Punch’s Quarry Ambush

In early November I.R.A. headquarters in Austin Brennan the acting commander of the East Clare Brigade and informed them that R.I.C. Commissioner Smyth and members of the ‘Cairo Gang’, a group of British Secret Service men, would be travelling by train from Dublin to Limerick. Austin Brennan was given detailed information about the their planned journey and in a joint operation with the Mid Limerick Brigade he was ordered to hold up their train at Killonan Station and assassinate Smyth and the British agents on board.

Joseph Honan from Tuamgreany was also on the run in the Cratloe area staying at Ballymaurice House with some of the other I.R.A. Volunteers who had been selected by Austin Brennan to take part in the attack: “I think it was about the third day after the crowd left for Limerick that a British Military plane made a forced landing in the Cratloe district. It came down in a field owned by Mr Punch. In the same field and about two hundred yards away from where the plane came to a halt was a quarry, the top of which was about twenty or thirty feet above the level of the field. I did not actually witness the landing of the plane which took place about mid day, but soon afterwards I went to Hogan’s house near at hand and got full details there of what had happened. One of the workmen Ned O Brien was in the I.R.A. and he told me that the pilot of the plane was unhurt because soon after landing he left the machine and went to the main road where was able to sent word of his position by some passer-by to the military at Limerick. I got a loan of a bike and with a young lad went off to investigate how matters stood as the idea was forming in my head that there might be a machine gun in the plane which might be captured. We turned back as soon as we saw lorries coming from Limerick. On returning to Hogan’s I discussed with Ned O Brien the possibility of attacking the plane and the guard which we now knew would be placed over it for the night, and agreed that it was an opportunity which should not be missed. O Brien went off to get the assistance of the local Volunteers. In a short while Jack Mc Namara, Motyhill, accompanied by Bill Lynch, two O Halloran brothers and six others arrived at Hogan’s.  Two men were sent off to make observations as to what was happening at the plane while Ned O Brien, Jack Mc Namara, the two O Halloran’s, myself and another man whose name I do not know went to Ballymaurice house and got the rifles. The scouts we had sent out came with the news that the military who had come out to guard the plane had built a fire in the field with a load of turf which they had commandeered from a man who was  passing along the road and that they were amusing themselves around the fire at a game called share the ring, and were obviously not expecting an attack. O Brien and Myself took the party of riflemen through the fields on to the top of the quarry. It was then about five thirty p.m. and quite dark. The fire lighted by the military gave us a splendid view of each soldier. We opened fire on them and kept up a hot fusillade for about twenty minutes of so. The military retaliated with heavy machinegun fire under which we retired to  a wood at the rear of the quarry and from there we returned with our guns to Ballymaurice house. I never learned what casualties were inflicted in that engagement on the British forces, but after the first volley I’m positive two soldiers fell into the turf fire.” Two British soldiers Private Spackman and Private Robins of the Oxfordshire regiment were killed in the attack.

The British Army responded to the soldier’s deaths by staging a massive security operation in Cratloe and Meelick. Hundreds of British soldiers searched the surrounding countryside for days afterwards and arrested every man and youth of military age they came across. A number of British Army road blocks and checkpoints were set up in the district in an attempt to capture the I.R.A. Volunteers involved in the attack. By this time they had all gone back into hiding but the members of Austin Brennan’s party who were returning from Limerick had a narrow escape. The planned attack on the British Intelligence agents was abandoned when news reached the I.R.A. that they were suddenly recalled to Dublin just before boarding the Limerick train. William Mc Namara was returning from Limerick with the other selected I.R.A. Volunteers on the Ennis road when they encountered a British Army checkpoint that had been set up a few hundred yards from Punch’s field where the republicans had mounted their attack on the British soldiers a few days earlier. “All the Claremen were cycling along the main Ennis – Limerick road in pairs about twenty yards apart. Sean O Halloran, Scariff, had been sent on in front of the party to scout the road. It was about nine or ten o clock at night. Con O Halloran and myself were in front and in the vicinity of Cratloe we were ordered to halt. At first we thought it might be I.R.A. scouts along the road, but were not long left in Doubt, as a burst of fire across the road quickly made us realise that we had run right into the enemy who were laying in ambush. The fire was heavy and concentrated and we were both knocked off our bikes. I managed to escape with an injured knee, probably caused in my fall from the bike. Fortunately the fence on the left hand side of the road was very low and the field inside it was a few feet below the level of the road. I clambered into the field and after a while made contact with Con O Halloran and another of the Mid Clare crowd Jack Hasset. … Sean O Halloran the scout, cycled right into the ambushing party which consisted of military. He was fired on at point blank range and badly wounded. When the soldiers heard us coming they left him and jumped inside the road fence. Thinking that he was dead they left him lying on the roadside but he recovered consciousness, crawled along a road to a cottage where his wounds were dressed and from whence he was shifted on by some local volunteers to a place of safety.”

Though the British Intelligence officers had escaped the planned I.R.A. ambush at Killonan Railway Station, they were not to survive for long.  Between nine and ten o clock on Sunday morning the 21st of November (known afterwards as ‘Bloody Sunday’) members of ‘The Squad’, a group of I.R.A. Volunteers managed by Michael Collins and trained to assassinate leading members of the British forces, executed eleven British Secret Service agents working in Dublin and two members of the Auxiliaries, in a coordinated operation which devastated the British Intelligence network in Ireland. The Mid and East Clare Brigades had supplied intelligence information to I.R.A. headquarters which led to the execution of Captain Billy Mc Lean and Captain John Fitzgerald. Mc Lean had been captured by the I.R.A. in Ennistymon, interrogated and released on the undertaking that he would leave Ireland immediately. Captain John Fitzgerald had been stationed with the R.I.C. in Clare, where he had been captured and interrogated by the I.R.A., court-martialled and sentenced to death. He was taken to a field and placed against a wall for execution. At the last moment he attempted to escape and was shot. The I.R.A. Volunteers left him for dead and he escaped back to his barracks after they left. I.R.A. Volunteer Jim Slattery from Clare was a member of the squad and led the group of gunmen who assassinated Lieutenant H. Angliss of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers on the morning of Bloody Sunday.

In revenge for the killing of their comrades, the Auxiliaries and British Army soldiers surrounded Croke Park later that evening, while a Gaelic football match was in progress between Dublin and Tipperary. They arrived in a large convoy of  lorries pr

On 18 November I.R.A. headquarters informed Austin Brennan the acting commander of the East Clare Brigade and informed them that R.I.C. Commissioner Smyth and members of the ‘Cairo Gang’, a group of British Secret Service men, would be travelling by train from Dublin to Limerick. Austin Brennan was given detailed information about the their planned journey and in a joint operation with the Mid Limerick Brigade he was ordered to hold up their train at Killonan Station and assassinate Smyth and the British agents on board.

Joseph Honan from Tuamgreany was also on the run in the Cratloe area staying at Ballymaurice House with some of the other I.R.A. Volunteers who had been selected by Austin Brennan to take part in the attack: “I think it was about the third day after the crowd left for Limerick that a British Military plane made a forced landing in the Cratloe district. It came down in a field owned by Mr Punch. In the same field and about two hundred yards away from where the plane came to a halt was a quarry, the top of which was about twenty or thirty feet above the level of the field. I did not actually witness the landing of the plane which took place about mid day, but soon afterwards I went to Hogan’s house near at hand and got full details there of what had happened. One of the workmen Ned O Brien was in the I.R.A. and he told me that the pilot of the plane was unhurt because soon after landing he left the machine and went to the main road where was able to sent word of his position by some passer-by to the military at Limerick. I got a loan of a bike and with a young lad went off to investigate how matters stood as the idea was forming in my head that there might be a machine gun in the plane which might be captured. We turned back as soon as we saw lorries coming from Limerick. On returning to Hogan’s I discussed with Ned O Brien the possibility of attacking the plane and the guard which we now knew would be placed over it for the night, and agreed that it was an opportunity which should not be missed. O Brien went off to get the assistance of the local Volunteers. In a short while Jack Mc Namara, Motyhill, accompanied by Bill Lynch, two O Halloran brothers and six others arrived at Hogan’s.  Two men were sent off to make observations as to what was happening at the plane while Ned O Brien, Jack Mc Namara, the two O Halloran’s, myself and another man whose name I do not know went to Ballymaurice house and got the rifles. The scouts we had sent out came with the news that the military who had come out to guard the plane had built a fire in the field with a load of turf which they had commandeered from a man who was  passing along the road and that they were amusing themselves around the fire at a game called share the ring, and were obviously not expecting an attack. O Brien and Myself took the party of riflemen through the fields on to the top of the quarry. It was then about five thirty p.m. and quite dark. The fire lighted by the military gave us a splendid view of each soldier. We opened fire on them and kept up a hot fusillade for about twenty minutes of so. The military retaliated with heavy machinegun fire under which we retired to  a wood at the rear of the quarry and from there we returned with our guns to Ballymaurice house. I never learned what casualties were inflicted in that engagement on the British forces, but after the first volley I’m positive two soldiers fell into the turf fire.”

Two British soldiers Private Spackman and Private Robins of the Oxfordshire regiment were killed as a result of the attack. The British Army responded to the soldier’s deaths by staging a massive security operation in Cratloe and Meelick. Hundreds of British soldiers searched the surrounding countryside for days afterwards and arrested every man and youth of military age they came across. A number of British Army road blocks and checkpoints were set up in the district in an attempt to capture the I.R.A. Volunteers involved in the attack. By this time they had all gone back into hiding but the members of Austin Brennan’s party who were returning from Limerick had a narrow escape. The planned attack on the British Intelligence agents was abandoned when news reached the I.R.A. that they were suddenly recalled to Dublin just before boarding the Limerick train. William Mc Namara was returning from Limerick with the other selected I.R.A. Volunteers on the Ennis road when they encountered a British Army checkpoint that had been set up a few hundred yards from Punch’s field where the republicans had mounted their attack on the British soldiers a few days earlier. “All the Claremen were cycling along the main Ennis – Limerick road in pairs about twenty yards apart. Sean O Halloran, Scariff, had been sent on in front of the party to scout the road. It was about nine or ten o clock at night. Con O Halloran and myself were in front and in the vicinity of Cratloe we were ordered to halt. At first we thought it might be I.R.A. scouts along the road, but were not long left in Doubt, as a burst of fire across the road quickly made us realise that we had run right into the enemy who were laying in ambush. The fire was heavy and concentrated and we were both knocked off our bikes. I managed to escape with an injured knee, probably caused in my fall from the bike. Fortunately the fence on the left hand side of the road was very low and the field inside it was a few feet below the level of the road. I clambered into the field and after a while made contact with Con O Halloran and another of the Mid Clare crowd Jack Hasset. … Sean O Halloran the scout, cycled right into the ambushing party which consisted of military. He was fired on at point blank range and badly wounded. When the soldiers heard us coming they left him and jumped inside the road fence. Thinking that he was dead they left him lying on the roadside but he recovered consciousness, crawled along a road to a cottage where his wounds were dressed and from whence he was shifted on by some local volunteers to a place of safety.”