Welcome to Easter Rising Stories Book of the Week
‘Killing At Its Very Extreme’
by Derek Molyneux and Darren Kelly is published by Mercier Press. This is the third book of their successful series. Their first book “When The Clock Struck in 1916” is simply the best book on the 1916 Rising which looks at in detail, battle by battle the close combat surrounding the city of Dublin. Their second book Those of Us Who Must Die looks at the treatment of and execution of the 1916 leaders as well as the conditions the Irish Volunteers found themselves in upon arrest.
So how does their third book hold up? Yet again Molyneux and Kelly have broken new ground with Killing At Its Very Extreme. This book rewrites areas which have often been overlooked, exploring the War of Independence from many new angles. As always with books by Derek Molyneux and Darren Kelly they objectively cast a cold eye on the brutality of assassinations as well as the horror of reprisals.
Urban guerrilla warfare, its ferocity, pain and terror was mercilessly perfected on Dublin’s dark, dreary streets from October 1917- November 1920. This book takes you to those streets.
It looks at the dogged tenacity of those left after the trauma of 1916 who refused to accept the detrimental rule of the greatest empire in the known world, is graphically explored in 336 pages.
Readers become immersed in the story of Brigadier Dick McKee, a person who has been criminally overlooked in terms of his influence on the major events with the War of Independence. One example is Colonel Ormonde de l’Epée Winter, the British intelligence chief known as the ‘Holy Terror’, arrived in Ireland to build up police intelligence for the British. He was immediately embarrassed by McKee and Peadar Clancy’s daring raid on the King’s Inn building. Surprise and speed were essential. It was carried out within 7 minutes. McKee then organised another bold ambush on the weekly army payroll brought in an armoured Rolls Royce each Thursday from the Munster and Leinster Bank at Doyle’s Corner.
Lets read an extract from the book to give you a flavour of events.
‘Volunteer Bill O’Connell sprinted towards the car. A bullet sent him tumbling to the ground, killed before his body crashed to the cobblestones. His brains splattered the street. This did not prevent the remaining IRA men from quickly surrounding the car. They jumped on its running boards while Bernard Byrne managed to insert his pistol barrel into a gap in a hatch… He fired several shots, their deafening echoes reverberated along with the ricocheting bullets inside smashing against metal and into flesh to the sound of terrified screams and shouts from those being cut, gashed and blinded by bullet and metal fragments. The machine gun was silent. In the chaos, Charlie Byrne inserted revolver through a vision slit at the vehicle’s front, only to have the gunner wrench and wrestle the barrel away.
Charlie Byrne, seeing no other option, ordered a retreat. Bernard Byrne, then sprinting away, came suddenly face to face with the British officer. He raised his pistol to fire, but it clicked harmlessly, to the officer’s relief. Byrne needed to reload but had no time. The officer reached for his own sidearm but Byrne punched him full force in the face, knocking him flat, and then sped past him, only to run into a local butcher who threatened him with a cleaver. Byrne’s pointing pistol quickly persuaded the butcher to back away.
All the surviving IRA men then escaped.’
The turmoil gripping the citadel of crown rule – Dublin Castle – was correctly considered to be a nest of enemy sympathisers and no doubt, spies. Lord French decided to take action. The ongoing assassinations of the detectives in G-division not only meant the loss of each detective’s knowledge and expertise, but also his string of touts. A select committee was formed to infiltrate Sinn Féin and assassinate selected leaders. Ned Broy warned Michael Collins of one such spy, Quinlisk. Collins sprung a trap and nonchalantly watched the British raid on the Munster Hotel from the other side of the road. The deadly cat and mouse game had begun.
The harrowing execution of the young Kevin Barry is detailed. From Lloyd George’s hollow assurances that he would grant the young student a last-minute reprieve to the executioner’s whisper, ‘I won’t hurt you’, the reader is brought right into the scene.
Another extract:
(Pg. 332)
“They walked slowly out of the cell, along a succession of silent prison corridors with Canon Waters and Fr Mc Mahon on either side of Barry, until they arrived at the prison’s hang-room where a hood was placed over Barry’s head. Guards stood silently around inside as they then entered. The scaffold stood before them, surrounded by whitewashed walls…
Executioner Ellis stood behind Barry and, in a sudden single move, fixed the rope in place around his neck… The room was silent apart from the muttered hum of prayers… The lever, attached to a hinge mechanism in the wooden floor, opened the trapdoor suddenly with a loud mechanical clunk, followed instantaneously by the dull snap of the rope breaking Barry’s fall, and his neck and spinal cord, ending his life…
The prison bell tolled as Barry’s body, following confirmation of his death, was then carried out to the prison garden for burial… Prison inmates strained to see the sad procession from overlooking cell windows. A gloom descended. No one spoke. The North Circular Road outside the prison was also silent, then, thousands took to their knees once again in prayer. A note was placed on the prison gate announcing Barry’s execution.”
Once again the authors have presented an unflinching, accessible account of the war waged against the British Empire, unleashing the full spectrum of human behaviour – good and bad – from all sides.
Available from: Mercier Press at the following link: Killing At Its Very Extreme
Hodges Figgis website Killing At Its Very Extreme
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