Dear me, one of my days off, and I find this space dedicated to an encomium to the events at Kilmichael 80 years ago. Yet despite the passage of all this time, Padraig O Cuanachain is warbling ecstatically in this space about the splendours of Tom Barry's flying column and its noble deeds in Cork.
Now what happened in Kilmichael - whatever it was - should not be the subject of pride, or boastfulness, or vainglorious satisfaction, and least of all song. For though there are many different accounts of events there, they all agree on several salient points. Sixteen Auxiliary RIC were killed. The last killings occurred after a surrender had occurred. One Auxiliary survived, was captured by the IRA, held for two days, and then killed. The only RIC survivor was left an epileptic quadriplegic for life. Now it takes a truly heathen interpretation of Irish nationalism to find satisfaction in these events. They were an utter abomination, and it doesn't matter if these men were Gestapo torturers, or that it was a military necessity to kill them, it is an obscenity to carol joyfully at such things, as does the song with which the diary in question began.
More violence
Admittedly, given the terror the Auxiliaries inspired almost everywhere, and their often atrocious and even murderous behaviour, there were profoundly extenuating circumstances for such triumphalist celebrations at the time. There are none whatever now. We know, 80 years later, about half of which have endured IRA campaigns of one kind or another, that violence does not achieve Irish unity. Celebrations of it are merely the seedbed for more violence in the future.
What was truly bizarre about the O Cuanachain diary was that it read rather like an Inter cert essay from 1966 rather than now. Peter Hart's outstanding study into the IRA in Cork has cast extraordinary light on the usual justification for the killings of the Auxiliaries after they had surrendered: that three IRA men had been killed under an earlier flag of surrender.
But as Peter reveals, this version of events only materialised late in Tom Barry's life. Barry's earlier accounts make no such mention of a false surrender, and his explanation for the IRA loss of three men dead was simple: "I attribute our casualties to the fact that those three men were too anxious to get into close quarters with the enemy . . . they were our best men and did not know danger in this or any previous actions. They discarded cover, and it was not until the finish of the action that P. Deasy was killed by a revolver bullet from one of the enemy he thought dead".
In all truth, either way, the false-surrender story is irrelevant. It would have been madness for Barry's men to kill some Auxiliaries but allow survivors to return to their base. In the absence of an IRA POW camp, there is only one solution for geurillas/terrorists - murder, and Barry, a murderous young man, chose it, to the immense distress of his volunteers, who were clearly decent young men doing their duty, as they saw it, for their country in appalling times.
Not unique
Such conduct isn't unique to the IRA. Conventional soldiers have always dismissed surrenders which were made after great loss or were militarily inconvenient. "Sorry, mate, too late," could be the last words a surrendering German of the Great War might ever hear.
No, what is most objectionable about the O Cuanachain diary - and all such texts exulting in particular feats of homicide - is the selectivity of deed, language and moral indignation which it contains. Peter Hart quotes Liam Deasy, a senior IRA officer, remembering Lt Colonel Crake, who was killed at Kilmichael, for his "soldierly humanity". A contemporary newspaper report said: "[the Auxiliaries] made diligent efforts to make a good impression . . . and took pains to let it be known they did not come for trouble and did not want it".
As for the death of Seamus O Liathain, the only person killed by the Macroom Auxiliaries before Kilmichael, one of their number, Bill Munro, wrote: "This incident depressed us, especially as it was a stupid and unnecessary death and had, so to speak, opened war, which we had not wanted".
Murdered
Needless to say, O Cuanachain makes no mention of the two Macroom Auxiliaries who shortly before Kilmichael were abducted from the Cork train, interrogated - how? I wonder - murdered and secretly buried. Their bodies were never discovered. And equally needless to say, our temporary diarist - oh tell me he is, isn't he? - is wonderful in his use of words. O Liathain, he declares, was "murdered in cold blood". The Auxiliary RIC man Cecil Guthrie, whose wife lived locally and who survived the ambush almost unscathed, was later found by the IRA: he was merely "executed", says O Cuanachain, without telling us that the murder happened after two - no doubt - rather interesting days' captivity.
You can trawl through the disgusting events of the time looking for proof of the intrinsic iniquity of men of the IRA or the RIC Auxiliaries. It is a futile quest. Many good men on both sides did evil things they would never have done had they not been caught up in war. It is war which was the evil - was, and is - and it is contemptible and diseased that 80 years later these revolting events are being celebrated as if they are something to be proud of.