PART 3
BY JOHN FITZGERALD
Continuing the story of the infamous Friary Street Ambush:
The British army patrol had just entered Friary Street and was trudging towards them. As McEvoy gaped in horror and alarm at the sleepy-eyed woman in the doorway, a corporation worker quickstepped past Dunne and himself on his way into the church for his Morning Prayer.
These two occurrences were totally unexpected. No allowance had been made for the woman looking out or the man calling to the church. The advance guard of the patrol edged past the Friary. It was about 25 yards ahead of the wagon, which had two soldiers marching behind it. All the troops seemed alert, with bayonets fixed to their loaded rifles. The wagon rolled past the church.
In the Friary porch, Dunne and McEvoy remained motionless for half a minute or more as the advance guard and the wagon with its two mules and military escort moved further up the street. The two rebels then ventured a look down the street to see if the rear-guard soldiers were on the way. They noticed that these troops were further behind the wagon than the ambush planners had allowed for.
Looking up the street, they saw that the wagon had not yet reached Gargans’s yard. Dunne and McEvoy emerged from their positions in the church porch and at the same time Dermody and Hennessy came out of the entrance to Garden Row opposite. The four of them met in the middle of the street.
Tom Hennessy quickly decided that a change of plan was essential. He ordered Dunne and McEvoy to tackle the soldiers who had passed by and were approaching Gargan’s yard. Hennessy and Dermody went down the street with the intention of confronting the rear-guard troops who had trailed behind.
Dunne and McEvoy stepped off the street back onto the footpath outside the church. The wagon was about fifteen yards up the street from them. A glance back down the street revealed Dermody and Hennessy casually walking past the two rear-guard soldiers, standing in the middle of the street behind the soldiers, they prepared to waylay them.
At almost exactly the same moment, Dunne and McEvoy found themselves almost face to face with the military driver of the wagon and the troops marching behind it. At this point, they expected to hear the whistle blowing to signal the commencement of the ambush. But Jim Brien had not blown it as he believed the whole ambush plan had already gone awry.
Not hearing the whistle threw Dunne and McEvoy off-balance. Quick thinking was required. They began to move towards the wagon, knowing that immediate action was essential, or they would lose the initiative.
But then disaster struck…The woman in the doorway shrieked: “Soldiers, soldiers, you’re being attacked!” The two soldiers at the wagon beheld her frenzied form and heeded her warning. They grasped their weapons and dashed to cover. One hugged the earth behind a low wall that fronted the church. The second took cover in a doorway.
From these two vantage points, they saw Hennessy and Dermody attempt to seize the rifles of the two rear-guard troops. The rebels had the soldiers pinned down in the middle of the street, and were engaged in what looked like a wrestling bout with them in an effort to grab their weapons.
But as Hennessy and Dermody drew away from their crouching foes, they presented clear targets for the two soldiers observing them from cover. Taking careful aim, the soldier in the doorway and the one at the Friary wall opened fire. Four shots rang out. Michael Dermody and Tom Hennessy fell to the ground, blood oozing from their wounds.
Corporation worker Tom Dullard, who had just finished his Morning Prayer and was about to return to his job, was startled by the sound of the first gunshot. In a panic, he started to run down the footpath away from the Friary and towards High Street. One of the four bullets fired by the troops ricocheted off a wall and pierced his head. He collapsed on the street…
To be continued…
***
(More stories of those bygone times can be read in my book Callan in Words and Pictures, which is available from Amazon)
