On the 15th of June the Meelick Company of the I.R.A. suffered another major loss with the death of Captain Patrick Gleeson in action against the Royal Scots at Burton Hill in Meelick and the murder of Captain Christopher Mc Carthy by British soldiers after the ambush. Christopher Mc Carthy, a native of Milltown Malbay, was a member of the 4th Battalion of the West Clare Brigade of the I.R.A. who had transferred to the East Clare Brigade. On the morning of the Meelick ambush a small group of I.R.A. Volunteers including Gleeson and Mc Carthy went to Burton Hill early in the morning to raid the Limerick to Ennis train for mail to censor for intelligence information. A low stone barricade had been built across the railway track, a short distance before the Cratloe railway station, to stop the train. One Volunteer was travelling on the train ready to signal to the I.R.A. in case there were British forces on board.
As the train approached the barricade after ten o clock the I.R.A. Volunteer on board began signalling frantically to his comrades that the British soldiers were on board by waving a handkerchief out the window of one of the leading carriages. However his signal was not seen by the raiding party who held their positions. The British soldiers travelling on board saw them and a brief fight ensued during which the British soldiers forced the train driver to drive the train through the stone barricade to Cratloe station. On reaching Cratloe station the British soldiers forced the other passengers off the train and ordered the crew to reverse the train back along the track to Burton Hill. As the train approached the bend where the I.R.A. were, the engine driver repeatedly blew the steam whistle to warn the republicans that the British soldiers were returning, until an officer with the Royal Scots drew his revolver and threatened to kill him.
Most of the I.R.A. Volunteers were still in the fields to the north of the train track waiting for their comrades who had climbed telegraph poles attempting to disrupt British communications when the soldiers halted the train and dismounted firing their rifles and machine guns at the I.R.A. Volunteers retreating towards the tree line at the top of the hill. Patrick Gleeson was mortally wounded by the opening volley of machine gun fire and fell to the ground unable to continue. As Mc Carthy was withdrawing with the others he noticed Gleeson was missing and returned to rescue him. The British soldiers began advancing up the hillside from the railway track. Mc Carthy opened fire on the advancing soldiers and attempted to drag him Gleeson to safety. The pair were surrounded and captured after Mc Carthy ran out of ammunition. By this time Gleeson was already dead. After capturing Mc Carthy the soldiers of the Royal Scots murdered him by cutting his throat, and shooting him a number of times at point blank range. The rest of the I.R.A. party had already escaped to Woodcock Hill
The British soldiers went to the farm of the Burton’s a local unionist family and forced a number of the farm labourers there to help them remove the two bodies. Michael Doherty was carrying Mc Carthy’s body with another man when he lifted back the covering the British soldiers had placed over it and saw that Mc Carhty’s throat had been cut and his chest was riddled with bullet wounds. Immediately he received a blow of a rifle butt from one of the Royal Scots who replaced the covers on Mc Carthy’s the body. Both bodies were taken to the house of the Collins family where the soldiers guarded them until British reinforcements arrived and taking them to Limerick. In order to cover up their crime the British military did not release the bodies of Gleeson and Mc Carthy to their relatives for burial for over a month until after the truce. Their bodies were eventually exchanged with the I.R.A. in return for the body of Daniel Murphy, the Black and Tan intelligence officer from Cork who had been executed by members of the East Clare brigade at Glenwood on the 12th of March. Gleeson and Mc Carthy were buried in the republican plot in Meelick churchyard alongside Patrick White.
Séan Moroney was still on the run in east Clare with Patrick Houlihan after the attack on the British Military at Tulla. Early in June he returned to his home at in Feackle to help in burning a local hunting lodge which had recently been occupied by the Auxiliaries to prevent them from reoccupying it. Moroney had slept during the day both he and Houlihan decided to accompany the local I.R.A. Volunteers on their mission: “We were armed with service rifles and had about sixty rounds of ammunition each. Two Volunteers my brother, Denis Moroney, and Volunteer Patrick O Brien went in front as scouts on bicycles. Four other Volunteers accompanied us on foot, carrying tins of paraffin oil to burn the house. When about half a mile from the lodge, on an open mountain road, we heard in front of us several voices shouting to halt. This was followed by a volley of shots. Captain [Patrick] Houlihan ordered the four Volunteers who were with us to get back as quickly as they could. He and I then lay down on the side of the road and could make out the forms of a large force of mounted soldiers, Lancers, coming over the top of a hill about three hundred yards away. They were on an old road that was impassable for horses except after a long period of dry weather. We opened fire on them and they dismounted and returned the fire. We knew after a very short time that it was a large force we had run into. They spread out on both sides as if to encircle us and kept up a very heavy rifle and rifle grenade fire. We changed our positions several times and kept them at bay for over an hour. During a lull in the firing we slipped away into a ravine where a small river runs and were out of their view.”
Other I.R.A. Volunteers caught within the British forces encirclement were not as fortunate Michael Gleeson was captured at Coolreagh bog near Feackle along with James Rochford, Ned Doyle, Jack Considine, Michael Tuohy and Paddy Tuohy. Gleeson and the other republicans suffered brutal treatment at the hands of their captors: “At first I was questioned about the I.R.A. and when I refused to give any information I was led away under a guard and ordered to a part of the field on which the troops were encamped. One of my legs was tied to a stake driven deeply into the ground. I was compelled to my two arms straight past my head. The other prisoners were similarly treated. Darkness had by this time set in and sentries were mounted over us. Throughout the night these sentries kept walking hither and thither using our chests as stepping-stones. According as the mood struck them they kicked us or beat us with their rifle butts. Frequently too, a soldier would bend down and commence twisting our necks from side to side. At dawn some of these troops collected cow dung from a neighbouring fields and rubbed it into our hair. Then a firing party came along and we were informed that we were all going to be shot. At this stage a cavalry officer arrived and when he saw our condition he said to some other officers that were about; ‘It’s a good job the press has not got hold of what’s going on here’. I turned my head to get a look at this man but as soon as I did so I received a blow of a rifle on the head, which rendered me unconscious. …After about a week, we were sent on to the Curragh where I was interned in Rath Camp.”
Since brutal deaths of William Shanahan and Michael Mc Namara by British forces the previous December, it was obvious to the I.R.A. that a British spy was operating in the West Clare Brigade area. Further confirmation that a British agent was at work came in May when the I.R.A. captured intelligence documents from a Royal Air Force plane, which crashed in Limerick. These documents included a number of intelligence reports from a spy in west Clare, giving accurate reports of the location of republican dug outs and the movements of I.R.A. Volunteers. The I.R.A. unit in Limerick immediately made contact with Liam Haugh and passed on copies of these reports to him. However the intelligence officers in the West Clare Brigade were unable to identify the culprit until a British Army officer from the Kilrush garrison was overheard revealing the man’s name during a slip in conversation.
The man concerned was Patrick Darcy, a native of Cooraclare, who worked as a teacher in Doonbeg. Two of his brothers were I.R.A. Volunteers, one of them Michael had drowned following an I.R.A. attack on the R.I.C. at Cooraclare in July of 1919. Because of his family’s involvement in the republican struggle he was on friendly terms with members of the local I.R.A. units. However during 1920 it was noticed that Darcy began drinking heavily and frequenting a pub in Kilrush, owned by a retired ex-R.I.C. man named Sheehan, in the company of British soldiers and Black and Tans. According to Michael Russell the possibility that D was a British had long been mentioned by local republicans in the area: “As the year 1921 wore on Darcy’s name was a byword amongst all the I.R.A. in West Clare as a British spy. He continued to frequent Sheehan’s public house and to mix in the company of the enemy forces. Every descent person in West Clare strongly condemned the Shanahan and Mc Namara murders and even people who were not in sympathy with Sinn Féin movement shunned the company of the British garrison in Kilrush after these happenings. But Darcy was seen to come into frequent contact with the enemy as time went on. He also drank more.”
Christopher Mc Carthy
On the 15th of June 1921 John Mc Cormack Captain of A Company – Clonlara East Clare Brigade IRA, led thirteen IRA Volunteers from the Brigades 2nd Battalion in an operation to raid the mails on the Limerick to Ennis train.
The train had been raided a number of times before and the mails taken on these occasions had revealed correspondence passing between the British forces and spies in the locality. During one raid the IRA found a letter adressed to John O Reilly , Newmarket-on-Fergus from the R.I.C. Reilly who was already suspected of spying was abducted by the I.R.A. and court-martialed. He was found guilty of spying and was executed on 20th April 1921.
Mc Cormack planned the June raid hoped that the captured the mails would again reveal the identity of a sp . “At that particular period I had a very strong suspicion that some person in the Cratloe district was acting as a spy for the British forces and it was because of this that I decided to raid the mails in the hope that we might find something which would help to identify the spy. I selected Woodcockhill, about half a mile from Cratloe railway station as the venue for this operation…”
The planned operation was to take place in the Woodcockhill – Burton Hill area instead of the Cratloe railway Station where most of the other raids had happened. A Barricade of stones was built across the railway line as a barrier to stop the train. This barrier was marked with a red flag to make it visible to the driver who would be forced to stop. I.R.A. Volunteer Patsy Cherry had boarded the mid day train to Ennis train at the Long Pavement station in Limerick. The plan was that as the train approached the barricade Cherry would signal to the hidden I.R.A. men that there were no British forces on the train by waving his hat from one of the carriage windows. Once they received the signal that the coast was clear Mc Cormack would lead the waiting I.R.A. raiding party onto the train when it stopped at the barricade and capture the mails.
The I.R.A. raiding party under Mc Cormacks command consisted of thirteen men including: Lieutennant Michael Gleeson of Caherdavin, James O Halloran from Portrine – Cratloe, Tom Bently from Cratloe, Bobby and Jackie Nix from Meelick, and Christopher Mc Carthy a native of Milltown Malbay, was a member of the 4th Battalion of the I.R.A.’s West Clare Brigade. Mc Carthy was the only man not from the locality and he had transferred to the East Clare Brigade because of what he perceived as inactivity and a lack of militarism in the West Clare Brigade Area . All of these men were armed with either rifles or shotguns.
As the train approached the barricade just after mid-day, Patsy Cherry failed to give the all clear signal because there was a large detachment of British soldiers from the 2nd Battalion Royal Scots on board. The train driver, a Limerick man named Sullivan, who Mc Cormac later described as as “sound supporter of the I.R.A.” on seeing the barricade guessed that the train was to be raided and knowing that there were British soldiers on board, he put steam on and drove through the barricade to prevent the I.R.A. having to fight a much larger force of British soldiers.
As the train passed his position Mc Cormac noticed a British soldier with his head outside the window, and fired a shot at him. If the British soldiers on board had not been aware of the I.R.A.’s plans to stop and raid they train before this they most certainly were after wards.
On reaching Cratloe station the British soldiers forced the other passengers off the train, their commanding officer then boarded the engine and ordered the crew to reverse the train back along the track to Burton Hill. As the train approached the bend where the I.R.A. were, the driver Sullivan repeatedly blew the steam whistle to warn the republicans that the British soldiers were returning, until an officer with the Royal Scots drew his revolver and threatened to “blow his brains out”.
Unaware that the British soldiers had now commandeered the train and were returning to their position Mc Cormac decided to cut the telegraph wires on the northern side of the railway track, to prevent the British soldiers reporting the I.R.A.’s presence when they reached Cratloe Station. Mc Cormac fetched a hedge cutters from Michael Collin’s house, nearby on the northern side of the railway line and climbed the telegraph pole and began cutting the wires. Unfortunally the hedge cutters broke after the first wire was cut and Mc Cormac shouted to James O Halloran to go to Goggins house on the southern side of the track and find another cutting impliment. According to Mc Cormac:
“O Halloran was just about to enter the back door of Goggins’ which was was 40 yards or so away, when I noticed the train reversing from Cratloe. I shouted to the men to disperse, jumped off the pole myself, ran across the railway line and flung myself over a wall along which I ran until I got over a hawthorn hedge that provided me with cover from view until I got clear of the enemy. When James O Halloran heard my shout to disperse, he saw the threat coming from the enemy in the reversing train and, with his Martini Henry rifle, opened fire on the military. I believe it was his action saved my life as his shooting attracted the attention of the soldiers in his direction and thus enabled me to get away.”
Christopher Mc Carthy and Michael Gleeson who had been standing on the northern side of the track watching Mc Cormac cut the telegraph wires were not so lucky. When the soldiers halted the train and dismounted firing their rifles and machine guns at the I.R.A. Mc Cormac, O Halloran and most of the I.R.A. Volunteers the others dispersed across the level fields to the south. However Gleeson and Mc Carthy retreated northwards uphill towards Collins’ house. Gleeson was mortally wounded by one of the opening volleys of British gun fire and fell to the ground unable to continue. Mc Carthy returned to rescue him. The British soldiers began advancing up the hillside from the railway track. Mc Carthy opened fire on the advancing soldiers and attempted to drag him Gleeson to safety. The pair were surrounded and captured after Mc Carthy ran out of ammunition. By this time Gleeson was already dead. After capturing Mc Carthy the soldiers of the Royal Scots killed him by cutting his throat, and shooting him a number of times at point blank range.
Republican Plot, Meelick where Gleeson, Mc Carthy and Patrick White are buried
The British soldiers went to the Gleeson’s farm and forced a number of the labourers there to help them remove the two bodies. Michael Doherty was carrying Mc Carthy’s body with another man when he lifted back the covering the British soldiers had placed over it and saw that Mc Carhty’s throat had been cut and his chest was riddled with bullet wounds. Immediately he received a blow of a rifle butt from one of the Royal Scots who replaced the covers on Mc Carthy’s body. Both bodies were taken to the house of the Collins family where the soldiers guarded them until British reinforcements arrived. After their bodies were returned to their relatives Gleeson and Mc Carthy were buried in the republican plot in Meelick churchyard alongside Patrick White killed on Spike Island Cork by a British sentry two weeks earlier on 1st June 1921.
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