Sir, – What a lovely letter from Ruth Wheeler (June 3rd) on her grandfather’s account of his capture and imprisonment by the IRA in 1920.
Brig Gen Lucas recorded the humanity of his captors, publicly and to his family, but perhaps his modesty precluded him telling of his rescue of one of them, Joe Good, from possible drowning in the Shannon.
The London-born and bred Good, who first saw Ireland shortly before taking part in the 1916 Rising, wrote a memoir, Enchanted by Dreams, for his family in 1946, which was published by his son in 1996. Lucas and Good were both fishing in the Shannon by Castleconnel, Good in a punt which he could not control and was being swept towards a weir. Lucas jumped into another boat and towed him ashore. Neither Good nor Michael Brennan nor the other IRA men on the riverbank could swim either.
We should thank Ruth Wheeler for blowing away the fog of a propaganda war which did not clear when the guns fell silent. – Yours, etc,
DONAL KENNEDY ,
Palmers Green,
London.
Sir, – I refer to Brendan Ó Cathaoir’s letter of May 22nd, regarding the capture and detention of Gen Lucas. One of the “safe houses” to which Mr Ó Cathaoir refers was the farmhouse of John and Johanna Sheehan, Berna, Templeglantine, Co Limerick, where Gen Lucas stayed for one week approximately, before being “ferried across the Shannon” to Clare. When he was leaving the house for Clare, he thanked my grandmother for the way he was treated. He asked her: “What will you get out of this?” She replied, “All I want is an Irish republic”. – Yours, etc,
SEÁN SHEEHAN,
Roebuck Road,
Clonskeagh, Dublin 14.