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20th Century Ireland - Desmond Ryan (1893-1964)
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Email: info@searcs-web.com 20th Century Ireland - Desmond Ryan (1893-1964) |
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Desmond Ryan was born in London of Irish parents. He was educated in Dublin by the
Christian Brothers' and at
Padraig Pearse's school, St. Enda's,
where he joined the Fianna.
After leaving school Ryan became Pearse's secretary while studying by night for a BA.
Ryan fought in the Easter Rising of 1916 alongside Pearse and
James Connolly in the G.P.O.
After the Rising he was interned in Stafford and Frongnoch Internment Camps and in Wormwood
Scrubs Prison. On his release in late 1917 Ryan became a journalist and published articles
in the Freeman's Journal from 1919-1922. Ryan also published The Story of a Success (1918); The Man called Pearse (1919); a study of de Valera entitled Unique Dictator (1936); and a volume of autobiography entitled Remembering Sion (1934) from which this extract is taken.© From the sentinel tower I saw the Terror, and the Terror had many faces. Sometimes it was the burned and wrecked town of Balbriggan with its tale of midnight murder and blazing houses and the Black and Tans shrieking like demons as they dragged the two Republican leaders from their houses and left them riddled with bullets and gaping wounds in their throats. As you left the train you saw a ruined factory with fire-worn walls; but it was only in the centre of the town, with its tumbled houses and bullet-scared panes and terror-shaken groups whispering in corners, that the damage was apparent. In the poorest quarter of the town you saw gutted rows of houses and women shivering with frightened, despairing eyes beside their ruined homes as they told you: 'They were devils, devils, devils. They screamed like devils and acted like devils and may the Devil their Father take them in the end!' Dublin lay under Curfew, the hour of which was lowered with every street ambush, until eight o'clock on a summer evening saw the heart of the capital silent; and in the slums the children cooped up in stench and fear breathed in fear and disease night after night. Automatically the fingers of the Dublin journalists formed the familiar story: 'At eight or six or seven o'clock this morning or evening a bomb explosion, followed by a number of shots, was heard as a military lorry passed through Blank Street. The military returned the fire. There were no military casualties. Later a number of civilians were treated, detained or identified by their relatives at the city hospitals.' Through the Dublin streets lumbered the lorries with rifles protruding or the bird-cage variety of light tenders in which the Black and Tans sailed round in to invite bombs and pot shots from the dark lanes and shady corners. Sometimes a Black and Tan in mufti struck a Dubliner across the face in Grafton Street. Sometimes pistols barked in broad daylight and a G-man or Secret Service agent dropped dead on the pavement. Sometimes in a field near a Dublin bridge a Sinn Fein sympathizer was found dying during Curfew hours riddled with bullets. Once I went up to a Dublin hotel and was present while the police opened a room where a murder had occurred the night before. Across a bed lay a man with a deep bullet would in the lower part of his chin, his eyes glazed and the sheets drenched with blood. There was only one bullet mark in the room on the wall opposite the door. It was quite evident that he had been shot down as he went to the door for in the room all signs of struggle were absent. A bag on the chair beside the bed had been tumbled in a hurried search. Two men had called in the night and departed unnoticed. The man was a Kilmallock town councillor of Sinn Fein sympathies who had passed a pleasant evening in the Abbey Theatre the night before. He had been unarmed and had no association with the IRA, but unfortunately for him his name and the name of a well-known Volunteer leader in the South were the same. The Castle propaganda department in the same day issued two reports: a notorious gunman named Lynch had opened fire on a raiding party which had come to question him; a respected town counsellor named Lynch, of moderate Sinn Fein views, had been murdered by a party of Sinn Fein extremists. After that I had few illusions about the Castle propoganda, and when later I read the revelations of General Crozier I found to my surprise I still retained more than I should have. Half-way through the Terror, the General resigned in disgust and 'told the world'. Not that there was much room for any journalist to retain illusions in that time. Once I had to inquire into the death of two young men found riddled near Drumcondra with tin cans on their heads. One was still alive in the morning and in the hospital accused the Black and Tans of taking him and his companion up under Curfew, examining them and then driving them in a motor-car to the field and shooting them. The Castle issued a statement that the young men had been interrogated and released in good time to reach their homes before Curfew. This was too cool. I had interviewed the father of one of the men before the Castle statement was issued, and quite casually he had told me how he had rushed towards the Black and Tan lorry as he heard of his son's arrest. It drove off and looking up at Amiens Street station he saw it was five minutes to ten, the Curfew hour. Nevertheless the young men had ample time to be driven all the way up the quays to the Castle, examined, and reach their homes before Curfew! This incident was too much for some of the Auxiliaries, to their eternal honour, who openly charged their colleagues with the murder, but a whitewashing inquiry soon settled that. Sometimes there was a humming of lorries after Curfew and a blaze of searchlights and in the morning it was learned that the raiders had just missed Collins or Brugha or Mulcahy again. Or an entire Dublin district awoke to find itself cordonned with troops and barbed wire and raiding parties combed out house after house yelling virtuously: 'Mick Collins is here! Don't tell us any of your lies, we know everything!' In the meanwhile Michael Collins either watched the raid a few yards outside the cordon or sat quietly in a Dublin hotel known to hundreds... I saw Cork during this time with its Curfew, and there was an intenser terror by day and night than in Dublin with all the alarms and thrills and horrors and spasms. In the jail I saw the hunger strikers wasting to skeltons with the stench of slow decay blowing through the cells. Two deaths occurred during the hunger strike [mass republican prisoners hunger-strike of 1920] and it was noticed that the coffins were light as they were borne from the jail. This long agony kept time with the agony of Brixton [Prison where Terence McSwiney died on hunger-strike] and outlasted it. A sigh of relief went through the city when MacSwiney died. Once at the jail gate I heard the father of one of the dead hunger strikers turn to the crowd and say: 'My boy is dead. He died for Ireland. If he were a criminal I would hang my head in shame, but now I can walk with head erect through the streets of Cork.' © Searc's Web Guide 1997-2008 |
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