Page 39 - Garda Journal Winter 2019

HISTORY | Cork’s Collins Barracks
Civic Policeman standing by the National Monument on Grand Parade, Cork
Members of Irish Defence Forces at Collins Barracks during a recent Open Day
quickly became one of prolonged, static trench warfare. A conservative total of 200,000 Irishmen voluntarily enlisted and there are some 49,000 Irish recorded dead. Recruiting throughout Cork City and County was carried out, initial training conducted in the Barracks and battlefield familiarisation, inclusive of fully function trench layout systems, carried out in Kilworth, where the remains of these
‘cordon and search’ operations, organised drives to snare certain successful IRA flying columns, using infantry, cavalry and artillery units, now all equipped with wireless, and they also had the assistance of spotter planes.
It was to become an intense and ferociously lethal competition of wits and will. One of the most spectacular clashes was an attempt to trap Tom Barry’s West Cork flying Column, one of the most active in the country, having been engaged in many actions against the British infamous Essex Regiment, which had developed a reputation for ruthless ill-disciplined behaviour.
The flying column had already successfully taken on the Auxiliaries by ambushing a notoriously noteworthy party of them at Kilmichael, between Dunmanway and Macroom, on 28 November 1920.
On 19 March of the following year the column found itself the objective of a large British army operation consisting of 1,500 troops and Auxiliaries from throughout Cork city and county garrisons.
“‘training trenches’ are still visible today.
THE STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE
Easter Monday 24 April 1916 saw activists of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army take the British authorities in Dublin completely unawares and they occupied a number of strategic buildings within and around the city centre. A classic case of ‘Order, Counter-Order, Disorder’ characterised ‘The Easter Rising.’
It was not put into effect on a national scale, but after a week’s fighting in Dublin it proved to be the military failure it was likely destined to be but this miscalculation was nothing compared to the miscalculation by the British Authorities in the aftermath of the Rising.
The manner of the prolonged executions by firing squad in Kilmainham Jail of 13 of the Rising’s leaders provoked particular public outrage, rapidly turning public opinion against a heretofore generally held acceptance of British rule in Ireland.
Dissatisfaction with British rule in Ireland was to take firm hold over the coming years and in an atmosphere of political stalemate at the end of the First World war, Sinn Féin and the Volunteers now came together under one standard from 1918 onwards, and their clear aim was to bring the Irish people from oppression, through opposition, to outright freedom.
The War of Independence (1919 -1921) was to become an engagement of terror and counter-terror, one particularly hard-fought in Cork City and County. IRA ‘flying-column’ ambushes, counter assassinations, as well as a savage, secretive intelligence ‘war’ was conducted.
Regular British Army units, coordinated from Victoria Barracks, the bastion of British Rule and symbol of British Writ throughout the Division, became involved in large scale
It was one of the last of the British Barracks in Ireland to be handed back due to an unfinished, as it happened
unsuccessful, search for British military prisoners held as hostages by the old IRA.
GARDA JOURNAL 51