In an extract from his new book on the Civil War in Kerry, historian Owen O’Shea recounts the most brutal incident of the conflict in the county in which eight IRA prisoners were executed at Ballyseedy during the ‘terror month’ of March 1923
The atmosphere in the guardroom at the Free State Army headquarters at Ballymullen Barracks in Tralee just after midnight on March 7th, 1923, was described as “menacing”. There was what Diarmaid Ferriter described as “a lust for revenge”.
It was almost 24 hours after the IRA-planted trip mine exploded at Knocknagoshel and claimed the lives of five Free State soldiers, and fury pervaded the mindset of the troops of the Kerry Command.
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Nine republican prisoners at Ballymullen Barracks, many of whom had been tortured and beaten with a hammer, were selected by Colonel David Neligan to clear an obstruction on the Tralee to Killorglin road at Ballyseedy Cross.
They were Patrick Buckley of Scartaglin, a former RIC officer at Farranfore; John Daly of Ahaneboy, Castleisland; Pat Hartnett of Gortnaminch, Listowel; Michael O’Connell, Castleisland; John O’Connor, a former RIC officer from Innishannon, Co Cork; George O’Shea, Tim Tuomey and Stephen Fuller, all of Kilflynn; and James Walsh of Churchill, Co Kerry.
The language was abusive language; it wasn’t too good. One fella called us Irish bastards and he was an Irishman himself
Daly was taken on a stretcher owing to a back injury. A tenth prisoner, John Shanahan, had been so badly beaten that he was unable to walk and was left behind. It was contended that one of the reasons these men were selected from a wider group of prisoners was that they had no known links to the Catholic clergy or hierarchy, so their deaths would not antagonise the Church, which was actively and vocally supportive of the Free State and its leadership.
Before being removed from the prison, Stephen Fuller was shown into a cell which contained nine coffins: ‘This is yours’, he was told.
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The nine men were led out of the barracks by a group of soldiers, including Commandant Edmund Breslin and Lieutenant Joseph Murtagh, and were placed in a truck which was driven to Ballyseedy Cross, where a barricade was blocking the road. They were ordered to stand round the barricade, their hands were tied behind their backs and they were tethered to each other. Stephen Fuller described what happened in the moments before the explosion:
“We arrived out anyway. The language was abusive language; it wasn’t too good. One fella called us Irish bastards and he was an Irishman himself. One of our lads asked to be left say his prayers. ‘No prayers,’ he said. ‘Our fellas [those killed at Knocknagoshel didn’t get any time for prayers. Maybe some of ye might go to Heaven … ye might meet our fellas there.’ They tied us then, our hands behind our back and left about a foot between the hands and next fellow. They tied us in a circle then around the mine and they tied our legs then and the knees as well, with a rope. And then they threw off our caps and said we could be praying away now as long as we like.”
There was a hole in the middle of the road and human flesh scattered in all directions, debris and everything scattered all over the place
A few moments later, the mine was detonated from nearby, causing a loud and enormous explosion. The bodies of the prisoners were then shot with automatic weapons to ensure they were dead, among them Patrick Buckley, who had been “blown in two at the waist”. Not all of his fellow prisoners died instantly: according to an IRA report to GHQ, one prisoner who was still alive was finished off by Comdt Joe Leonard who “fired into him as he lay moaning on the ground”.
Stephen Fuller, who was listed in press reports as having been killed, was blown into a stream by the force of the explosion and managed to reach the nearby home of the Curran family, where he was treated. He was taken from there the following morning to the home of the Daly family at Firies and later spent several weeks hiding in a dugout.
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That Fuller survived the explosion at Ballyseedy was extraordinary. According to May Daly, who looked after him, his back “was all tattooed with the gravel of the road and his hands also”. For a few days, Fuller was unconscious, but gradually recovered. Medical assessments in subsequent years detail the effects of the explosion at Ballyseedy. Dr Edmond Shanahan, the first doctor to tend to Fuller, wrote ten years later that he was suffering from nervous shock: “a chronic neurasthenic and I have no doubt but his present condition is due to the explosion … all his back was burned with gunpowder and dozens of small pieces of grit embedded under the skin … The scars from same are still to be seen today”.
A local girl who passed the site of the explosion described it as a “shocking site. There was a hole in the middle of the road and human flesh scattered in all directions, debris and everything scattered all over the place.” The Cork Examiner reporter described how the prisoners were “mangled almost beyond recognition; portions of their limbs and flesh, with pieces of clothing, were found adhering to trees and strewn along the roads and fields over a hundred yards” from the scene. An IRA report claimed that “some of the Colonials [army officers] returned to the site at dawn and ‘laughed and jeered as they threw the pieces of flesh, boots, and clothes over the hedge on either side”.
When the dismembered remains of the eight men who died were placed in coffins and returned to their families at Ballymullen Barracks, there was a dramatic furore. Bill Bailey, a native of Ballymullen, was one of the Free State officers on duty and recounted the events of the day to Ernie O’Malley years later.
The funerals which followed prompted an outcry and condemnation of the actions of the Free State Army
At about four o’clock in the afternoon, it was decided to release the remains to the families, who were waiting outside the barracks with an estimated 400 people. Bailey described how, as the “procession of corpses” made its way through the barrack gates, the army band began to play lively music. “The band lined up and played ragtime [music] inside [the] gate – I’m the Sheik of Araby etc, on either side of the main gate. Completely shocked and dazed the people”.
The families reacted furiously, throwing stones at the soldiers and smashing the army coffins on the ground. They placed the deceased in coffins they had brought themselves. The remains, many of which could not be clearly identified, had been placed indiscriminately in the coffins: the sister of Michael O’Connell discovered his body in a coffin bearing the name Stephen Fuller. Patrick Hartnett’s mother arrived from Listowel and was handed one of the coffins but insisted on opening it, stating, “I won’t want anyone’s son, only my own”. One of the coffins was opened and Mrs Hartnett was only able to identify her son by a “small bit of his black curly head”.
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The funerals which followed prompted an outcry and condemnation of the actions of the Free State Army. As a result, it was decided that, henceforth, prisoners who died in military custody in the Kerry Command areas would be buried by troops where they died rather than in their own parish. The real reason for the order, the republican newspaper Éire declared, was to ensure that Major General Paddy O’Daly “and his butchers are given a free hand to murder their prisoners and to cover up the evidence of their butchery”.
The only official refutation of the evidence given at the army inquiry about what happened at Ballyseedy in March 1923 might not have emerged at all, but for the persistence many years later of journalist and publisher Dan Nolan. Nolan, a native of Castle Street, Tralee, was managing director of The Kerryman until the late 1960s. He founded Anvil Books in 1964, which fulfilled his passion for publishing.
It was not to be the only such premeditated execution of republican prisoners in the county
Nolan was aware that retired army captain Niall Harrington, who grew up in Tralee, was writing an account of his experiences during the Civil War in Kerry. Nolan recognised the value of an account from a Free State soldier as a counterbalance to the strongly pro-republican Tragedies of Kerry by Dorothy Macardle, which, he remarked, could be quoted “at length” by many people in Kerry.
He was conscious, too, of the need to achieve balance in the Harrington story and provided much information that ensured the final publication offered the perspectives not just of those, like Harrington, who arrived at Fenit on the Lady Wicklow, but also many of the combatants on the anti-Treaty side. Harrington died in 1988, but his book, A Kerry Landing, was published by Anvil Books in 1992 with the support of his daughter, Nuala Jordan.
During the writing of the book, a handwritten note contained in Harrington’s papers emerged and is the only known record of a Free State Army officer clearly disputing the official account of events at Ballyseedy. It was attached to a copy of the report of the Court of Inquiry which had been held on April 7th, 1923, and was a whitewash investigation into the murders at Ballyseedy and elsewhere.
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In the note, which is undated, Harrington was explicit and definitive about what had occurred:
“The attached copy of an alleged Court of Enquiry held into the Ballyseedy slaughter is in my personal knowledge, totally untrue. The mine was constructed in Tralee under the supervision of the principal officers, Captains Eddie Ed Flood and Jim Clarke, and with complete knowledge and encouragement of Major Gen Paddy Daly … Ballyseedy was a reprisal for Knocknagoshel. It was planned and carried out by a group of Dublin Guard officers.”
It was not to be the only such premeditated execution of republican prisoners in the county, which ensured that Kerry would forever be associated with the worst excesses of the violence and barbarity of the Civil War in Ireland.
No Middle Path: The Civil War in Kerry by Owen O’Shea is published by Merrion Press, priced €19.95
