ON THIS DAY
22 October
1920. Ambush at Toureen
Tom Barry, column commander at Toureen.
On 22 October 1920 the Cork No. 3 Brigade IRA ambushed a British Army convoy at Annagh Beg, near Ballinhassig, on the Cork–Bandon road. The fight is recorded as the Toureen or Tooreen ambush. The Military Archives Brigade Activity Reports list it that day as an operation of the 3rd Cork Brigade. UCC’s Cork Fatality Register names the senior IRA officers as Tom Barry, column commander; Charlie Hurley, brigade commander; Liam Deasy, brigade adjutant; Dick Barrett, brigade quartermaster; and Seán Hales, Bandon Battalion commander.
Two military lorries were on the road. The first passed the position. The second was stopped by fire. Lieutenant William Alfred Dixon, aged 39, 2nd Battalion, Suffolk Regiment, attached to the 1st Battalion, Essex Regiment, was killed. Private Charles William Reid, aged 18, Essex Regiment, was mortally wounded. Sergeant Thomas Arthur Bennett, aged 27, RASC, died of wounds the next day. UCC also records Private Jones as mortally wounded. Other soldiers were wounded. No IRA dead are recorded at the scene.
IRA accounts do not agree on the number of rifles and rounds taken. They agree that arms and ammunition were taken from the stopped lorry before the column withdrew. One Bureau of Military History statement gives eight rifles, a revolver and a quantity of ammunition. Later memoirs give higher totals. The exact figure is not settled.
The same night in Bandon
Seán Hales, Bandon Battalion commander, present at Toureen.
UCC records that after the ambush soldiers of the Essex Regiment ran through Bandon. Shops were damaged or wrecked. The Bandon Hosiery Company was destroyed. Damage to that works alone was put at £50,000. The factory employed local people. The reprisal therefore hit more than the owners.
1920. Ambush at Parkwood
The same day, on the Moate–Kilbeggan road at Parkwood, just inside the Offaly border, the Athlone Brigade flying column fought its first engagement. The column commander was James Tormey, aged 21, a former British soldier. Westmeath County Council’s reconstruction names about fifteen men in the column; several had served in the British Army.
They had expected a small police patrol. They met a convoy moving west from Gormanston. Fire was opened on a lorry. RIC Constable Harry Biggs, from London, about twenty-three, two weeks in the force, was mortally wounded and died in or beside the vehicle. After a short fight Tormey ordered a withdrawal. The column took no recorded casualties.
Later that day Crown forces fired through Moate, Athlone and Kilbeggan. Michael Burke, a civilian, was shot dead. Hamar Greenwood later told the Commons that in the conditions then prevailing in Ireland “the innocent should sometimes suffer for the acts of the wrongdoer.”
1922. Four National Army soldiers killed at Ferrycarrig
Two years later, on 22 October 1922, anti-Treaty IRA men attacked a National Army Lancia at Ferrycarrig, County Wexford. RTÉ’s Civil War fatalities study records four soldiers killed and several wounded. Local research names the dead as Patrick O’Connor of Coolcotts, Wexford; Christopher Kierans of Rathfarnham, Dublin; Peter Behan of Newbridge, County Kildare; and William Doyle of Broadway, Wexford. The IRA party is identified as a five-man group under Bob Lambert. A grenade exploded inside the vehicle.
On 22 October 1920 IRA volunteers had fired on soldiers of the British state. On 22 October 1922 Irish republicans fired on soldiers of the Irish state.
1922. The bishops’ letter is read
Cardinal Michael Logue. Portrait by Sir John Lavery, 1920.
The same Sunday, a pastoral letter of Cardinal Michael Logue and the Catholic bishops of Ireland was appointed to be read at the principal Masses. The printed text, issued in Dublin by Browne and Nolan, is catalogued by the National Library of Ireland as a condemnation of Civil War violence and an appeal for peace. The hierarchy had drafted the letter after meeting in early October. An earlier version appeared in the press on 11 October. 22 October is the day it was read in the churches.
References
University College Cork, Cork Fatality Register, ‘Lieutenant William Alfred Dixon’, 1920-91. Toureen/Annagh Beg, 22 October 1920. Names Barry, Hurley, Deasy, Barrett and Hales from Daniel Canty, BMH WS 1619.
Military Archives, Brigade Activity Reports, 3rd Cork Brigade, Tooreen ambush, 22 October 1920.
Westmeath County Council / westmeathculture.ie, ‘The Parkwood Ambush, October 1920’.
Revolution in Profiles Offaly, ‘Harry Biggs 1897/1899?–1920’.
RTÉ, ‘Southern danger: Civil War deaths in Wexford’ (UCC Irish Civil War Fatalities Project). Ferrycarrig, 22 October 1922.
Mac Suain, S. (1995) County Wexford’s Civil War. Names of the four National Army dead at Ferrycarrig.
National Library of Ireland, Pastoral letter of Cardinal Logue and the bishops, Browne and Nolan, 1922 (vtls000514373). To be read 22 October 1922.
Leave a comment