Unbelievably, one man, Stephen Fuller, was thrown clear into a ditch unnoticed by the perpetrators. He survived and went on to live a full life, including a period as a Fianna Fáil TD.

His comrades that lonely night, all young men, never got to see the new state that emerged from the ashes of the 11-month conflict. Among them was George O’Shea, a native of Kilflynn in North Kerry. George was an uncle of John O’Shea on his father’s side.

And commanding the Free State soldiers who tied the prisoners together and retreated a safe distance, was Ned Breslin, a native of Derry. Within a year of the atrocity, Breslin would marry Mary Slattery, an aunt of John O’Shea on his mother’s side.

Breslin’s presence at Ballyseedy would not be confirmed for the O’Shea family for decades afterwards, but when it was it led to the sundering of ties among siblings.

“My mother was very shocked when she finally had it confirmed,” John O’Shea says.

“She sent a letter to her sister who was living in Dublin with Breslin and they fell out and didn’t talk anymore after that. That was in 1980 and both of them died in 1996. For all that time there was nothing between them.”

The character of the Irish Civil War was such that it has long been described as “brother versus brother”. Unlike other internal conflicts, this one was not based on geography, religion or tribal loyalties. As John O’Shea aptly describes it, the conflict was all about “the stepping stone or the Republic”.

The “stepping stone” was Michael Collins’ term for what the Anglo-Irish Treaty had achieved, a route to freedom. The Republic was the working out of the 1916 Rising, a complete break from the crown in a united Ireland. (Precious little energy or thought appears to be have been spent on what a “republic” might consist of but that’s for another day).

In such a milieu, it was up to every man and woman to wrestle with their own conscience and come to a conclusion as to which side they were on. Inevitably, families split.

The O’Sheas of Kilflynn were typical of Irish families at the start of the 20th century: Nine siblings, some of whom were destined for the immigrant boat. For a while, that looked to be the fate of George O’Shea.

“A granduncle of mine, George’s uncle, had joined the London Metropolitan police,” John O’Shea says.

“He had done well and he got George to do the exams for the police in England. But then around 1917, George was in Tralee one day with his mother and he saw the state of the poverty and the hospital trains coming from the [First World] war. So he decided instead he’d join the IRA and fight for this country.”

During the War of Independence, George, along with John’s father, Dan, was part of a North Kerry brigade that was resolute in taking on the crown forces. 

Then came the truce, the Treaty, the Dáil debates, and the wider debate among the general population. 

In the general election of June 1922, around 78% of the electorate backed parties supporting the Treaty, but among those who had fought in the War of Independence the outcome fell short of the goal.

“My father supported the Treaty at first although he later joined the anti-Treatyites but George was dead set against it. He said he’d fought for a Republic and he’d die to maintain it.”

The conflict began with the shelling of the Four Courts on June 28. Following that, the national army under Collins quickly gained control of Leinster. 

Ned Breslin's War of Independence

On August 2, the SS Lady Wicklow arrived in Fenit after a 24-hour journey from Dublin with 450 national army troops. The contingent was led by Paddy O’Daly, who would go on to gain notoriety for how he prosecuted the war during his time in Kerry. 

Also on board was Ned Breslin, who would go on to meet his future wife in Tralee. Breslin had arrived in Dublin from his native Derry in 1918 to join the IRA, according to John O’Shea, in the company of Johnny Haughey, father of the future Taoiseach, Charles.

In December 1920, at the height of the War of Independence, Breslin was among the large contingent of volunteers who attempted to burn down the Custom House in Dublin.

He was captured in the aftermath of that engagement.

“Ned’s son told me that when he was arrested after the Custom House he had bullets in his pocket, even though he’d got rid of his guns,” John O’Shea remembers.

They brought him to Mountjoy and, according to later witness statements, he got a terrible hiding there from the British. One report was that his fingernails were pulled out.

“Anyway, he was sentenced to death and that hung over him until the ceasefire six months later and he was released.”

Following the signing of the Treaty, Breslin backed Collins and joined the National army. After arriving in Fenit on the Lady Wicklow, he worked closely with O’Daly.

A month after the Free State forces took Tralee, John’s father Dan was captured and sent to the prison camp in the Curragh. His brother George remained at large, living rough in countryside beyond the towns of north Kerry which were all now under Free State control.

“My father had joined the anti-treaty column but his heart wasn’t really in it,” John says. “He came to regret that he got involved at all, he felt he might have been able to do something that would have saved George’s life.”

George O’Shea was captured in a foxhole outside Kilflynn on February 23, 1923. He and others were brought to Ballymullen Barracks in Tralee, where Ned Breslin was in charge of the prisoners. They were severely beaten in custody.

Among the civilians working in Ballymullen barracks at the time was Mary Slattery, a teenager from Ballymacelligott who worked as a typist. Romance blossomed between the Derryman and the local girl. Mary’s younger sister Diana was destined a brother of George O’Shea who was being ill treated elsewhere in the building where Mary was working.

On March 6, a party of eight soldiers in the national army went to Knocknagoshel where there was a suspected arms dump. They walked into a trap and five were killed in an explosion, a sixth so badly injured his legs had to be amputated.

Events at Ballyseedy

The following evening, under O’Daly’s instructions, nine anti-Treaty prisoners, including George O’Shea and Stephen Fuller, were brought to Ballyseedy under the guise that they were being used to clear barricades on the road put there by other anti-Treatyites. In reality, this was all about revenge. 

The nine were tied together around a mine, given a last cigarette and told to say their prayers. As well as Fuller and O’Shea, the others were Patrick Hartnett, Tim Tuomey, John O’Connor, James Walsh, Michael O’Connell, John Daly, and Patrick Buckley.

Stephen Fuller's account

Fuller later recorded what happened: “I was tied up in three places. The explosion cut all the rope… it was about two feet from the mine.

All the rest were killed, eight of them. I was able to scramble away somehow. I recovered my senses when I went up in the air, but I lost them again when I hit the road. 

"I went straight up and must have been blown fairly high. All my clothes were blown off.

“It was not known I escaped until the following day I believe.”

Fuller’s account was in complete contrast to that of Ned Breslin who gave evidence at the inquiry into the incident just over a month later.

Ned Breslin's cover-up

“On the morning of the March 7, I left Tralee between 2 and 3am with nine civilian prisoners to remove a barricade at Ballyseedy Road. We arrived there — and I got the prisoners out of the car.

“I lined them up and told them what I brought them up for and instructed them to remove the barricade — which they proceeded to do. I had a look at the barricade myself, I got suspicious about it and told my men to get back a safe distance.

“The prisoners were at work removing the barricade for a couple of minutes when there was a very loud explosion. For a few minutes after the explosion I was knocked to the ground. I got up and found the bodies of the prisoners had been scattered all over the road.”

That was a complete lie, designed to cover up mass murder committed by the army of the nascent state. O’Daly, who instigated the policy of murder — 19 anti-Treaty prisoners were killed over the following two weeks — also chaired the inquiries into the murders.

For the O’Shea family, the manner of George’s death and its immediate aftermath left serious trauma.

“They came into the house and laughed and insulted my grandmother and her four daughters,” John O’Shea says.

My aunt Julie never recovered from the shock and she died three years later at just 25 years of age. 

My aunt Moll died at 46. My other aunts were never the same again. It also affected my father and he passed away at 60. He was on medication for the remainder of his life after that.”

The conflict ended just over two months after Ballyseedy. Ned Breslin went back to Dublin, this time with Mary Slattery. Mary insisted that she wanted to be married in her own parish so the following year the couple were married under armed guard in Clogher church in Ballymacelligott.

“The army had it fortified for the wedding ceremony,” John O’Shea says. “They were expecting an attack from the IRA because of Breslin. My mother didn’t attend, nor her father, nor her brother John who went on to win an All-Ireland with Kerry. There were very few of the family there.”

Mary Slattery was just 19 on her wedding day. The newly-married couple returned to Dublin, and Breslin was rarely ever seen in his wife’s native county thereafter.

One of the few exceptions to that was an occasion a few years after his wedding when he and his wife came to Tralee and walked into one of the local pubs.

“Stephen Fuller was in there having a drink,” John O’Shea says. “Breslin saw Stephen and there are various versions of what happened, whether or not Breslin reached for his gun but one way or the other he was out the door very fast.”

Breslin’s involvement in the Civil War meant that he was largely disowned by the wider Slattery family.

John’s parents, Dan O’Shea and Diana Slattery got married later and there were often suggestions that Diana’s brother-in-law had been present in Ballyseedy until it was finally confirmed and Diana wrote to her sister Mary effectively sundering their relationship. The family chasm did not persist into the next generation, as John O’Shea kept in touch with his cousins.

“Their son Eddie did come down to Kerry and I would have been good friends with him. We were able to talk about a lot of those things.

“According to Eddie, the reason it got so vicious in Kerry was the death of Michael Collins. Vinny Byrne [one of Collins ‘squad’ during the War of Independence] said he would have shot any anti-Treatyite he met after Collins was killed. There were people crying in Tralee over that man’s death.”

John O’Shea is now in his 70s and retains the keenest of interest in both his family history and their role in the wider struggle for independence. The vast majority of his family at the time would have been in the anti-Treaty camp, but he now takes the long view of the conflict that saw families sundered.

“But some of those atrocities that were committed were just awful," he says. 

“Fine Gael should have separated themselves from it and condemned them. At least they changed a bit more recently. Leo Varadkar said about ten years ago that Ballyseedy was a disgrace. And it was. It was awful what happened that night.”