seamus dubhghaill

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The Corporals Killings

British Army corporals Derek Wood and David Howes are killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on March 19, 1988, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in what becomes known as the corporals killings. The soldiers, wearing civilian clothes, both armed with Browning Hi-Power pistols and in a silver Volkswagen Passat hatchback, drive into the funeral procession for IRA member Kevin Brady.

The Brady funeral is making its way along the Andersonstown Road toward Milltown Cemetery when the corporals’ car appears from the opposite direction. The car drives straight towards the front of the funeral, which is headed by several black taxis. It drives past a Sinn Féin steward who signals it to turn. Mourners at the funeral say they believed they were under attack from Ulster loyalists, as three days earlier, loyalist Michael Stone had attacked an IRA funeral and killed three people. The car then mounts a pavement, scattering mourners, and turns into a small side road. When this road is blocked, it then reverses at speed, ending up within the funeral procession. Corporal Wood attempts to drive the car out of the procession but his exit route is blocked by a black taxi.

An angry crowd surrounds the car, smashes the windows and attempts to drag the soldiers out. Wood produces a Browning Hi-Power 9mm handgun. He climbs partly out of a window and fires a shot in the air, which briefly scatters the crowd. The crowd then surges back, with some of them attacking the car with a wheel-brace and a stepladder snatched from a photographer. The corporals are eventually pulled from the car and punched and kicked to the ground.

The attack is witnessed by the media and passersby. Journalist Mary Holland recalls seeing one of the men being dragged past a group of journalists. “He didn’t cry out; just looked at us with terrified eyes, as though we were all enemies in a foreign country who wouldn’t have understood what language he was speaking if he called out for help.”

The men are taken to nearby Casement Park sports ground, just opposite. Here they are beaten, stripped to their underpants and socks, and searched by a small group of men. The BBC and The Independent write that the men were “tortured.” A search reveals that the men are British soldiers. Their captors find a military ID on Howes which is marked “Herford,” the site of a British military base in Germany, but it is believed they misread it as “Hereford,” the headquarters of the Special Air Service (SAS).

Redemptorist priest Father Alec Reid, who plays a significant part in the peace process leading to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, intervenes and attempts to save the soldiers, and asks people to call an ambulance. “I got down between the two of them and I had my arm around this one and I was holding this one up by the shoulder….They were so disciplined, they just lay there totally still and I decided to myself they were soldiers. There was a helicopter circling overhead and I don’t know why they didn’t do something, radio to the police or soldiers to come up, because there were these two of their own soldiers.”

One of the captors warns Father Reid not to interfere and orders two men to take him away.

The two soldiers are placed in a taxi and driven fewer than 200 yards to a waste ground near Penny Lane (South Link), just off the main Andersonstown Road. There they are taken out of the vehicle and shot dead. Wood is shot six times and Howes is shot five times. Each also has multiple injuries to other parts of their bodies. The perpetrators quickly leave the scene. Father Reid hears the shots and rushes to the waste ground. He believes one of the soldiers is still breathing and attempts to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Upon realizing that the soldiers are dead, he gives them the last rites. According to photographer David Cairns, although photographers have their films taken by the IRA, he is able to keep his by quickly leaving the area after taking a photograph of Reid kneeling beside the almost naked body of Howes, administering the last rites. Cairns’ photograph is later named one of the best pictures of the past 50 years by Life magazine.

The whole incident is filmed by a British Army helicopter hovering overhead. An unnamed soldier of the Royal Scots says his eight-man patrol is nearby and sees the attack on the corporals’ car but are told not to intervene. Soldiers and police arrive on the scene three minutes after the corporals had been shot. A British Army spokesman says the army did not respond immediately because they needed time to assess the situation and were wary of being ambushed by the IRA. The large funeral procession also prevents them getting to the scene quickly.

Shortly after, the IRA releases a statement:

“The Belfast Brigade, IRA, claims responsibility for the execution of two SAS members who launched an attack on the funeral cortege of our comrade volunteer Kevin Brady. The SAS unit was initially apprehended by the people lining the route in the belief that armed loyalists were attacking them and they were removed from the immediate vicinity. Our volunteers forcibly removed the two men from the crowd and, after clearly ascertaining their identities from equipment and documentation, we executed them.”

Two men, Alex Murphy and Harry Maguire, are sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, but are released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. Several other men receive lesser sentences for their part in the corporals killings.

(Pictured: Catholic priest Father Alec Reid administers the last rights to Corporal David Howes, one of two British soldiers brutally beaten and murdered in Belfast)


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IRA Cork No. 2 Brigade Arms Capture at Fermoy

The first organised action against British military forces since the 1916 Easter Rising, takes place at Fermoy, County Cork, on September 7, 1919. It is carried out by the Cork No. 2 Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) under the command of Liam Lynch. Their objective is an armed party of British soldiers who attend Sunday service at the Wesleyan Church at the eastern end of the town, the church being about half a mile from their barracks. It is not known if the rifles they carry are loaded but the assumption is that they are and plans are made for that contingency.

At around 10:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, September 7, 1919, fourteen soldiers and a corporal leave their barracks and march through the town towards the Wesleyan Church. They carry their rifles at the slope. Approximately twenty-five volunteers from Fermoy company, armed with just six revolvers between them, assemble in groups of two and three in the vicinity of the church, remaining well spread out to avoid attracting attention. The main attacking party of which Larry Condon is in charge, includes John Fanning Michael Fitzgerald, Patrick Ahern and James Fitzgerald. Another group is detailed to collect the rifles and transfer them to cars parked nearby, while the remainder are to close in from the rear when the attack begins and prevent any attempt by the British to get back to their barracks. Any volunteers who are unarmed carry short clubs hidden on their person.

One of the cars, with George Power in charge, is halted near the church, with two men attending to an imaginary breakdown. The second car, which includes Liam Lynch, drives up Patrick Street behind the party of soldiers, timing it to arrive at the church at the same moment as the soldiers. A whistle blast begins the assault. Liam Lynch calls on the soldiers to surrender but they immediately resist. The attackers rush them, shots are fired and for a minute or two there is a confused struggle. A soldier swinging a rifle butt at Lynch is shot dead while three others are wounded. When the soldiers are finally overpowered, their rifles are taken from them and piled into the Buick driven by Leo O’Callaghan. Into that car also goes Liam Lynch, Owen Harold, Ned Waters, Tom Griffin, Larry Condon, Michael Fitzgerald and John Fanning while Jack Mulvey’s Ford contains Pat Leahy, John Joe Hogan, Peter O’Callaghan, George Power and Dan Hegarty. Both cars head out the Tallow road while the remaining volunteers scatter on foot.

Shortly afterwards a bugle call at the barracks raises the alarm and within minutes two lorry loads of soldiers are speeding out the Lismore road in pursuit. However, at Carrigabrick, a mile and a quarter from the town, two trees on the roadside have been partly sawn through and then held in position by ropes. The moment the cars carrying the rifles pass, the trees come down with a crash thereby forcing the pursuers to make a detour and lose the trail. At Kilmagner, five miles from Fermoy, the rifles are taken to a pre-arranged spot and safely concealed. The following night they are transferred to a dump in the Araglen company area.

Much thought had been given to the selection of officers and men for the task. It is inevitable that those of them who are well known locally would thereafter have to evade arrest. Intensive searches by military and police continue throughout the day. Parties of military in lorries scour the countryside, cars are held up and many people questioned. Two days later the district is proclaimed a military area.

On the Monday night following the raid a large party of soldiers from the British garrison at Fermoy descend upon the town. They smash the windows in most of the shops in Pearse Square, MacCurtain Street and Patrick Street and loot the contents. The following night the troops are confined to barracks, but on Wednesday night they assemble again but find a large crowd of residents waiting for them in Emmet Street. Armed with sticks, stones and other weapons, the local people attack the soldiers so furiously that they are driven back to their barracks. Many citizens barricade their homes and premises and prepare to defend them against further attack, but by Thursday the spate of lawlessness appears to be over for the time being.

However, arrests soon follow. Local Battalion Commandant Michael Fitzgerald, Vice Commandant Larry Condon and Fermoy Company Captain, John Fanning, are among those detained. Others arrested are James Fanning, John Swaine, John Joe Hogan, Martin O’Keeffe, Dick O’Keeffe, Pat Leahy, Tom Griffin, Peter O’Callaghan and Jack Mulvey. Two months later further arrests are made at Mallow. Dan Hegarty, Brian Kelly, Ned Waters, Owen Harold and Leo O’Callaghan are detained. After a series of weekly remands, the prisoners are returned for trial at the Cork Assizes in July, 1920. At Cork the Grand Jury finds against Michael Fitzgerald, John Joe Hogan and Dan Hegarty. The remainder are released.

(From: “Arms Captured in Attack on Military at Fermoy,” http://homepage.eircom.net/~corkcounty/ | Pictured: The former Wesleyan Church in Fermoy)


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Death of David Lord, RAF Officer & Victoria Cross Recipient

David Samuel Anthony Lord, VC, DFC, recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces, is killed at Arnhem, Netherlands, on September 19, 1944 during World War II. A transport pilot in the Royal Air Force, he receives the award posthumously for his actions during the Battle of Arnhem while flying resupply missions in support of British paratroopers.

Lord is born on October 18, 1913 in Cork, County Cork, one of three sons of Samuel (a warrant officer in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers) and Mary Lord (née Miller). One of his brothers dies in infancy.

After World War I the family is posted to British India and Lord attends Lucknow Convent School. On his father’s retirement from the Army the family moves to Wrexham and then he is a pupil at St. Mary’s College, Aberystwyth, and then the University of Wales. Later, he attends the English College, Valladolid, Spain, to study for the priesthood. Deciding that it was not the career for him, he returns to Wrexham, before moving to London in the mid-1930s to work as a freelance writer.

Lord enlists in the Royal Air Force on August 6, 1936. After reaching the rank of corporal in August 1938, he applies to undertake pilot training, which he begins in October 1938. Successfully gaining his pilot’s wings, he becomes a sergeant pilot in April 1939, and is posted to No. 31 Squadron RAF, based in Lahore, India. He later flies the Vickers Type 264 Valentia biplane transport. In 1941, No. 31 Squadron is the first unit to receive the Douglas DC-2 which is followed by both the Douglas DC-3 and Dakota C-47 Skytrain transports. That year he is promoted to flight sergeant and then warrant officer. He flies in North Africa, supporting troops in Libya and Egypt for four months, before being posted back to India. Commissioned as a pilot officer in May 1942, he flies supply missions over Burma, for which he is mentioned in despatches.

Lord is awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in July 1943, receiving the award at Buckingham Palace, and is promoted to flight lieutenant shortly afterwards. By January 1944, he has joined No. 271 Squadron RAF, based at RAF Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, and begins training as part of preparations for the invasion of Europe. On D-Day, he carries paratroopers into France and his aircraft was hit by flak, returning to base without flaps.

The Battle of Arnhem is part of Operation Market Garden, an attempt to secure a string of bridges through the Netherlands. At Arnhem, the British 1st Airborne Division and Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade are tasked with securing bridges across the Lower Rhine, the final objectives of the operation. However, the airborne forces that drop on September 17 are not aware that the 9th SS and 10th SS Panzer divisions are also near Arnhem for rest and refit. Their presence adds a substantial number of Panzergrenadiers, tanks and self-propelled guns to the German defences and the Allies suffer heavily in the ensuing battle. Only a small force manages to hold one end of the Arnhem road bridge before being overrun on September 21. The rest of the division becomes trapped in a small pocket west of the bridge and has to be evacuated on September 25. The Allies fail to cross the Rhine, which remains under German control until Allied offensives in March 1945.

Lord is 30 years old, and a flight lieutenant serving with No. 271 Squadron, Royal Air Force during World War II when he is awarded the Victoria Cross. On September 19, 1944, during the Battle of Arnhem in the Netherlands, the British 1st Airborne Division is in desperate need of supplies. His Dakota III “KG374” encounters intense enemy anti-aircraft fire and is hit twice, with one engine burning. He manages to drop his supplies, but at the end of the run finds that there are two containers remaining. Although he knows that one of his wings might collapse at any moment, he nevertheless makes a second run to drop the last supplies, then orders his crew to bail out. A few seconds later, the Dakota crashes in flames with its pilot and six crew members.

Only the navigator, Flying Officer Harold King, survives, becoming a prisoner of war. It is only on his release in mid-1945, as well as the release of several paratroops from the 10th Parachute Battalion, that the story of Lord’s action becomes known. He is awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.

After Arnhem is liberated in April 1945, Grave Registration Units of the British 2nd Army move into the area and began to locate the Allied dead. Lord is buried alongside his crew in the Arnhem Oosterbeek War Cemetery. There are many plaques in memory of him, including one at Wrexham Cathedral in Wales.

Several aircraft have carried tributes to Lord. Between 1993 and 1998, the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight‘s Dakota, serial “ZA947”, is painted in the colours of Lord’s aircraft during the Arnhem battle, and bears the same code letters: YS-DM. Between 1973 and 2005, the Dakota displayed at RAF Museum Cosford is similarly painted and coded to represent Lord’s aircraft. From 1966 until its disbandment in 2005, No. 10 Squadron RAF is equipped with Vickers VC-10s, each of which is named after a Royal Air Force or Royal Flying Corps VC recipient. Aircraft serial number ‘XR810’ is named David Lord VC.

Lord’s Victoria Cross is presented to his parents at Buckingham Palace in December 1945. In 1997, his Victoria Cross, along with his other decorations and medals, are sold at auction by Spinks to Lord Ashcroft. As of 2014, the medal group is on display at the Imperial War Museum.


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Birth of Josephine Bracken, Common-law wife of José Rizal

Marie Josephine Leopoldine Bracken, the common-law wife of Philippine national hero José Rizal, is born in Victoria Barracks in Victoria, British Hong Kong, on August 9, 1876.

Bracken is born to Irish parents James Bracken, a corporal in the British Army, and Elizabeth Jane McBride, of Belfast. After her mother dies shortly after childbirth, her father gives her up for adoption. She is taken in by her godfather, the American George Taufer, a blind, and fairly well-to-do engineer of the pumping plant of the Hong Kong Fire Department, and his late Portuguese wife. He later remarries another Portuguese woman from Macau, Francesca Spencer, with whom he has another daughter.

After the second Mrs. Taufer dies in 1891, Taufer decides to remarry again but the new wife turns out to be difficult to deal with for Bracken. She spends two months in the Convent of the Canossian Sisters, where she previously attended early years of school. She decides to go back only after Taufer calls at the convent’s door pleading with her to come back home as his third wife turned out to be a bad housekeeper. A few months later she has trouble again with the third Mrs. Taufer and haunts her out of the house.

Bracken later recommends that her blind adoptive father see José Rizal, who is a respected ophthalmologist who had practiced at Rednaxela Terrace in Hong Kong. By this time, he is a political exile in Dapitan, Zamboanga del Norte in southern Philippines. The family sails to the Philippines and arrives in Manila on February 5, 1895, and later that month Bracken and Taufer sail to Dapitan.

Taufer’s double cataract is beyond Rizal’s help, but he falls in love with Bracken. Taufer vehemently opposes the union, but finally listens to reason. She accompanies Taufer to Manila on his way back to Hong Kong, together with Rizal’s sister, Narcisa, on March 14, 1895. Rizal applies for marriage but because of his writings and political stance, the local priest Father Obach, will only agree to the ceremony if Rizal obtains permission from the Bishop of Cebu. Either the Bishop does not write him back or Rizal is not able to mail the letter because of Taufer’s sudden departure.

Before heading back to Dapitan to live with Rizal, Bracken introduces herself to members of his family in Manila. His mother suggests a civil marriage, which she believes to be a lesser “sacrament” but free from hypocrisy — and thus less a burden to Rizal’s conscience — than making any sort of political retraction. Nevertheless, Bracken and Rizal live together as husband and wife in Barangay Talisay, Dapitan, beginning in July 1895. The couple has a son, Francísco Rizal y Bracken, who is born prematurely and dies within a few hours of birth.

On the evening before his execution on December 30, 1896 on charges of treason, rebellion and sedition by the Spanish colonial government, the Catholic Church claims that Rizal returned to the faith and is married to Bracken in a religious ceremony officiated by Father Vicente Balaguer, S.J. sometime between 5:00 AM and 6:00 AM, an hour before his scheduled execution at 7:00 AM. Despite claims by Father Balaguer and Bracken herself, some sectors, including members of Rizal’s family, dispute that the wedding had occurred because no records are found attesting to the union.

Following Rizal’s death, Bracken joins revolutionary forces in Cavite province, where she takes care of sick and wounded soldiers, boosting their morale, and helping operate reloading jigs for Mauser cartridges at the Imus Arsenal under revolutionary general Pantaleón García. Imus is under threat of recapture, so Bracken, making her way through the thicket and mud, moves with the operation to the Cavite mountain redoubt of Maragondon. She witnesses the Tejeros Convention on March 22, 1897 before returning to Manila, and is later summoned by the Spanish Governor-General, who threatens her with torture and imprisonment if she does not leave the colony. Owing however to her adoptive father’s American citizenship, she cannot be forcibly deported, but she voluntarily returns to Hong Kong upon the advice of the American consul in Manila.

Upon returning to Hong Kong, Bracken once more lives in her father’s house. After his death, she marries Vicente Abad, a Cebuano mestizo, who represents his father’s tabacalera company in the British territory. A daughter, Dolores Abad y Braken, is born to the couple on April 17, 1900. A later testimony of Abad affirms that her mother “was already suffering from tuberculosis of the larynx” at the time of the wedding.

Bracken dies of tuberculosis on March 15, 1902, in Hong Kong and is interred at the Happy Valley Cemetery.


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Birth of Thomas Dermody, Scholar & Poet

thomas-dermodyThomas Dermody, classical scholar and poet, is born in Ennis, County Clare, on January 15, 1775. He writes under several pseudonyms including Mauritius Moonshine and Marmaduke Myrtle.

Dermody is scholarly but lives hard and makes little of his life. At the age of nine he is employed as a classical teacher in his father’s school, and has already acquired from his father a love for literature and the bottle.

Dermody has the genius of a poet, and writes fairly good poetry, but his genius is not enough. He lives for 27 years, half his life a promising boy and half a ne’er-do-well. His promise brings him generous patrons in his early days in Ireland, but he scorns the hand that feeds him, denies the friends who could nurse his genius, and runs away to England to keep bad company.

At the age of nineteen, he enlists in the army and behaves uncommonly well under military discipline. He becomes corporal, sergeant, and eventually second lieutenant, serving with distinction. He is wounded in France, and upon his return to England, is retired on half-pay.

He gains and loses friend after friend and abuses patron after patron. They clothe and clean him and make him presentable, but he then drinks himself to nakedness and rags and behaves like a brute. Such from day to day and year to year is his life, and in the end he drinks himself to death and perishes in a miserable cottage near Lewisham on July 15, 1802. He is filled with conceit and a slave to his desires, but the lines that are fading away on the stone above his grave show that he was a poet. Dermody is buried in the churchyard of St. Mary’s Church Lewisham.

Dermody publishes two books of poems which, after his death, are collected as The Harp of Erin. Some 56 of his sonnets have been published in various works, from his first 1789 collection Poems to those published in 1792, with a few posthumously published verses in the biography by James Grant Raymond. Samuel Taylor Coleridge takes an interest in some of his verse which has been included in the literary magazine The Anthologia Hibernica.