying out restoration work on the truly wonderful old farm building and farmyard, where prisoners were guarded. It will soon be open to the public whenever the present pandemic ends, if ever!
Anyone found aiding the enemy had to be dealt with locally and that was no easy matter, but the Glenrue Company took great care to treat every offender as fairly as was humanly possible in those dangerous days! An example of the punishment meted out is the following: a man who objected to his trees being cut down to block a road had his horse and trap taken from him and didn’t get it back for a number of months.
Towards the end of that month of June 1920, the Glenrue Company had to take part in the arrest and detention of nine people in Kilmallock and they had to mount night guard over them as well. These prisoners were eventually acquitted but checking them out while guarding them, was no easy matter and making sure that, by releasing them later, that they were not putting other volunteers involved in the struggle at risk of reprisal - a real balancing act!
In July, the East Limerick Flying Column came into the Glenrue area and was billeted in three houses up in Ballyshane, just beyond the Glenrue Parochial House. Shortly after, a patrol of ‘Black and Tans’ suddenly appeared. There was a skermish in which an enemy soldier and an IRA volunteer were both wounded. Sadly, two IRA volunteers were captured during the incident as well.
To be continued in The Avondhu on Jan. 7th, 2021