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2. Guerrilla war—war in the shadows 2 страница
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General Richard Mulcahy defended this policy, stating that the killings were a matter of conscience but that they were also
matters of political expediency, of common sense, and in accordance with the spirit in which theVolunteers were founded as a defence force. 41
Like Collins, Mulcahy always kept an eye on the ultimate goal—removal of British governance—and always deemed it ‘prudent’ to be especially careful about taking any action that could alienate the local population.
The Soloheadbeg attack indicated how little control Dublin’s GHQ exercised over the IRA in the countryside early in the war. Every act orchestrated by GHQ was designed, however, to contribute to the political and psychological demoralisation of the British, even though local initiatives were another matter. It would be misleading to attribute to GHQ control
or co-ordination of all actions; until the end of the war there was a great deal of local action which took place without GHQ control, and often without even GHQ knowledge. 42 Autonomy was the byword for all units outside Dublin. Moreover, GHQ, which superseded the old Volunteer Executive in March 1918, expected payment for such supplies as field equipment and training manuals. Right up to the Truce, units were expected to be financially self-sufficient, though their sources of money became less spontaneous as their needs mounted. It was only in late 1919 that GHQ began to show greater skill in its command and control of the IRA. They began to offer more and demand less.
General Mulcahy felt that GHQ was willing to compromise and to be tolerant of what he deemed to be the ‘intransigence’ of country units and leaders, but there is no doubt that attempts at central control by GHQ became more manifest as the war continued. 43
During 1918 and 1919, however, headquarters began to show greater adeptness at directing and supervising the Volunteers.
…
Headquarters provided advice, instruction, a little equipment and a welcome sense of national togetherness. In return, provincial units accepted the dismissal and appointments of commandants, provided [that] the families of local influence were not seriously inconvenienced; and to some extent they modified their military activities to accord with headquarters’ preferences. 44
Mulcahy felt that GHQ played a large (and often misunderstood) part in imposing a national policy and attempting further control of the army. 45 Although many actions were initiated without consultation with GHQ, Mulcahy felt that they usually received approval (albeit belatedly) because they conformed to the military, ethical and political policies of the army and the Dá il. He related:
Without the stabilising influence and prudent policies of the GHQ staff, which were sometimes resented by the fighters in the field, military initiative during the war could not have been maintained and expanded, nor would the subservience of the
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army to parliament and the people have been so certain, if and when independence was achieved. 46
Still, there always seemed to be an underlying conflict between commanders in the country and GHQ in Dublin. Personality clashes were common, and in that the Irish War of Independence was no different from other guerrilla wars. The gulf between HQ and field officers is a common problem and is usually remedied by some ‘cross-fertilisation’ of the two. With the commitment to guerrilla war, a training programme and exchange of information became essential. It often seemed, however, that GHQ was not aware of the needs of the men and women in the country and did not really understand the kind of war that guerrilla tactics entailed. To leaders like Liam Lynch, it sometimes seemed that GHQ was too ‘squeamish’ in the instructions that there should be no casualties.
At the outset of organisation, GHQ sent Andy Cooney, Seá n MacBride, Ernie O’Malley and others to more fully organise and teach. They were to show the countryVolunteers how to set up outposts, how to run patrols, how to deploy the units and escape. Many of the country units had been doing these things for some time, however, and resented the ‘Dublin interference’. Persuasion and goodwill always worked better than direct exercise of authority. 47
Moreover, some of those sent ‘to the country’ did not fit in with the units they were to teach. Ernie O’Malley, for example, was an intellectual and raised eyebrows among the rural men when he said that he knew of their ways because his grandmother used to churn butter in their Dublin home. O’Malley’s reports to Dublin indicated his near-disdain for some of the country units. He reported in December 1919 that
Officers or men have not the faintest idea or at most only a very faint idea of military work in general. They know very little of the organization and systematic training necessary to turn out an efficient soldier. Military propaganda is necessary. Already I have instructed officers to court-martial men who have missed more than three consecutive parades. 48
Moreover, when the men would retire to a pub for a few pints at the end
of a day’s training, O’Malley would sit in a corner, as he did not drink. The fact that he read a book, possibly in Greek, and did not really socialise with the men separated him still further. 49 To compound the problems, when the Dublin instructors recommended the replacement of many of the local leaders, who had been elected to their positions, there was further resentment in the ranks. These attempts at GHQ control alienated many local leaders, and the antipathy of some of the local commanders towards what they felt was interference and micro-managing was to have repercussions throughout the war, and especially in the lead-up to the Civil War.
There was frequent disagreement between the strategy and tactics recommended by GHQ and those of field commanders. On 2 August 1919, representatives of the Cork, Kerry, Waterford and West Limerick brigades met with Collins and the other members of GHQ staff in order to co- ordinate IRA activity in the countryside. The representatives were Terence MacSwiney (Cork No. 1 Brigade), Liam Lynch (Cork No. 2 Brigade), Liam Deasy (Cork No. 3 Brigade), Paddy Cahill (Kerry No. 1 Brigade), Dan O’Mahoney (Kerry No. 2 Brigade), Jeremiah O’Riordan (Kerry No. 3 Brigade), Pax Whelan (Waterford West) and Revd Dick McCarthy (West Limerick). Mulcahy outlined GHQ policy with regard to ambushing:
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General ambushing was to be the principal form of attack against the British, but ‘in all cases the enemy should first of all be called upon to surrender’.
Clearly this would defeat the purpose of an ambush. Brugha supported Mulcahy, but Collins and the men in the field objected strenuously that this was impractical. In the end, the principle of surprise as set forth by the brigade officers won the day. Conflicts like this continued throughout the war.
The Irish military effort in the War of Independence differed from previous Irish rebellions and risings in three significant respects:
• Previous insurrections committed the whole available force at the first blow and stood by the result.
• Previous efforts had been much influenced by the hope of foreign aid.
• The IRA had an advantage not possessed before—the approval of a national government constitutionally elected in the 1918 election. 50
The Irish guerrilla war was waged on three fronts: (1) the urban terrorist campaign waged by Michael Collins against the intelligence system of Dublin Castle; (2) the small-scale warfare by part-time guerrillas attacking the RIC and outlying British posts; and (3) the larger-scale but still guerrilla war conducted by the flying columns of the IRA.
In assessing its development even up to the war’s end in 1921, it would seem that the IRA was marked by the irregularity and separation of its units, many of which never became ready for serious action. Fortunately for the Irish, the British were slow to recognise the growing power of Sinn Fé in; when the violence started in 1919 they failed to understand or exploit the divisions between Sinn Fé in and the IRA, and that lack of understanding increased later after the conflict exploded into full-scale guerrilla warfare in 1920. The notion of a unified popular nationwide uprising, combining political and military elements, was a fiction. GHQ‘command and control’, dealing with an army that was in large measure self-created and self- sustaining, made constant and strenuous efforts to break down local independence and to regularise the hierarchy of control. Beyond a certain point, however, central operational control of guerrilla warfare is impossible, and the Irish never had a complete command and control structure imposed from Dublin. Mao Zedong wrote later: ‘In guerrilla warfare, small units acting independently play the principal role and there must be no excessive interference in their activities’. 51 Whether by design or because of circumstances, much Irish activity was independent of Dublin control and was accomplished in autonomous actions. Within the IRA it was evident that there was ‘tension between the strong centrifugal tendency of the local units and the growing centripetal drive of GHQ’. 52 The latter impulse culminated in 1921 and gave rise to most of the IRA’s theories of guerrilla action, but until then the major evolutionary stages of the campaign were spontaneous and unplanned. Nobody was more conscious of local inconsistencies in the IRA’s performance than GHQ in Dublin, and in 1921 strenuous efforts were made to translate into reality the image of a single, unified insurgent nation. While Collins continued to build up the muscle of the IRA, dealing out praises and rewards for success and fulminating
against failure, Mulcahy laboured to regularise and integrate its multiform, disparate components and to elaborate a total strategy. 53
At this time An t-Ó glá ch began to print more articles of encouragement to the Volunteers:
the enemy is feeling the strain on his resources …
. . .
the Republic of Ireland IS and WILL BE …
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. . .
We are carrying out a well-considered plan of campaign in which the object is to harrass and demoralize the enemy without giving them an opportunity to strike back effectively. We realize that it is far more profitable to kill for Ireland than to die for her. 54 [Emphasis in original]
The initial goal of the IRA was to arm itself. Each unit was supposed to take care of this individually, and that, of course, led to a great disparity of arms throughout the country. Further, GHQ provided little support and the lack of arms was a constant complaint throughout the conflict. From 1919 Headquarters attempted to enforce a monopoly on arms acquisition. GHQ was constantly reminded that the small core of active Volunteers necessarily had to be limited because of this lack of arms and ammunition. Major actions involving large numbers of men and arms had to be avoided at all costs. 55 Most early actions had but one aim: to get arms and to use them to get more arms. The whole development of the war depended on captured arms.
Local units were encouraged to raid in their local areas, but arms purchases outside the local territories were forbidden. For example, Michael Brennan of Clare seized £ 1, 500 during a raid on the Limerick post office, and then came to Dublin to buy arms. He bought a number of revolvers before being informed that Collins was unhappy that he was spoiling the market. GHQ ordered him to stop his activities. 56 Thomas Kettrick, the quartermaster in Mayo, went to buy arms in England and arranged to transport weapons and explosives to Mayo. Collins was enraged at his going independently to England without permission and told him that his activities would upset the market. 57 ‘Spoil the market’; ‘upset the market’—
one has to ask whether this was Collins the businessman, the Minister for Finance, or Collins the commander talking. Collins was a naturally accomplished businessman and he always approached his duties in a businesslike manner.
In addition to stifling independent attempts to acquire weapons, GHQ closely monitored the distribution of arms from its stockpile to country units. It had a habit of only supplying weapons to units that were already active. Collins wrote to a brigade commander in May 1919:
When you ask me for ammunition for guns—which have never fired a shot in this fight—my answer is a simple one. Fire shots at some useful target or get to hell out of it.
In time, these differences became so acute that Cork, for example, would act largely on its own with little regard to the Dublin GHQ. Many units made use of the old saw that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. Michael Brennan in Clare said:
During the election [in December 1918] my brother Paddy worked out a completely new policy which I’m afraid he didn’t submit to GHQ for approval. He was pretty certain it wouldn’t be approved, but on the other hand he thought if it worked, GHQ would accept it and issue it as their own policy. This was in fact what happened a few weeks later. 58
That policy continued throughout the war, and in Dublin as well as the country. Martin Walton related that in late 1919 he was asked to go on a raid with fourVolunteers whom he met in Drumcondra. ‘Now raids at that time were more or less forbidden officially by our headquarters staff. If you got away with it you got a pat on the back, and if you didn’t get away with it you were disowned. ’59 In military slang, ‘ground truth’ describes the reality of a tactical situation as opposed to intelligence reports and mission plans. The closer one is to the fight, the more ‘real’ it is. On the other hand, the further one is from it, the more abstract it is. The IRA leaders throughout the country always felt that they understood the ground truths of the situation much more clearly than did GHQ in Dublin, and they proceeded accordingly.
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O’Donoghue listed three distinctive features of guerrilla war as waged by the Irish in 1919–21:
• They had no external military aid or direction.
• They acquired their arms primarily from the occupation forces by fighting for them, at first almost with bare hands. [Though Collins pursued many chances to import arms for theVolunteers, arms captured from the British were the primary source for the Irish. ]
• The whole force was never committed to the struggle at the same time. The policy was rather a piecemeal attack by limited numbers on successive, selected objectives. 60
The overwhelming numerical and arms superiority of the British army, later augmented by the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries, raises the question of how the Irish were able to avoid annihilation and succeed to the degree that the British were willing to negotiate a treaty in 1921. 61 It is accepted that there are three major reasons. First, the explosive upsurge of national vitality at the time demanded a widespread outlet for action. For the Volunteers it could be nothing less than a military fight in arms. Second, the democratic organisation of the Volunteers and the impossibility in the circumstances of any tight control by GHQ permitted and encouraged the development of local initiatives on a scale that would have been inconceivable in a regular army, enabling local commands to harass the British in myriad actions. Third, these individualised initiatives generated the dispassionate study by local commanders, each in his own area, of the relative strengths of his own and the opposing forces, and they determined that a new approach to the military problem was necessary— hence the need for guerrilla tactics, constantly being adapted as circumstances changed. 62
While the British army, like every other actor in the conflict, became brutalised by the cycle of attack and retaliation, it was the British paramilitary police forces who became the most feared and hated by the Irish public, and it was their paramilitary police, with their indiscipline and hostility to the general population, who did most to turn the civilian population against the Crown forces. 63 The Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries are often confused; both introduced an atmosphere of stark
terror throughout Ireland but they were distinct entities. 64 The Black and Tans were deployed to Ireland in March 1920, and the Auxiliaries followed in July. About 7, 000 men served as Black and Tans, while another 2, 200 were Auxiliaries. 65 The guidance to both units did not ‘advocate lenience for the Irish rebels, and encouraged the meanest form of warfare’. 66 On arrival they began to engage in wholesale intimidation and violence against civilians without any provocation. It was said of the Black and Tans that
… they had neither religion nor morals, they used foul language, they had the old soldier’s talent for dodging and scrounging, they spoke in strange accents, called the Irish ‘natives’, associated with low company, stole from each other, sneered at the customs of the country, drank to excess, and put sugar on their porridge. 67
While both units were undisciplined and were despised by the population, the Auxiliaries were by far the more feared. 68 They were overwhelmingly former British army officers who were demobilised after World War I, but there were also former officers from British Empire regiments—Canadians, New Zealanders, Australians, South Africans and some Americans who had served in British regiments during the war. They were intended to serve as adjuncts to the RIC but, although they were supposed to undertake police functions, they were only nominally part of the RIC and were actually employed as separate paramilitary divisions. 69 It was the Auxiliaries who perpetrated most of the notorious outrages between July 1920 and the Truce in July 1921. The Auxiliaries have been described as
cunning, intelligent and better armed than an ordinary military unit and with the conviction that might makes right, the Auxiliaries resembled a sort of English Freikorps, a close fraternity of jobless veterans with few skills except the profession of arms, comfortable within a military structure, fiercely loyal to the government, and out for adventure. … Significantly, they were not generally held accountable for their actions to either military or police authority. Ostensibly, their mission was to
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restore law and order, but instead of attempting to stabilize the situation, or pacify the people, they were employed to punish the Irish and damage the local economy in an effort to destroy the IRA’s base of support. 70
Tom Barry differentiated between the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries:
The Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries came from two different strata of life, and the general feeling even here in Ireland at the time was that the Black and Tans were the worst. I don’t accept that at all. The Black and Tans included good and bad, like every armed force you meet and quite a number of them were rather decent men.
But the Auxiliaries were something else … They were far worse than the Black and Tans … I have no doubt that a few of them could pass as ordinary decent men, but the vast majority were the worst the British produced at any time … They were sent over here to break the people and they were a far more dangerous force than the Black and Tans. 71
Seá n O’Casey expressed his opinion: ‘The Tans alone would make more noise, slamming themselves into a room, shouting to shake off the fear that slashed many of their faces. The Auxies were too proud to show a sign of it. The Tommies [British army troops] would be warm, always hesitant at knocking a woman’s room about. ’
Considerations of propaganda and politics were never very far away from military action during the war. The outrageous behaviour of the ‘Tans’ and ‘Auxies’ captured the attention of the press in Ireland, Britain and overseas, especially in the US, with the British government being accused by its critics of ‘conniving in a systemic program of barbaric reprisals against the Irish people’. 72 Among the many critics of the Black and Tans was King George V, who told Lady Margery Greenwood, wife of Chief Secretary Hamar Greenwood, that ‘he hated the idea of the Black and Tans’. 73
As the war evolved, there was a growing feeling among IRA members that they needed a standing force to carry out a sustained series of attacks. The 15 May 1919 issue of An t-Ó glá ch called for ‘intensive, persistent, and
widespread guerrilla warfare’. 74 In fact, many of the men on the run were a burden on the local population, and the formation of ‘flying columns’ was thought to solve the problem. Donal O’Hannigan wrote of the men in Limerick: ‘fully armed we had traveled over 30 miles cross-country in daylight without any great difficulty … What we had in mind was an efficient, disciplined, compact and swift-moving body of men which would strike at the enemy where and when a suitable opportunity arose. ’75 The unit carried out its first operation on 9 July, disarming four constables at Ballinahinch. Its first action under fire in an engagement occurred four days later, when theVolunteers ambushed a military patrol at Emly. 76 In addition to taking the fight to the British, the bolder daylight raids were designed to win the PR battle and show the world the IRA’s strength.
Most of the Black and Tans were young, unemployed, former enlisted men in the British army, and products of Britain’s working class. Records and their statements indicate that they were attracted by promises of upward mobility, steady work, good pay and a comfortable pension. The Auxiliaries were all former officers in the army but they, too, were attracted by a wage of ‘£ 1 per week, all found’. Contrary to some Irish propaganda that the groups were just British convicts, about 20% of the Black and Tans and 10% of the Auxiliaries were Irish-born. 77
It was to counter these British forces that the flying columns were established and the idea has been attributed to several individuals. 78 Dan Breen credited his Tipperary comrade Seá n Treacy with the concept: ‘We wanted full-time soldiers who were prepared to fight by night or by day, ready for any adventure. They would constitute a mobile force capable of striking at a given moment in one district and on the next day springing a surprise thirty miles away. ’79 Others, including Dublin Volunteer Joe Good and British General Nevil Macready, wrote that Michael Collins invented the units. 80 This reflects a tendency to attribute every republican initiative to the seemingly ubiquitous Collins. As late as June 1920 there was still a difference of opinion about the columns. GHQ discussed them in a meeting that month:
Dick Mulcahy was not too keen on the idea, but Michael Collins was very keen on it. ‘We’ll have to get these bloody fellows doing something’ said Collins referring to the men on the run. (At that time and for some time later, they were a bloody nuisance, for
they lounged around, slept late, ate people’s food, and did no work for the Company or Battalion in which they happened to be. )81
Each might have had theories about full-time mobile republican units, but that ambush of the military patrol at Emly is the first recorded use of a flying column. Small actions such as that illustrated the beginning of a new pattern in the mode of Irish warfare. 82 At this early stage there was no real designation from GHQ as to what the pattern was to be, and it would take several months for GHQ to exercise severe restraint on the actions of individualVolunteer units. 83 Guerrilla warfare in Ireland was constantly evolving, as it must for all successful guerrillas. 84
Michael Brennan had another reason for men to combine in the columns:
As the year wore on the pursuit became tougher and we were inclined to drift together, partly for company, but mainly because the ‘safe areas’ were now fewer and we usually met in them. The localVolunteers always posted men at night to warn of raids, and it was as easy to warn four as one and much easier than to send a message to four widely separated men. We very quickly discovered that moving around in a group gave greater security and without any actual orders being issued other men on-the- run drifted to us and our numbers grew. 85
By later in 1920 all of the Dublin officers had encouraged GHQ staff to adopt flying columns as a policy, and on 4 October GHQ issued an order for all brigades to start columns. The ‘official’ column was to consist of twenty- six men and four squads. They were to function as individual units but were to co-ordinate with their battalions. The tactical innovations took place in the field, but Headquarters adopted the idea and sought to facilitate its spread to other areas. The column commander received clear instructions:
• To gain experience for himself and his men by planning and then carrying out simple operations.
• By harassing smaller and quieter military and police stations.
• By interrupting and pillaging all stores belonging to the enemy.
• By interrupting all communication.
• By covering towns threatened by reprisal parties. 86
In addition to providing a standing body of troops, the columns helped to alleviate the arms situation. 87 Brigades and battalions forming a column pooled their weapons on the understanding that they would be more effective in the hands of a compact striking force than scattered in dumps across the countryside. Even so, the East Limerick column began with five Lee-Enfield service rifles, one old Winchester, seventy rifle rounds, three shotguns, three revolvers and a few cartridges for each. 88 This was hardly a formidable arsenal and it is no wonder that their first action was to seize arms from a police patrol.
At the beginning of the war, little thought was given to guerrilla tactics in the local units; the emphasis was on acquisition of arms in all areas. Collins was acutely aware of this. Joe Good recounts that he was having a meeting with Collins when a visitor from America interrupted them:
I was speaking to Mick when an American visitor flourished a cheque-book and was offering Collins a cheque or cash if he preferred. But Mick replied, angrily and rudely, ‘We don’t need your bloody money, we want guns—and more guns’. I said later that surely the money could have been used to buy guns, but Mick insisted that supply of arms (and not the means to pay for them) was our great problem. 89
In a review of MaryannValiulis’s biography of Richard Mulcahy, C. C. Trench wrote:
The main feature of the guerrilla war—the use of mobile, full- time active service units and attacking soft targets rather than hard army targets—were [sic] not invented by the chief of staff [Mulcahy] but were devised perforce by the field commanders such as Liam Lynch. All Mulcahy did was to order the others to do likewise. 90
Risteard Mulcahy contested this strenuously:
This rather dismissive remark conceals a considerable degree of ignorance about the organisation and evolution of the Irish army. Many of the successful strategies which were adopted during the War of Independence were, of course, initiated by those who were fighting in the field and who were face to face with the realities of the conflict. But the extension of those tactics to achieve an orderly strategy, the burning of the three to four hundred police barracks, and the organisation and training of the flying columns and the active-service units could not have taken place without the guidance and control of the GHQ staff. 91
Local Volunteers were often called up to provide support for an ambush or attack in a given area. They would normally make use of shotguns or revolvers, while the column men used rifles. GHQ organised camps all over the country to facilitate the growth of the new units.
Whatever their origin, the columns do represent the essence of the war: live to fight another day; attack and disperse; attack and disengage and move to another position to attack again. 92 Each column must attack constantly, and from all and unexpected directions. Guerrilla tactics have to be changed constantly: it could be said that ‘if it works, it is obsolete, try something else’. 93 Fire and movement formed the basis of all the Irish tactics. When conditions were not favourable, the Irish learned to disengage and develop a new plan; no attack would be started unless conditions were very much in their favour. The plans of action had to be simple, understood by all in the column and, if possible, well rehearsed. The guerrilla is always on the offensive, always takes the initiative. The Irish moved in small units and prevented the British from moving in small units. Each column was ‘an army in itself ’, self-contained and prepared to fight on its own.
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