Page 40 - Garda Journal Winter 2019

HISTORY | Cork’s Collins Barracks
The British army, in Victoria (now Collins) Barracks Cork, takes down the Union flag for the last time.
British troops parading at Victoria Barracks for Lord French, commander-in- chief of British Home Forces, in August 1916. During the War of Independence Victoria Barracks served as the base of the British 6th Infantry Division, commanded by Major- General Sir Peter Strickland. T
Workers clearing rubble on St Patrick’s Street in Cork following the infamous ‘Burning of Cork’ by British forces on the night of 11–12 December 1920
With contact inevitable, Tom Barry opted to choose his ground at Crossbarry and ambush an encircling section of the surrounding troops, to fight through the cordon and thereafter conduct what became a classically executed, highly successful fighting withdrawal.
A far more modest ambush by a city-based IRA group, far fewer in number, at Dillion’s Cross only a few hundred meters from Victoria Barracks, was to lead to an outrageous reprisal which became known as ‘The Burning of Cork‘ when later that night many prominent buildings throughout the city and retail premises on Cork’s main street were looted and burned by the Auxiliaries.
Martial Law, curfews, arrests of suspected IRA members, suppression and harassment became common. But the
irregular force, drawn from and supported by, the Cork people, was to eventually prevail.
As a result of the treaty signed on 6th December 1921 between the Irish Plenipotentiaries and the British Government, all government properties including military barracks were handed over to the Irish provisional government. The formal handover of Victoria Barracks (and other military barracks countrywide) brought home to Cork people more than anything else the reality that the British were actually finally leaving Ireland.
Independence had actually been achieved. Major Bernard Montgomery, later Montgomery of El Alamein, handed over Victoria Barracks to Commandant Sean Murray.
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.
The Irish War of Independence had been hard and bitterly fought throughout Cork. But if the British were departing, the Irish they were leaving behind were a divided people. The Anglo-Irish Treaty caused deep divisions within nationalist Ireland because six North-Eastern countries of a total of 32 country-wide were to remain part of Britain. Those who favoured acceptance argued that the powers it granted made it worthy of support, and the only alternative was a renewed war with Britain.
Those against criticised it for its failure to achieve a full and completely free Republic of Ireland. The divisions became bitter, divisive and personal. Civil War loomed, and indeed hostilities did break out between Pro and Anti-Treaty forces. Southern Anti-treaty forces were the last to hold out but were out-manoeuvred by a surprise coastal landing of Pro- Treaty forces who landed only a few miles outside Cork city. They put the Barracks ‘to the torch’ on the 10 August 1922 before hastily retreating south westwards. A tragedy within a tragedy that was already the Civil War was to occur not long after on 22 August, when Cork man Michael Collins, leader of the Pro-Treaty forces, after whom the barracks was to be eventually named, undertook an inspection of his force’s positions in Limerick, Kerry and Cork. Becoming aware of his presence in West Cork, local Anti-Treaty forces put in place an ambush along a route they believed he would take on his way back to Cork City, at a place called Beal na Bláth ( Mouth of the Flowers). Their patient determination to kill paid off and in the ambush Michael Collins was fatally wounded. The Civil War was to drag on with atrocities committed by both sides, however the ability of the Anti-Treaty side to continue operations became increasingly difficult to sustain and the Civil War drew to a conclusion. In the years that followed the army had to transform itself from a revolutionary to a regular army. It had firstly to be formally established, then reducing numbers and becoming reorganised along regular military lines. Fortunately these developments, once finances allowed, saw the physical restoration of the newly name ‘Michael Barracks’ (a name that never took on) and so ‘Collins Barracks’ it was to become, ready for its next role in important matters at a time when the world was facing into another great war.
A STATE OF EMERGENCY - 1939 - 1959
‘They also serve, who only stand and wait ‘ and waiting they were, ....soldiers of the First Southern Division were watching for German paratroopers to drop out of the night sky. Implausible as it might seem to us to-day, it was
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