Sir, - I write in relation to the recent correspondence about the ambush at Kilmichael on November 28th, 1920, which was initiated by Kevin Myers on May 29th when he praised Peter Hart's book The IRA and its Enemies and accepted its conclusions. In his book Hart concluded that "British information seems to have been remarkably accurate. Barry's history of Kilmichael, on the other hand, is riddled with lies and evasions. There was no false surrender as he described it." Hart has defended this view on two subsequent occasions in your columns.
This opinion of Hart is largely based on what he calls Barry's "original after-action report written for his superiors", which was captured by the British. Hart accepts this as "an authentic captured document" and states that it "was only printed in an unpublished and confidential history."
Several observations may be made about this document, which is so central to the charge that Barry was lying. Firstly, the report as it appears in the General Strickland Papers is not the original handwritten account by Barry. It is typed into the official record of the Irish Rebellion (1916-1921) in the 6th Divisional Area. Secondly, the report is not dated. Thirdly, contrary to Hart's assertion, the report did appear in published form, although with a limited circulation, in The Irish Republican Army from Captured Documents Only (June 1921).
The internal content of the report also raises many questions. While it does describe the column as being divided into three sections for the ambush, as indeed happened, there are many anomalies. The most serious discrepancies, as Hart admits, are the statements that that the column left its position to return home "as the enemy searches were completed", and that the decision to attack the Auxiliaries was taken some five minutes into their homeward journey. In other words the document suggests that, contrary to all other existing evidence, the column did not remain in their ambush positions until the Auxiliaries arrived.
These considerations alone place a major question mark on the authenticity of the document. These errors, moreover, are compounded by other issues over detail: for example the time of the column's arrival at Kilmichael and the time of the ambush do not accord with other accounts. The report is also brief. It does not, it is true, contain a mention of a false surrender, but neither does it mention other features central to the incident such as Barry standing in the road in military uniform to confront the first lorry, or the division of the three sections into smaller sub-sections.
The context in which the report was written is also significant. Barry had retreated with the column to Granure, some 10 miles south of Kilmichael, by the late evening of November 28th. In the early hours of next morning he was contacted by Charlie Hurley, Brigade Commandant, and made a verbal report to him. Liam Deasy received what he described as "a full report of the ambush" from Hurley on November 30th. A few days later, on December 3rd, Barry was taken to hospital in Cork with heart trouble, and was confined there until December 28th. In this context questions arise as to the need to make a report, and the opportunity to do so.
It should be noted that all Barry's detailed accounts of the ambush since the early 1940s mention a false surrender, and that he referred to others who did the same. One of the most significant was General F. P. Crozier, who was responsible for the Auxiliary Division of the RIC from 1920 to 1921, when he resigned owing to their lack of discipline. He wrote in Ireland For Ever (1932) that at Kilmichael "it was perfectly true that the wounded had been put to death after the ambush, but the reason for this barbarous inhumanity became understandable although inexcusable" because "arms were supposed to have been surrendered, but a wounded Auxiliary whipped out a revolver while lying on the ground and shot a `Shinner', with the result that all his comrades were put to death."
Hart accepts that this story was to be heard as early as 1921, and he acknowledges Crozier "as the first writer" to acknowledge the false surrender story. In fact Crozier was not the first to write of such a surrender. Piaras Beaslai, for one, wrote in his life of Michael Collins (1926) that "what really happened on the occasion was that, after the fight had continued for some time, some of the Auxiliaries offered to surrender. When Volunteers advanced to take the surrender they were fired on."
Despite this significant evidence, which explicitly affirms the false surrender story, Hart chooses to reject it in favour of a document, surrounded with question marks, which merely fails to mention a false surrender. One cannot but feel that far more evidence is required before Barry's account may be dismissed as "lies and evasion". - Yours, etc., Brian P. Murphy,
Glenstal Abbey, Co Limerick.