BY JOHN FITZGERALD
(Part two)
Last week, I recalled how Sean Holden of Callan observed bees disinfecting themselves to comply with Foot and Mouth Disease restrictions…,
On a more serious note…the farmers and their families affected, as well as any farm employees on the site of an outbreak had to be quarantined. Little red flags dotted the boundaries of these farms, a dire warming to all would-be visitors or trespassers.
The inconvenience occasioned by this measure was nothing, though, compared to the shattering blow the farmers had suffered. Their carefully nurtured rural livelihoods were in tatters. Martin Lynch of Mallardstown remembered uniformed guards being posted at the entrances to farms in the Callan district, which added to the drama and sense of national panic.
The fact that the farmers could apply for compensation to cover their loss was a welcome relief, but the experience still had a lasting psychological impact on them.
Also distressing for the farmers and their families was the actual process of eliminating livestock suspected of harbouring the disease. They found it hard to stand by and watch their animals being slaughtered in the open air. Normally the livestock would be butchered in factories, “out of sight and out of mind.” To see the slaughter at close quarters genuinely shocked many farmers, and even more so their children.
Some of the soldiers drafted in to implement the killing programme were affected too by this demanding and bloody enterprise.
Their training had prepared them, however adequately, for battling enemy troops in the event of an invasion. Killing farm livestock was a different proposition. While it was safer than confronting an armed foe, it upset many of the men assigned to the task. They weren’t butchers or “slaughter men” by inclination.
The depressing and dreadful sight of condemned animals being herded towards wide, deep pits in the countryside stayed in Seamus O’ Brien’s mind for decades. The pits were dug with spades, shovels, and pick axes, there being no mechanical diggers available in those days.
Seamus was one of a number of LDF men asked to assist an army shooting-party to “execute” cattle. The livestock were nudged to the edge of the mass grave, or driven down into it, and the men, under the supervision of an army officer, opened fire on the scores of cows and bullocks.
The young carpenter felt nauseous as he dispatched one bovine after another, each with a shot to the head. He recalled: “It was strange…I thought…one second a cow would be full of life, bustling about, shaking her head, oblivious of the dire situation in which she found herself.
“Then, when I pulled the trigger, at point blank range, her life ended abruptly. The body that was so animated…quivering with movement a few seconds before…just slumped or buckled into a heap. I shot a fair few the day I served on the firing party. It was an unpleasant experience, and I felt sorry for the poor cattle.
“I remember how one cow with her big soulful eyes stared innocently at me. I shoo-ed at her to avert that sad, mournful gaze because I couldn’t bring myself to shoot her with those watery trusting soulful eyes looking straight at me. At the precise moment when she looked away, I took careful aim and fired. She died instantly.
“Another cow suffered from a badly aimed shot. Not from my rifle, thankfully. She screeched and moaned until an officer, reprimanding the poor marksmanship; drew his revolver and fired two shots into the cow’s head. Another man went pale when a sliver of brain tissue splashed into his face from a bullock that partly keeled over on top of him instead of into the pit.”
When the graves were full to the brim with carcasses, other soldiers had to fill in the pits.
Seamus also participated in the mass killing of sheep and pigs. He found this task slightly more irritating than dispatching cattle because the sheep bleated so noisily and the pigs wouldn’t stop squealing.
He described the chaotic scenes: “The pigs were difficult, they darted this way and that…shrieking and dodging, desperate to avoid their fate, but we managed to shoot them all. To let any escape would have endangered the faltering Irish economy. It depended so heavily on agriculture. I needed this consoling thought, because the endless shooting had a numbing, disheartening effect. Though I found that you got used to it. You can get used to anything, I suppose.”
The crisis continued well into 1942. Patsy Hawe of Kilmoganny, who had joined the regular army at the outbreak of war, received orders to travel to Leighlinbridge for “foot and mouth duty”. He had to assist in the digging of a huge pit to accommodate vast numbers of carcasses.
He described the experience: “It was a hot summer’s day and the sun was beating down as if an oven had opened in the sky. The sweat poured out of us as we slaved away to dig the biggest hole or trench I had ever seen. It was as long as a football pitch. We dug with picks and shovels in the blazing sun. Working in that intense heat was some dose, especially wearing Wellingtons. And then to cap it all we thought we’d die with the hunger.
“Because most fruit was gone completely from the shops, people naturally picked blackberries, but as a result every blackberry bush for miles around was stripped bare. When we took a break from digging, for dinner, the waiting queue stretching from the food kitchen would have lined the road from Kilmoganny to Windgap…and that’s three miles.”
Patsy, like all the army “diggers”, was glad of the meal served up, but he never figured out what it was, recalling: “We called it Mystery Stew, because nobody knew what went into it. Whatever it was, it kept us going.”
The national FMD scare ended after nine worrying months for farmers and all who depended on their produce…which was just about the entire nation. The army was relieved to be back defending Ireland’s neutrality instead of shooting cattle and digging holes for carcasses.
(Extract from my book Are We Invaded Yet?)
