Dan Breen and the IRA by Joe Ambrose Page A

Robinson felt that, ‘The RIC seemed to be at first amused at the sight of Dan Breen’s burly figure with nose and mouth covered with a handkerchief; but with a sweeping glance they saw his revolver and O’Dwyer and me … they could see only three of us.’
    â€˜Hearing Dan Breen and Seán Treacy shouting, “Halt, put up your hands!” Robinson and I immediately started to get out on to the road,’ said O’Dwyer, ‘and almost simultaneously either one or two shots rang out. I distinctly remember seeing one of the RIC men bringing his carbine to the aiming position and working the bolt and the impression I got was that he was aiming at either Robinson or myself. Then a volley rang out and that constable fell dead on the roadside. I am not certain whether it was that volley or the previous shot, or shots, which killed his companion.’
    â€˜I fired three shots at him,’ admitted Tadgh Crowe. ‘One was ineffective and the other two got him in the arm and back. About the same time, either one or two shots were fired from the gate where Seán Treacy was positioned and the other constable fell, shot through the temple.’
    â€˜The driver of the cart and the county council ganger were, naturally, very frightened,’ said Paddy O’Dwyer. ‘Dan Breen spoke to them and told them that nothing was going to happen to them. One of these men, Godfrey, knew both Breen and Treacy well and I imagine that Flynn must have known them too. On Breen’s instructions, Tadgh Crowe and I collected the two carbines belonging to the dead constables. Breen, Treacy and Hogan then drove away the horse and cart with the gelignite.’
    â€˜I took the belts with the pouches of ammunition and handcuffs off the dead policemen,’ said Tadgh Crowe. ‘Treacy, Breen and Hogan drove away on the horse and cart with the gelignite and Paddy O’Dwyer and I took the RIC men’s carbines and hid them together with the belts, pouches of ammunition and handcuffs in a ditch about half a mile from the scene of the ambush. O’Dwyer and I then parted, he to go back home to Hollyford and I went to Doherty’s of Seskin.’
    â€˜Seán Treacy had made all the arrangements for disposing of the gelignite,’ remembered Robinson. ‘Dan Breen and Seán Hogan mounted the cart, Breen, standing up with the reins, whipped the horse and away they went clattering on the rough road. I had thought that Dan Breen, who had worked on the railway, would have known the danger of jolting gelignite that was frozen … the weather was very cold. Hogan told me afterwards that he tried to caution Dan but either he couldn’t hear him or he put no “seem” to it.’
    According to Breen: ‘Séamus Robinson did not know of the police being shot that day until he was nearly at home in Ballagh. He was at a point about 300 yards from where the shooting took place and, though he heard the shots I suppose, he did not see the effect of them. It was Robinson himself who told me afterwards that himself and McCormack, one of the other men who were engaged with us, had nearly arrived at Ballagh on their way home when McCormack told him that the two police were dead and that this was the first he heard of anyone being killed.’
    In his ‘Statement to the Bureau of Military History’, a sealed account of events left behind for future generations, Breen went out of his way to repeatedly claim that he and Treacy set out to kill RIC men at Soloheadbeg: ‘I would like to make this point clear and state here without any equivocation that we took this action deliberately having thought the matter over and talked it over between us. Treacy had stated to me that the only way of starting a war was to kill someone and we wanted to start a war, so we intended to kill some of the police whom we looked upon as the foremost and most important branch of the enemy forces which