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    Michael's War: A Story of the Irish Republican Army, 1916-1923
    Michael's War: A Story of the Irish Republican Army, 1916-1923
    Michael's War: A Story of the Irish Republican Army, 1916-1923
    Ebook272 pages5 hours

    Michael's War: A Story of the Irish Republican Army, 1916-1923

    By Daniel Ford

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    About this ebook

    When he set out on his road to rebellion, Michael Ford only wanted to keep the foxes out of Hannon's Glen. But before he was done, he found himself exchanging rifle fire with the British army, with an unlikely ally in the form of Annabel Love, the squire's daughter. Michael's War tracks the course of revolution and civil war that rended Ireland from 1916 to 1923.

    It ends with its hero escaping to America--but what sweetheart will he ask to join him in the new world? Michael's War is a conflicted love story set during the Irish rebellion and civil war, early in the 20th century.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWarbird Books
    Release dateMar 17, 2015
    ISBN9781502220097
    Michael's War: A Story of the Irish Republican Army, 1916-1923
    Author

    Daniel Ford

    Daniel Ford has spent a lifetime reading and writing about the wars of the past hundred years, from the Irish rebellion of 1916 to the counter-guerrilla operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is best known for his history of the American Volunteer Group--the 'Flying Tigers' of the Second World War--and his Vietnam novel that was filmed as Go Tell the Spartans, starring Burt Lancaster. Most recently, he has turned to the invasion of Poland in 1939 by Germany and Soviet Russia. Most of his books and many shorter pieces are available in digital editions He lives and works in New Hampshire.

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      Michael's War - Daniel Ford

      MICHAEL’S WAR

      A STORY OF THE IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMY, 1916-1923

      Daniel Ford

      Warbird Books 2015

      Contents

      Chapter 1 – In Hannon’s Glen

      Chapter 2 – Adare House

      Chapter 3 – Blood Under the Door

      Chapter 4 – The Recruiters

      Chapter 5 – A Nation in Arms

      Chapter 6 – A Wasp in Glencooley

      Chapter 7 – Against All Enemies

      Chapter 8 – Three Eggs a Penny

      Chapter 9 – At Parish Court

      Chapter 10 – Hunger Strike

      Chapter 11 – The Tans in Glencooley

      Chapter 12 – Cat and Mouse

      Chapter 13 – Died for the Republic

      Chapter 14 – Ambush

      Chapter 15 – The Man in the Bothie

      Chapter 16 – The Grudge Was All You Left Us

      Chapter 17 – On the Run

      Chapter 18 – From the Center to the Sea

      Chapter 19 – Half the Loaf

      Chapter 20 – A New Day for Glencooley

      Chapter 21 – Civil War

      Chapter 22 – The Fire Raisers

      Chapter 23 – A Grave with Nobody in It

      Notes, and a Glossary

      Copyright - Author

      1 – In Hannon’s Glen

      EASTER MONDAY 1916, and the hounds came baying through Hannon’s Glen for the second evening in a row. Bill Hannon cursed them as they tore through his fields, the horses after them. The Daley brothers cursed them next, and Michael Ford cursed them as they led the hunt to the fifty acres he worked with his mother and a hired man. Bastard dog! he shouted, flinging a stick at the nearest hound. Nothing better to do than chase a fox—as useless as your master!

      His dog was a sensible collie with a black and white face, one ear up and one ear down. Shep did the work of two men on the farm, when it came to moving the animals where Michael wanted them, and it would never occur to Shep to waste his energy on anything so frivolous as a fox.... But if he did chase a fox, you may be sure he would have caught the beast.

      In a quiet rage Michael waited for the Kerryman Hunt to appear, all togged out in tall hats and long-tailed jackets, their boots gleaming with spit and polish—mere Irish spit, of course, applied by the groom when he wasn’t otherwise occupied. Protestant spit was too precious for shining boots.

      At the head of the Kerrymen rode Austin Love himself, master of the hunt. He was a gray haired, worried man—like a terrier—and thin as the stick Michael had flung at one of his dogs. Still, the squire had a way with a horse. He was in front of the others by two or three lengths, though many of the Kerrymen were only half his age. He led them (as the hounds led him, baying and yapping, and as the wily fox led the hounds) down the glen, toward Uncle Tim’s farm.

      Last of all rode the women—young women mostly, all but one of them mounted precariously on sidesaddles, and that one a chick scarcely out of the nursery. Michael snorted. (A pity they wouldn’t notice his scorn over the pounding of their hooves!) Much as he despised the hounds, who had nothing better to do than chase a fox, he despised the gentry more, who had nothing better to do in Holy Week than chase after the hounds. And most of all he despised the ladies who were so fine that they must ride sidesaddle. Any true Irishwoman would have tucked her skirts between her legs and mounted the horse astride—aye, and without saddle or bridle if it came to that.

      Of the girls and women who were riding to the hounds this evening, he recognized only Annabel Love, who had been his playmate when they were children. Ten years ago, indeed, Annabel had spent as much time at the Ford farm as she had spent at Adare, the big house by the sea. Now, however, she spared not a glance in Michael’s direction. Like the rest of the Kerrymen, from Austin Love to the chick astride her pony, Annabel was intent on the chase.

      After the last of them had gone off to wrack Uncle Tim’s farm, Michael walked around to inspect the damage. He always hoped the Kerrymen would break something valuable enough to give him a complaint in court, but they never did. Today they’d tumbled a rail from the fence, trampled a corner of the kitchen garden, and churned a good bit of the pasture to mud. It was nothing that couldn’t be set to rights in time—mere Irish time, of no account in a court of law. When he returned to the house he found his mother standing in the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. She was a square-faced, handsome woman. People said that Michael was the image of her. Ah, didn’t they look grand! she said of the Kerrymen.

      See what they’ve done to your garden, Michael pointed out, though the damage would make no impression on his mother. She prized the hunt for its dash and noise, better entertainment for her than the Kerry Dances.

      Small matter, she said. I’ll have the garden fixed in no time, but how are the fences?

      One rail down.

      John O can mend it after tea. But did you see Annabel Love on the gray gelding, and isn’t she a fine figure of a woman? Sure, she’s all grown up—the blessings of God be upon her! I expect we’ll hear of a match at Adare House one of these days, some fine gentleman and our own Annabel.

      Hear of it you may, Mammy, but you won’t be invited to the wedding.

      And why should we be invited, after all? The Loves are gentry and the Fords small farmers, and that’s an end to it. Come in now for your tea.

      I want to mend the fence.

      Get John O to help you, so.

      I will, Michael said.

      And don’t be long or your tea will be cold.

      I’ll be quick, Michael said, but he was neither quick nor did he bother with John O, who was better off with the cows. Instead he whistled up Shep and repaired the rail at his leisure, cursing the hunt and his mother’s doting on Annabel Love. Marry a fine gentleman, indeed! Why should that be marked in the stars? Maybe he’d marry Annabel Love himself! Not that he wanted to: a more useless creature, in field or byre, couldn’t be imagined than a sidesaddle member of the Kerryman Hunt.

      It was gone six when he returned to the house, and John O was long finished with the milking, but of course Michael’s meal was still warm on the hearth: soda bread, potatoes, and mutton from the wether John Daley slaughtered last week, and that Michael helped butcher. There’d be no cold meals for him in this house, for he was the first and the last of the litter, the apple of his mother’s eye—yes, and his grandmother’s too—the man of the house at the age of sixteen. Well, it had been always thus. Michael’s father had died before his son was born, from a stroke following a spill from a horse. Since that day (night, rather, for the first Michael Ford died in his sleep with his young wife beside him) there had been only one man in the house. Young Michael was doing a man’s work in the fields by the time he was ten, and he took a man’s place at the table not long after. Now he was sixteen and had his leaving certificate from Glencooley National School, and in all but legal title the master of the farm. So it was John O and the women who waited for their tea, not Michael who took it cold.

      The house, which his father and Uncle Tim had built in 1898, was a long, low building of mortared stone. The door was set at the center. It opened upon the one main room where they all—including the hired man—lived and worked. The room was large accordingly, with the fireplace taking up most of one end of it. Behind the fireplace was the front parlor, rarely used and containing the good furniture. (Not so good, if the truth be told, after so many years in a closed room, where the damp got to the leather.) There was a fireplace in the parlor, too, backing up to the main chimney, but it was only lit on Christmas and like occasions.

      The main room and the parlor were open to the rafters, to take the curse off the low walls. The back bedroom, however, was roofed over. His mother and the old lady slept there, while Michael and John O shared the loft above. Since the hens sometimes nested in the thatch, scratching deep holes for themselves, it sometimes fell out that Michael would have his breakfast egg dropped into bed with him, saving Mrs. Ford the trouble of going outside to find it. By the same token, though, the thatch would leak at that very spot, so the morning egg delivery never lasted long: he would have to get out the ladder and repair the weak spot in the thatch.

      On one occasion, a new hatched chick fell through the roof and landed in the cup of milk John O was raising to his lips. He almost died of the fright. Saints preserve us, he liked to say. I’ve often heard that in the old days the people brought their animals indoors, for the sake of the warmth they could provide. You might have a lamb under the bed, a cow tied against the dresser, a donkey against the opposite wall, and a dog or cat at the fireplace. But I never heard of a family that raised chickens in the milk churn! Which turned the matter from a laugh upon John O to a laugh upon the whole family.

      It was Mrs. Ford who gathered the eggs from the thatch, because the hens were for the kitchen and therefore under her management. Annabel Love should have seen Michael’s mother with her skirts hitched up, plunging elbow deep into the thatch while the ladder teetered underfoot. If Mrs. Ford had ridden a horse, it was certain she would have ridden astride, like any good Irishwoman.

      When the thatch needed repairing, however, it was Michael’s duty to put the ladder against the wall and scale the roof. And so they made shift to live together in harmony, each doing what he or she was best able to do. The blessings of God be upon them!

      After the meal, with John O and the old lady smoking their pipes by the fire, Michael made peace with his mother. Mammy, he said, his square-tipped fingers interlaced, why was it that Annabel Love spent so much time here when we were children together?

      Do you remember her, the darling girl? Yes, Michael remembered her, in plaits and pinafores in front of this same fire, turning the crank of the blower as if the fate of the world depended on it. A big eyed child who seldom laughed. Whatever she did, she did in all seriousness, whether blowing the fire, sweeping the floor, or filling her mouth with soda bread. Why, we took care of her when she was a baby, his mother told him. You’re twins, in a manner of speaking, Michael Ford and Annabel Love. Didn’t your father die before you were born, and didn’t Mrs. Love die in childbirth?

      May they rest in peace! cried the old lady by the fire, making the sign of the cross on her forehead, breast, and shoulders.

      John O had been nodding off, his head drooping on his long neck. At the old lady’s cry, he looked startled but soon rallied himself. Amen to that, he said, looking from face to face as if to discover who had died.

      You were born weeks ahead of your time, his mother said, getting into her story now. Michael nodded impatiently. He had heard this part many times before, but it would do no good to hurry his mother along. The old lady and John O were listening now; she had a full fledged audience and would make the most of it. Twas the shock of your father dying, I’m sure, but there you were far ahead of your time, and we put you in a box lined with cotton-wool. The old lady nodded wisely: she had been part of these events. "Sure, nobody knew whether you’d live or die, but you have good blood in you, God bless you. Ah, what a winter that was, the cold coming in through every crack, and the rain never ceasing. December of ’99! You came in with the century, Michael avick, did you ever think on that?"

      He had, but not for long. If he was a special dispensation of the twentieth century, why so were Willie Hannon and most of their friends, and there was nothing remarkable in them as far as he could see.

      Well, things were at a worse pass down at Adare House, with the squire’s wife trying to give birth, and she not able! I had one side of the coin, you might say, and young Mrs. Love had the other. First she had the midwife from Glencooley, and then the doctor from Tralee, but she could have been alone in the bracken for all the good they did. She died about the time Annabel came into the world, the poor orphan babe.

      Holy Mary, the old lady cried, have mercy upon us!

      So Annabel Love, for all her fine breeding, had her first meal of cow’s milk, like a calf in the byre. Then the squire bundled her in swaddling clothes, tucked her inside his greatcoat, and rode straight over here.

      What? said Michael, understanding with a jolt where this story was leading.

      This was the first place he came, and you may be sure he wasn’t disappointed. ‘Mrs. Ford,’ said he, astride the fine white horse he rode in those days, ‘there’s been bad blood between our families in the past—’

      Aye, and still is, Michael said, thinking of the hunt charging through his fields without so much as by your leave.

      ‘Bad blood between the families,’ said he, ‘but you’ll not be refusing the request I make of you tonight.’ And he brought out the babe from beneath his coat and put her into my arms. ‘Will you nurse her with your own?’ he said. ‘I will,’ I said, and brought her in by the warmth of the fire.

      Are you telling me, Michael said, that you were wet nurse to Annabel Love?

      That’s the long and the short of it, my darling, you on one breast and she on the other. And that’s how the child got into the way of spending so much of her time in this house. Sure, wasn’t it as much of a home as her own, since she spent the first year of her life in it?

      "And he paid you? Austin Love paid you?"

      To be sure he did. Money was in short supply in those years, with no War to bring high prices for meat. We weren’t so far removed from the Great Hunger, remember, and ninety pounds a year to pay on the farm.

      The old lady crossed herself. She was a child of the Famine Years; between the day she was born and the day she married, the Ireland’s population went from eight million to five million, the rest having starved or emigrated. In spite of all, Mary McCarthy grew to womanhood with rosy cheeks and auburn hair, and the old people still spoke of her as the prettiest bride ever married in St. Brendan’s parish. She bore seven children to John Ford, Michael’s grandfather, whereupon old Squire Love—father to the present owner of Adare House—evicted them from their bothie by the strand.

      So the Fords were evicted and their cottage tumbled, and their land turned into pasture for sheep. The old lady could not be persuaded to talk about those years, with seven children a-growing, living like tinkers in all probability, or like rabbits in the ground.

      In time, the girls married farmers’ sons and the boys found work in Tralee, except for Michael’s father and Uncle Tim, who bought neighboring farms under the Land Reform Act of 1895. These were carved from the estates of old Austin Love, his thousand acres badly entailed by the time his son inherited them. So young Austin Love gave up most of his land, retaining only two hundred acres by the strand. The rest went to his tenants and anyone else who cared to apply, with the government reimbursing him and the new owners paying off the government, year after year. If it was hard to raise the money now—and it was, as Michael could testify—what had it been like in 1900?

      He said: It wasn’t much better than slavery, was it, if we were so poor they could buy mother’s milk from us?

      Glory be to God, darling, his mother laughed. Sure, I had milk and to spare for the both of you!

      The old lady nodded agreement, knocked the dottle from her pipe, and rose creaking from her seat by the fire. Are you coming to bed, Bridie? she said to Michael’s mother.

      Michael bade them goodnight, took his cap, and went out to the twilight. As the only calf in the byre, it was his fate to have no young people about the house. So he was into the habit, when the day’s work was done and the evening meal settled in his belly, of walking up the glen to Bill Hannon’s house. There Michael could sing, play the concertina, dance, or spark the Hannon girls. Or he and Young Willie talked away the night—about emigrating to America when the War was over, perhaps, or to Australia, or about joining the Irish Volunteers and giving the British Empire a poke in the eye. It was all talk, of course, at least on Michael’s part. He couldn’t emigrate, with his mother and grandmother depending on him. As for the Volunteers, all they did was strut along the streets of Tralee and sing rebel songs in the public houses. The patriot game! Why would he waste his time with that stuff?

      There was no music tonight at the Hannon place. Hallo Mick! Bill Hannon shouted when Michael came in at the door. Have you heard the news? There’s a Rising in Dublin!

      They’ve taken the General Post Office, Willie chimed in, and they’ve proclaimed the Irish Republic, now what do you think of that? He came over and took Michael by the arm, drawing him down to a seat by the fire. Nellie Hannon—the girl Michael’s mother had picked out for him—made room for him. Listen, Mick, Willie said with his black eyes aglow, don’t you think we should be out and doing something to support the boys in Dublin?

      Sure, what would we be doing?

      We could dynamite the RIC barrack.

      We could, if we had the dynamite, and if dynamiting the barrack would do the slightest bit of good for Ireland. Aren’t the constables Irishmen too?

      If there’s anything worse than an Englishman, Nellie Hannon said, "it’s an Irishman who takes the King’s shilling. The Royal —Irish—Constabulary!"

      Do you have a gun? Michael asked.

      Bill Hannon shouted from the table: We have the shotgun, meaning the old muzzle loader that Willie and Michael used in hunting ducks.

      We wouldn’t get far, Michael said, with only the one blunderbuss between us. Where did you hear of the Rising, Willie?

      At Daley’s pub. Willie earned a few shillings a week by doing odd jobs for John and Pat Daley, who owned the farm between the Fords and the Hannons, along with the public house in the village. Twas a traveling man from Tralee, who heard the news at the railroad station.

      They talked it over while the girls made tea and served it with brac still steaming from the pot. That was another thing Michael enjoyed about the Hannon house: the Fords ate plain fare for all but Christmas and Michael’s birthday, but the Hannon girls always had something baking in the iron pot, and often it was Michael’s favorite bread, raisins and citrons filling a loaf so light it would melt in your mouth, and glazed with sugar. It was such a loaf, with great daubs of butter from the churn, that Nellie Hannon served him now, while they went over what little Willie knew of the events in Dublin. A load of German arms was landed in support of the Rising—and on the Kerry coast!—but something went awry and now the English had the ship. Accordingly the Rising was canceled. But the hotheads in Dublin went ahead on their own, hoping to spark the rest of the country into rebellion. Certainly, if Willie Hannon was any example, they were succeeding well enough.

      2 – Adare House

      LAST SPRING, Michael’s mother had bought a clutch of goose eggs and set them beneath a broody hen. Of the goslings hatched out in this way, a gander and two geese survived to enliven the barnyard with their gabbling. They would hatch out more goslings in their turn, and then be fattened for Christmas dinner, and so on forever if no evil befell them. But when Michael arose next morning, he found the two geese with their necks wrung. What do you think of that? he said to his mother, bringing the birds into the house. "We can’t shoot the foxes because that would spoil the

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