By John Fitzgerald
(Part two)
In March1921, six members of the Callan IRA Flying Column sought shelter at the Luttrell farmhouse: Paddy Ryan, Ned Aylward, Jimmy Leahy, Paddy Luttrell, Sean Quinn, and Jim McKenna.
The Luttrell family welcomed them and they opted to spend the night in the unoccupied Garryricken House. But someone had tipped off the Tans and a large British force arrived to capture them…
You can read Part One on the Observer website…
Back in John Luttrell’s bedroom, the Inspector threw open a window and shouted to the troops and police outside that a large number of armed men were in Garryricken House. From the corridor in the mansion, the three rebels could see Inspector Baynham looking out the window of the caretaker’s house. Leahy and Aylward grabbed their rifles and took careful aim.
They both fired at the Inspector from the gable-end window of the mansion. A bullet caught him in the neck. They saw him slump to the ground, blood gushing from the wound like a fountain. John Luttrell was forced at gunpoint to help the Inspector. He bandaged his wound and stopped the bleeding, as Annie Luttrell and her two terrified children looked on. The Inspector commended him on his knowledge of First Aid.
The Tans responded to the shooting of Baynham by spraying the gable-end window with bullets. But the rebels had taken cover inside the room. As Jimmy Leahy knew Garryricken House very well, he offered advice on the most viable escape route from the building. He directed Aylward and Quinn along another corridor towards the mansion’s rear courtyard.
As they ran past a stairway, the corporal, who was running along parallel to them on the ground floor, spotted the rebels and shouted at them to surrender. They fired at him, but missed, and he dashed outside into the courtyard towards which they were heading.
Meanwhile, Aly Luttrell roused Paddy Ryan, who had been sleeping in the farmhouse behind the mansion, from his slumber. Aly was a brave Cummainn Na mBan woman. She gave him Jimmy Luttrell’s suit to wear and hid the rebel uniform. Thanking her, he leapt through the back window into the farmyard where he sought cover behind a pier.
He spotted the corporal loading a Very Light Pistol. The Tan fired two flares into the dark early morning sky to illuminate the area, hoping to expose the positions of rebels that might have exited the mansion or other houses. Paddy tried to shoot him, prompting a hail of gunfire from the corporal and other soldiers.
Quinn, Leahy, and Aylward bolted from Garryricken House, entering the courtyard. They could see Paddy Ryan blasting away with his rifle at the Tans. He was positioned near a gateway beside a pier, close to a rick of hay. The three IRA men ran to join their comrade.
At this point, Jim McKenna and Paddy Luttrell, who were still asleep in the bottom storey of the mansion, leapt from their beds after being awoken by the sound of heavy machineguns, rifles, and pistols. McKenna was the first to hear the gunfire. Both he and Luttrell had fought in the Nine-Mile-House ambush.
They dressed frantically and smashed through a panel in the locked bedroom door with their rifle butts. They moved quietly up the stairs to the room where they thought they might find their three comrades, Quinn, Leahy, and Aylward.
But the lads were in the courtyard with Paddy Ryan. Luttrell suggested an attempt to escape through his brother John the caretaker’s house, unaware that the Tans had occupied it. But as they sprinted down the long passageway towards the door that opened into the adjoining house, the men almost ran into an officer who was guarding the room where Inspector Baynham was being treated for his wounds.
The officer raised his revolver and fired, missing the two men. They ran for cover in another doorway in the corridor, bullets flying around them, and returned fire. The Tan ran into the room, dodging a hail of bullets, and the two IRA volunteers availed of his temporary absence to make a break for the front door with the intention of reaching the sunken ditch in front of the house.
They were unaware that the Tans had taken up positions along the ditch. They had second thoughts about this plan after firing a shot in the direction of the ditch to ascertain the presence or otherwise of enemy forces in that location.
The response left them in no doubt on that score: The encircling troops and police raked the doorway with rifle and machine-gun fire. Wood and masonry was shot to pieces over them as they threw themselves to the ground inside the entrance.
Their ammunition running low, the disillusioned rebels could see no way out of this deadly siege. They decided to make a run for it, thinking it was better to die in a hail of bullets than by a hangman’s noose.
But the intensity of the gunfire that greeted their brief appearance in the doorway again dissuaded them from that option. And a policeman positioned in the sunken ditch who happened to know Paddy Luttrell shouted at him to stay inside to avoid certain death.
Running towards the rear entrance, they encountered again the officer guarding the injured Inspector Baynham. A few shots were exchanged, but nobody was hit. Out of ammunition, they hid their guns under floorboards and lit a fire in the kitchen.
They reckoned that if they were captured without weapons, they could claim to have been visitors to the house who inadvertently got caught up in a showdown between the Tans and the IRA. And they believed the British- with the exception of the one friendly policeman- could not have identified them in the dark
Their comrades in the rear courtyard were still giving the Tans a run for their money. Though outnumbered and outgunned, they had one important advantage: Leahy knew the grounds of Garryricken House like the back of his hand. The fact that darkness had not yet given way to morning light added to the value of this local knowledge that the Tans lacked.
Leahy led his three associates towards a wooded field behind the farm outhouses.
To be continued…
