Mick Clifford: Cold-blooded Civil War mass murders reverberate around Kerry a century later

Every so often, they would head out into the country to engage the republicans. Stalemate had persisted for about six months, but things were changing. The Free State was gaining the upper hand nationally, and word was sent around to drive home the advantage.

Five of the republican soldiers came down from the hills on March 2 in the parish of Dromod, outside Waterville. They went to the family home of one of their number, Dan Shea, where Dan’s mother served them up a breakfast. 

Accompanying Dan were Michael Courtney, William Riordan, John Sugrue, and Eugene Dwyer.

All were from the general locale around Waterville, Dromid, and Ballinskelligs, all in their late teens and early 20s, and were intent on attending a wake.

A local man had died in the parish, and all felt obliged to pay their respects later in the day.

“We’re pretty good at going to wakes around here, even today,” says Donie Shea, Dan Shea’s nephew.

“The five of them had their breakfast in our house in the morning and went up to Corravolla, by the Inny River. They went by the river rather than by the road for security. 

"It was a Sheehan man who had died," Donie Shea says:  

Up until the Civil War they were all on the one side and in a small community you’d want to attend the wake.

Somebody, somewhere, passed on word to the Free State forces that these men would be at the wake.

“They [the Free Staters] were on the prowl that day,” Donie Shea says. “And even though the lads had sentries everywhere the Free State troops arrived at the wake unannounced.”

Four of the five were quickly spotted and arrested. For Dan Shea, though, it looked for a while like luck might be his friend.

“In those days they would have had no electricity,” Donie says. “A small oil lamp would have been used in the house so light would be at a minimum. 

"A lady called Mary O’Malley sat on Dan’s knee, which shielded him from the troops. I was friendly with her when she was older and she would always tell the story of how proud she was at that point to have saved Dan.”

The luck didn’t last long. After the convoy left with their prisoners, somebody noted that there was supposed to have been five of them at the wake. They turned around and revisited the house. This time they spotted the fifth man and brought him with them.

Dan Shea had come close to retaining his freedom, continuing his fight for the Republic as he saw it. But his war was over. Within 10 days, his life and those of his comrades would also be over, taken in an act of barbarity that resonated down through the century in the Iveragh Peninsula and far beyond.

Battle at Gurrane

Three days after the capture of the five men in Dromid, the republicans in south Kerry suffered another blow. 

Hundreds of Free State soldiers began to sweep the countryside beyond Caherciveen and advanced on the townland of Gurrane, just off the road to Glenbeigh. Historian Tim Horgan described in his book, Fighting For The Cause, how the Free State soldiers advanced on the republicans’ HQ in Gurrane, a house owned by a local family, the O’Connells.

“In the early hours of 5 March, three Free State columns with several hundred troops converged on Gurrane’s slopes, encircling the IRA column of about 40 riflemen. The scouts posted as sentries in the surrounding countryside failed to detect the arrival of the Free State forces.

“The house was surrounded before the sleeping IRA officers were aware of the danger outside. A fierce gun battle ensued, stopping briefly to allow Mrs O’Connell take her infant son from her besieged home, but the men in the house eventually surrendered.”

The IRA officers present, including the brigade’s commanding officer, Michael Griffin, were arrested.

One IRA man, Dan Clifford, the brigade’s engineering officer, wasn’t so fortunate. He was taken to an outhouse and shot dead. Clifford (a granduncle of the author of this piece) was an electrician by trade.

Why he was arbitrarily selected for execution has never been established, but Tim Horgan speculates it may well have been because of his engineering role at a time when landmines were a major weapon in the war. Landmines were just about to add an even more devastating aspect to the conflict.

The following day, up in the north of the county, five Free State soldiers were killed by a booby-trap bomb in Knocknagoshel. 

Following that, commander of the Free State forces in Kerry, Dubliner Paddy O’Daly, authorised the use of republican prisoners to “clear mined roads”, as “the only alternative left to us to prevent the wholesale slaughter of our men”.

That night, nine republican prisoners were taken from Ballymullen Barracks in Tralee to Ballyseedy and tied around a landmine which was detonated. Eight of them died, but the ninth, Stephen Fuller, was thrown clear. He escaped and survived the conflict to later serve as a TD.

The same night, five men were taken out to Countess Bridge near Killarney and subjected to the same barbaric method of execution. Again, one survived. Both incidents highlighted one thing for the Free State forces: Next time, they’d ensure nobody survived.

Four days later, at around 1pm on Sunday March 11, a group known as the ‘Visiting Committee’ arrived in Caherciveen by sea on the SS Mayfield “to carry out an inspection”. They were a unit attached to David Neligan’s Tralee-based intelligence section of the Free State army. During the War of Independence, Neligan had been a member of Michael Collins’s squad. The Visiting Committee was led by a Dubliner, commandant JJ Delaney, and a Lieutenant P Kavanagh. The party were ostensibly there to inspect Free State positions.

During the day, they inspected positions in Caherciveen and travelled to Waterville to assess the situation there.

Then, in the early hours of the following morning, the party travelled to Bahaghs, a townland about three miles from Caherciveen, where an old workhouse was being used as makeshift detention facility for republicans. 

It was a very late hour to be conducting an inspection. When later asked why they went to the workhouse at that time, Delaney replied: “My reason for inspecting the post at that hour was to enable me to catch the boat, which was lying off Valentia, to proceed to Kenmare.”

The boat was due to go with the tide sometime after 5am.

What occurred thereafter was in dispute at the time and for a while after the conflict ended. Delaney, Kavanagh, and one of the privates attached to their troop gave their respective versions of the following hours that were similar to a large extent.

Kavanagh said: “When the inspection of the workhouse was finished, we started for Caherciveen at about 3am. About a quarter mile from the workhouse on the way back we were held up by a barricade across the road.

“It was only a small one but I was suspicious because the road had been clear when we were going out.”

According to this version, the party returned to the workhouse to get prisoners to remove the barricade as per Paddy O’Daly’s instructions the previous week.

This was Commandant Delaney’s account: 

“I went back to the workhouse and got five civilian prisoners and brought them back to the barricade. They started work at the barricade and there was an explosion when they were nearly finished removing it. All five were killed. I got a scratch on the hand and one on the head from flying stones.”

His right-hand man, Kavanagh, takes up the narrative of what occurred after the explosion: 

“We got back to Caherciveen as quickly as possible and sent out the doctor and the ambulance. We went straight to our boat, which was waiting to take us to Kenmare.”

So went the official account of how five local men met with violent deaths. 

Apart from the detail that Delaney, Kavanagh, and their men went to the workhouse in the early hours, and left on the boat that morning, most of what was related was lies, designed to cover up an atrocity in the same manner as the lies that were first told about Ballyseedy and the Countess Bridge.

The truth would eventually out, much of it coming from local Free State forces who had been stationed at the Bahaghs workhouse and were unwilling to be part of a cover-up for an atrocity.

• There was no barricade on the road;  
• Delaney and his men did not leave the workhouse and return to get the prisoners to accompany them;  
• The visit in the early hours of the morning had nothing to do with an inspection. 

In all likelihood, the timing was associated with committing murder in the dead of night and doing so just before they left the area by sea, having made their mark.

Subsequent speculation had it that Delaney and his men were intent on taking out the IRA officers who had been captured at Gurrane the previous week, but they had already been transferred to Tralee. So it was that the five young men who had been arrested at the wake in Dromod were selected for execution.

According to those who were guarding the workhouse, Kavanagh went to where the five were being held and said: 

Do ye want to go for a drive, lads.

Those guarding the prisoners, and most likely the prisoners themselves, had the impression that they were being transferred to Tralee. The party left the workhouse thereafter.

About a mile away, opposite a quarry, the convoy halted. The five were taken out. Mindful of what had occurred the previous week in both Ballyseedy and Countess Bridge, measures were be taken to ensure nobody could run away. 

The five men were lined up and shot, probably in the legs.

Their state of mind at this point can only be guessed at. All would have been aware of what had occurred when prisoners were allegedly taken out and ended up dead in Tralee and Killarney.

Here they were in the middle of the night, far from any prying eyes or witnesses, removed from civilisation, at the mercy of men who now held the upper hand in a conflict that had turned savage, their young lives about to end in horrible deaths. 

They weren’t to know but that to which they were being subjected represented the darkest hour before a new dawn within a few short months for the nascent state. 

Their lives would, along with so many others, end up sacrificed in a civil war that was as redundant as it was senseless.

It is unknown whether the men were tied together before or after they were shot. But, at some point, they were roped around a landmine. 

The Free State soldiers, led by Kavanagh and Delaney, stood at a safe distance and the mine was detonated.

One subsequent report had it that Delaney and his men them repaired to a hotel in town and boasted about the killings. Delaney denied this.

“Neither I nor any of my party entered a hotel bar in Caherciveen after the mine explosion,” he said.

Refused a church funeral

They found rosary beads among the carnage. There were a few other personal effects, but it was the rosary beads, believed to have belonged to Dan Shea, that evoked the most poignancy. The remains were brought to the new market building in Caherciveen. 

They were not allowed into the church, following on from the bishops’ instruction the previous October denying funeral rights to those fighting on the republican side. 

Initially, the bodies were not returned to their families, as per an order from O’Daly, but a local priest arrived and persuaded the local Free State commander to release the bodies.

An inquiry

An inquiry was conducted on April 7, less than a month after the killings, but it took a similar character to the inquiries into the events in Ballyseedy and Countess Bridge. 

Paddy O'Daly, the man who had introduced the policy of what amounted to murder of prisoners, oversaw the inquiries into the murder of the five prisoners in Bahaghs.

The inquiry heard only from the soldiers who were present — Delaney, Kavanagh, and one of the privates.

The finding was predictable and outrageous, reading: “That the civilians in question lost their lives in explosions while removing obstructions on the road, placed there by Irregulars… The court further finds that the allegations contained in the Irregular propaganda submitted to the court, particularly with reference to the maltreatment of prisoners are untrue and without foundation and that no blame attached to any officer or soldier engaged in the operations in which these prisoners lost their lives.”

This finding was more or less completely in line with the findings of inquiries into the Ballyseedy and Countess Bridge killings.

On April 10, Liam Lynch, the head of the republican forces, had been killed in battle in Tipperary. On May 24, his successor, Frank Aiken, ordered a ceasefire, telling anti-Treaty fighters to “dump their arms” and return home.

Éamon de Valera, the political leader of the anti-Treatyites issued a statement: 

Further sacrifice on your part would now be in vain and the continuance of the struggle in arms unwise in the national interest.

"Military victory must be allowed to rest for the moment with those who have destroyed the Republic." 

The atrocities did not go away

The Bahaghs atrocity, and the others in Ballyseedy and Killarney, didn’t go away. In the Dáil, Labour leader Thomas Johnson raised the allegations that the incidents in Kerry had all involved murder. 

The minister for defence, Richard Mulcahy denied this, stating that it was “inconceivable that they would be guilty of anything like the charges that are made against them”.

Then, in December 1923, as the new Free State was beginning to take shape from the wreckage of the Civil War, relatives of the dead men began seeking justice. 

Maurice Riordan, father of 18-year-old William who had died at Bahaghs, lodged a compensation claim with the new government.

Maurice Riordan wrote that his son’s death was attributable to “members of the National Army known as the ‘Visiting Committee’”. William had been “removed from the workhouse and it is alleged done to death by being dragged over a mine on the public road”.

Crucial intervention

The crucial intervention in this application for compensation came from the deputy commissioner of the new police force, An Garda Síochána, Eamonn Coogan (father of Tim Pat Coogan, journalist and historian, who wrote major biographies of both Michael Collins and Éamon de Valera).

Coogan wrote that he had been instructed by the garda commissioner Eoin O’Duffy (later notorious in the 1930s as a founder of the fascist Blueshirts movement). In the letter dated December 10 1923, Coogan stated that William Riordan had been an “Irregular and one of a column captured with arms”. He was taken from the workhouse and “done to death” with the other prisoners, Coogan wrote.

“In the small hours of the morning of March 12th, Kavanagh took five prisoners from the guard at the workhouse… the guard believing the prisoners were being transferred to Tralee, handed them over. It transpired that the five prisoners were subsequently shot and their bodies blown up by a mine at Bahaghs, Caherciveen. Evidence of these facts can be procured. The applicant in the claim, who is the father of William Riordan, is in needy circumstances.”

Coogan’s letter which, along with the file on the issue, was released in 2008, is revealing. Obviously, the gardaí were not willing to go along with a cover-up of murder by state forces. The man who had been in charge of the guard at Bahaghs on the fateful night felt so strongly about it that he resigned.

Senior Free State official intervenes

Within the permanent government at the time, it would appear the letter from Coogan was accepted as bona fide. The secretary of the department of home affairs, Henry O’Friel, wrote to his minister, Kevin O’Higgins, about the case in the context of the garda intervention.

First, he dealt with the inquiry which had exonerated the Free State soldiers.

“It is to be observed that the evidence taken by the court of inquiry was taken only from the troops involved,” O’Friel wrote. “No evidence appears to have been taken from the garrison at the workhouse and the examination of the witnesses called is lacking in strength.”

He went on to point out that the evidence from the troops included discrepancies, particularly about the force of the fatal explosion.

“One would have thought there would be a more vigorous examination on these points. Again, the witnesses deny that the prisoners were shot and blown up afterwards. The police say that evidence of this fact is procurable.”

O’Friel concluded: “The police report conflicts with the evidence taken at the court of inquiry and the latter, for the reasons stated above, can scarcely be regarded as having in the circumstances much value.”

So both the police force and the permanent government appeared to accept that individuals in the military had acted outside their powers and murdered five young men who had been in state custody.

Government dismissed their pleas

The matter was forwarded to the Executive, as the cabinet of the day was known. Despite the evidence that suggested a fresh inquiry — at the very least — was required, the Executive, presided over by WT Cosgrave, didn’t want to know about it.

A note following a discussion at Executive level stated: “It was decided that prima facia evidence of complicity in an attack against the state on the part of an applicant for compensation or in respect of who compensation is claimed is a bar to the claim … the onus of preparing evidence in respect of any alleged excesses by the troops during the period of hostility rests upon the party who considers himself aggrieved.”

The government effectively decided that it didn’t want to open up what could be a Pandora’s box. After all, extra judicial killings had been sanctioned by the civilian government, in which men were executed without any judicial process.

Blind eyes had been turned at state level during the Civil War to the kind of excesses that might ordinarily have been associated with the departed crown forces.

The bitterness that lingered from a brief, internecine conflict ensured that those in the ultimate state authority had no interest in pursuing justice for families of a low social order, in a far-flung corner of the country, whose sons and brothers had been murdered in cold blood by those claiming to represent a new state, just liberated from an oppressive foreign force.

Decades later, a mother still grieved

Mary Lehane remembers her grandmother’s sadness every spring around the anniversary of the atrocity.

“Around Easter time she would be so sad,” she says. “I’d bring her over to the graveyard where they [the five men] were buried in a mass grave.”

(Mary is a niece of Dan Shea and her son is RTÉ political correspondent Micheal Lehane). Mary continues: 

She lived with us for about 10 years before she died in 1962. That time of year would have brought it up for her.

“It used to take a lot out of us to see her so upset. You could see there was a desperate sadness there. She always wore a black shawl.

“Another thing I remember being said was that their bodies weren’t allowed into the church because of the position of the bishops at the time. But, sure, there wasn’t a sin between them.”

There was no local animosity about the incident. Those who were responsible were not from the area so the deed was not focus of any local fallout. In fact, there was a general trend towards attempting to forget what had occurred, such was its unspeakable horror.

An editorial in the Kerry’s Eye newspaper — reproduced recently in Owen O’Shea’s excellent account of the conflict, No Middle Path — urged that the people forget what had happened.

“The nine months have been very tragic ones for Ireland. It would be well if their memory could be blotted out altogether. The people should try at any rate to forget what has happened and to look forward to the future with confidence and with hope.”

While the editorial may have been written with the best of intentions, the idea that the unresolved past could be buried and consigned to a forgotten history was never going to wash.

Paddy O’Daly was reported later in life to have suffered from his conscience. He spent time in Grangegorman psychiatric hospital in Dublin. He had a small building firm and would seek out unemployed republicans to give them work, as a means, it was assumed, to try and make amends with his own past.

Kavanagh, the second-in-command at Bahaghs, emigrated to the US.

Fund to restore Bahaghs memorial

A monument was erected at the spot of the atrocity by the Bahaghs Memorial Trust but time has not been kind to it. 

As with all such monuments, it did not receive funding from the state but was paid for by the local community as a mark of respect for those who died that day at Bahaghs.

A campaign to replace it is underway and the hope is to have it installed on the centenary of that awful night when the worst of us plumbed the depths of humanity in a conflict of human waste.

• To support the Bahaghs Memorial Trust, go to GoFundMe.com.