FROM THE ARCHIVES:The Kilmichael ambush in Co Cork, in which Tom Barry's IRA unit killed 17 Auxiliaries, was one of the major events of the War of Independence. This was how it was first reported two days later in The Irish Times. – JOE JOYCE
A TERRIBLE tragedy is reported from Macroom, Co Cork, where on Sunday evening a party of Auxiliary Police was ambushed by about 80 or 100 men. Fifteen were killed outright, one died, and another is missing. The attackers, according to a statement by Sir Hamar Greenwood in the House of Commons last night, were in khaki and wore trench helmets.
The party was fired on from both sides of the road, and there was also direct enfilading fire down the road. According to unofficial reports, many houses in the district and adjoining villages have been burned.
An official telegram received at Dublin Castle at 5 o’clock yesterday stated that seventeen members of the Auxiliary Force of the Royal Irish Constabulary went out on patrol duties at 3.15pm on Sunday in motor lorries from Macroom, Co Cork.
They were ambushed by a body of armed men, whose number are believed to have been between seventy and one hundred. Fifteen of them were killed outright, one man was wounded and is dying, and another man is missing.
According to information, the ambush took place at Johnstown, a village between Macroom and Dunmanway. It is reported that reprisals took place yesterday. Shops in the district were set on fire, and scarcely a house was left undamaged. People are clearing out of the locality in terror.
Business was at a stand-still at Macroom yesterday, all shops being closed as a precautionary measure against reprisals. Large parties of Auxiliary Police arrived with rifles and revolvers and patrolled the town, and travellers who motored there were ordered by the military to leave.
Towards the close of a reply to Mr. [Joseph] Devlin on the adjournment of the House of Commons last night, Sir Hamar said the matter raised that evening (the carrying of arms in Ulster, particularly by the Ulster Volunteers) did not involve murder, and he passed on to a telegram which he had received that evening – one of the most distressing telegrams he had ever read to the House. He reminded the House the Auxiliary Division in Ireland was composed entirely of ex-officers, selected for conspicuous merit in the war.
A further telegram from the Police Force in Ireland states: “ Some of my poor fellows were disarmed, and then brutally murdered. The bodies were rifled, and articles of value, and even articles of clothing, were taken from the bodies.”
To-night, in Macroom, Sir Hamar continued, there are fifteen officers lying side by side dead, the victims of Irish assassins. I do not think the House would care to pursue questions about some odd patrol in Ulster, or the burning of some farm, in the face of this challenge to the authority of this House and of civilisation. (Cheers.)
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