The Easter Rising 1916 - Molly's Diary (Hands-on History) Read online

  So, I had been let in because they were expecting some First Aid kit.

  I handed her a bag of dressings. “They have yet to be purified,” I said. “But they are cleaned and packed.”

  She scanned the rooftop. I saw a strikingly handsome man coming towards us, walking upright as if he was taking the boards at the theatre.

  He raised a flag over the balustrades. The green flag unfurled and blew in the breeze.

  “Get down, Seán Connolly!” called out Dr Kathleen. “Crouch and take cover!”

  He gave us a slow smile. It was his last act. A shot rang out like the crack of a whip and he fell like a tree. Immediately a woman rebel ran to him and cradled his head in her lap. Her tears fell on his face. It was the actress Helena Moloney. She whispered the Act of Contrition into his ear. Dr Kathleen crawled across the bullet-pocked roof and felt his pulse.

  “There is no need for First Aid.”

  He must have died instantly. I was too shocked to take it in.

  A cry rang out. Then a burst of wracking sobs. It was Matthew over on the other side of the roof. He must have been told about his brother.

  “Stay at your post! There are snipers on the Castle Roof! That’s an order!” another rebel called to him.

  But Matthew tried to stand again to get to his brother.

  Dr Kathleen crawled over to him and pulled him down.

  “Matthew, get off the roof! I don’t want your mother to lose all her sons.”

  But he refused to move now. “I will defend the position,” he insisted.

  Beneath the next crack of bullets, I heard a whimpering sound. Someone with a shock of red-gold hair was slumped behind the opposite side of the dome, the hair all the more brilliant for being reflected in the glass. I panicked that it was Jack.

  I crawled over, my heartbeat drowning out the bullets in my ears. He was just a boy, of my own age, holding his right shoulder, his hair a redder shade than Jack’s. I saw the blood seep on his green, homespun jersey. My heart was in my mouth, pleased it wasn’t Jack, yet guilty for feeling relieved that it was someone else.

  Immediately Dr Kathleen was at my side. She tore open his clothing and exposed the pulsating flesh at the top of his shoulder, checking the back for an exit wound.

  “It’s superficial,” she said, and immediately applied one of the dressings I had just handed her. She reached into her bag and brought out a spool of bandages.

  “You’re going to be okay, Arthur,” she said to the boy as she handed me the roll of bandages to fix the dressing.

  My fingers were trembling, but I concentrated with all my might to pass the bandage over his shoulder, under his arm and across the chest to fix the dressing in place. I secured it with a pin. My only practice was on a woman in class and on my doll. I had no time to wonder at what I was doing.

  The boy was shaking and saying his Hail Mary.

  “Oh Mother of God, will I die?” he asked me. “Don’t let them leave me here.”

  “Let’s get Arthur downstairs,” Dr Lynn instructed.

  I helped her drag him to the rooftop entrance.

  “Do you know if there are any more Fianna here – or the Countess?” I dared to ask.

  “Constance is at Stephen’s Green with her boys,” she said. “Tell someone to give that boy a tot of whiskey, as his nerves are shook. But he will be okay if the wound doesn’t become infected. Throw some whiskey on it if there’s no iodine.”

  I helped the boy down the wide marble stairs and left him in the care of the Citizen Army Women.

  “Don’t leave me behind!” the boy called out as I left.

  “You stay here, Arthur,” said one of the women, giving him a swig from a flask. “Your legs won’t carry you.”

  “Tell me ma I won’t be home for me tae!” he called after me in a shaky voice.

  I ran down the stairs, determined now to get over to Stephen’s Green as soon as possible. Dr Lynn’s words had given me a clue, and I intended to find Jack and drag him bodily with me if I had to. This was no game of tin soldiers. Death was all around me.

  I reached the bottom and the door was wide open. The earlier rebel sentry was nowhere to be seen, but further up the street British soldiers were pinned to the sides of buildings, guns at the ready. More snipers were dotted on the roof.

  “Hold fire!” I called and, summoning my courage, raised my Red Cross flag.

  “Halt!” roared a voice.

  There was a break in the gunshot, and I ran around to the doorway where I’d left my bike. The dairyman and the office girl were gone. My hands shook when I first mounted but the soldiers and rebels let me clear the scene. But as soon as I passed, gunshot ran out behind me, sparking off the granite paving stones. I cycled away up Dame Street, pedalling like fury.

  Knots of onlookers blurred at every corner. It was like the flickering silent films at the Masquerade Picture Cinema on Talbot Street. People gathered in doorways, gawping, as if waiting for a parade to pass by.

  “Go home, child!” a woman shouted to me from a window.

  “Go by the back of Trinity Street!” one man roared to me as I came opposite the tall columns of the Bank of Ireland. “There are snipers on the roof of Trinity. They’ve shot at some cyclists already.”

  The great gates were closed and barricaded, the windows filled with sandbags, over which peeped the barrels of the defenders’ rifles. I prayed to God Jack wasn’t one of those shot.

  As I pedalled up Grafton Street, all the shops barred and shut, I began to see makeshift barriers: then along Stephen’s Green and towards the Shelbourne Hotel. Every kind of vehicle you could think of was pulled together to make the barricade as if giants were playing a game. I saw a splendid motor car with a holy medal in the front, a lorry, a dray cart and countless bicycles. Behind one barricade was an empty halted tram. I hid my bicycle out of sight in a doorway.

  Rifle fire suddenly rang out from the park. The gated entrance facing Grafton Street was closed but a man in a civilian suit ran up with packages in his hand and gained admittance. I guessed he was a rebel carrying ammunition.

  I saw the writer Mr James Stephens. He often comes to the GPO to send messages to newspapers in England. He is not very tall and jokes that he is Ireland’s tallest leprechaun, which is rather funny as he is famous for writing books on Irish mythology for children.

  The gates opened and three men ran out, two with rifles and fixed bayonets. The third man gripped a heavy revolver. They charged towards a motor car that had just come up Dawson Street, driven by a chauffeur. The man with the revolver saluted and addressed the occupants while his comrades fixed their bayonets on the chauffeur.

  “I beg your pardon, but you need to get out by order of the Irish Republic.” The rebel was polite but nervous.

  A terrified woman and a bewildered middle-aged man got out.

  “I want to get to Armagh today,” the man said, to no one in particular.

  The Volunteers directed the chauffeur to wedge his car into the barricade. I could see his legs were shaking through the open door at the front of the car, although his big tanned face was composed. He froze in fear when he finally managed to get it where they wanted.

  “Out, sir,” the man with the revolver ordered.

  The two passengers and the chauffeur staggered into the Shelbourne, supporting each other on shaky legs. There were several knots of curious onlookers, men, women and children, who refused to move.

  Mr Stephens approached the boy rebel with the revolver, who was about twenty. He had curly red hair and a kind face but he was constantly scanning the area, jittery and tense.

  “What is the meaning of all this? What is going on?” demanded Mr Stephens.

  “We have taken the city,” said the young man. “But these people won’t go home for me. We’re expecting an attack from the military at any moment. We have the Post Office, the railways, the Castle. We have everything.”

  The onlookers seemed to be taking it all as a joke. One little boy
ran around with his hoop. “But who will feed the ducks?” he cried out.

  Much of the rebels’ activity in the Green was obscured by shrubbery, but I peered through the gates. Women were laying out picnic teas and men were digging holes in the warm summer sunshine. Daffodils and crocuses swayed in the breeze.

  There were so many youths, the rebels looked to be an army of boys – and it gave me hope I might find Jack among them. There were also lots of young girls, some only a little older than me, wearing knapsacks, and singing rebel songs. I saw behind a bush a black hat with a cockade of feathers. The Countess, I guessed.

  I realized if I found Jack, it might not be so easy for me to persuade him to leave. His comrades all had guns.

  I was trying to think of a way in when who should I see trying to climb over the gates but young Dan O’Donovan, my cousin. He was just like my brother, as limber as a monkey.

  “What are you doing up here?”

  “Ma sent me out for some bread and milk and I just came to see,” he said.

  “Is Jack in there?”

  “I saw Madame Markievicz with a dead bird on her head and dressed like a man. She has a Mauser and an automatic pistol. They have a British Officer prisoner. There are only about twenty of them.”

  “I’m going to go in,” I said.

  Dan jumped down beside me. “I’m coming with you.”

  At that moment, a Boland’s bread van turned into the Green. The gates flew open for an instant and two young girls ran out brandishing revolvers. They halted the van and demanded that the driver hand over his supplies.

  “Take whatever you want,” the man said, taken aback by the youth of the rebels. “But let me keep me van.”

  One of the girls wrote him a note. “Please put the car in the barricade. The note says you can redeem it, by order of the Irish Republic.”

  “The Irish Republic, my foot,” said the man, but did it quick enough when the girl waved the revolver wildly.

  They unloaded trays of loaves from the back. Quick-thinking Dan ran to help out and I too picked up a tray of loaves.

  “We are here from St John’s Ambulance,” I told one of the girls.

  When we came to the gate, we were waved in and went to the summerhouse. There was a First Aid shelter in the glass conservatory and a little field hospital in the bandstand, a few wounded there already. Rosie Hackett was there, wearing a white nurse’s overall that came down to her toes. As I approached the First Aid station, Dan announced he would search the park and ran off before I could stop him.

  “I’m looking for my brother, Jack. He’s tall with red-gold hair,” I told Rosie.

  “You’re Bessie’s girl, aren’t you?” she said.

  “I think he might be on his bicycle,” I added.

  “Ah, if he’s a dispatch rider on courier duty, he might be working with Margaret Skinnider. She’s from Glasgow but all for Ireland. She smuggled our detonators for the bombs from Scotland into Ireland under her hat.”

  “What is a dispatch rider?” I asked.

  “They carry messages by bike between the various posts,” she said. “We even have two fellas who were in the Olympics doing it – but the women and young boys are doing it mostly. Commander Mallin said we’re to make sure we keep our lines of communication open for food, reinforcements and ammunition.”

  At that very moment, a woman cycled up wearing a uniform of green moleskin, knee breeches, a belted coat and the leggings known as puttees.

  “I need to speak to the Countess urgently,” she said in a Scottish accent. Margaret Skinnider, I guessed.

  “McCormick and the men have abandoned the attempt to occupy Harcourt Street Railway Station. They are falling back.”

  At that moment the commander, Michael Mallin, arrived with the Countess. I had seen him only yesterday – playing the flute in Liberty Hall! And I remembered that he was a silk weaver and Mother had once bought a shawl from him.

  The Countess was smoking a cigarette and putting her revolver back in her belt. She was tall and dashing like someone out of an adventure story. Her strong face must have been beautiful when she was young and even now she was arresting. She moved like a panther stalking prey.

  “I’ve been dealing with the objectionable snipers,” she said casually, as if she was out fox-hunting.

  Her companion, Mr Mallin, was tense and nervous. “There are at least sixty guns held at the College of Surgeons, belonging to the Trinity College Officer Training Corp,” he said. “We need to occupy the building.”

  “This open ground is not safe,” said the Countess. “We need a back-up position.”

  Mallin looked up and saw a party of men approaching.

  “Robbins, why aren’t you at Davy’s pub on Portabello Bridge?”

  “We had to abandon, sir,” said the young rebel.

  “Take a dozen over to the College of Surgeons and establish it as our headquarter position. The Green is too large and exposed. Mary and Lily, the Kempson girl, will go with you.”

  They began to form into a unit.

  Dan and another young boy of about twelve – Tommy, the delivery boy from the Dublin Bread Company – attached themselves to the straggling column of fighters. Margaret the cyclist dismounted and made to join them but the Countess called her over and whispered something in her ear.

  I seized my chance. I stepped close to them.

  “Do you know my brother Jack O’Donovan? Is he a dispatch rider?” I said quickly, a bundle of nerves.

  They both looked at me, in surprise at my audacity.

  “My boys are doing me proud! Some are on reconnaissance around the boundaries,” the Countess said.

  “Is Jack, tall with red-gold hair, among them?” I asked.

  “He and another boy might have been sent to liaise with the Fairview men and deliver a message to Tom Clarke’s wife Kathleen who lives there. They are to report to the GPO tomorrow.”

  I was crestfallen at her words. Fairview was the other side of the city, I wasn’t sure where.

  “And Anto Maguire?”

  “Child, he is on a military mission. You cannot just chase him around.” The Countess waved her hand to indicate I was dismissed.

  The column marched off. Dan tagged along with the DBC bakery boy, Tommy.

  I caught my cousin by the scruff of his neck. “You’re going home to your mother!” I said.

  “You can sneak back out,” laughed Tommie Keenan, his tricolour badge glinting. “Me da locked me in and I jus’ climbed out the winder!”

  “Go home, you eejit. Or you might lose your job at the DBC,” I said.

  “I’m twelve, nearly thirteen,” he said. “The Countess says we’re old enough to fight.”

  Another group of very young people arrived, including a girl I knew from North King Street, Mary McLoughlin, who was fifteen. Her brother Seán was in the Irish Citizen Army but she had another brother fighting in the Great War.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I’m a member of Clann na Gael, attached to the Hibernian Rifles,” she said. “The Fianna doesn’t let girls in but I want to fight for Ireland.”

  I looked at the group, in their green uniforms – a bunch of children like me.

  “We were on a route march with our captain, May Kelly,” she said. “There was no train from Dundrum station because of the Rising, so we walked back. This is the first military post we’ve reached.”

  “The Rising?” I said. “Is that what this is called? But you’re just young girls!”

  “The Countess let us in,” she said stubbornly.

  The Countess and Mr Mallin came striding up.

  “What are all these children doing here?” demanded Mallin.

  “If they’re old enough to work in Ireland, they are old enough to fight,” said the Countess. She pronounced it ‘Ah-land’ in her grand voice.

  “Dead children will discredit us. Get them out of here,” said Mallin.

  I remembered that he himself had fiv
e young children and that’s why mother had bought his shawl.

  “Everyone under sixteen please leave,” said the Countess, not exactly pleased.

  “But we want to fight,” persisted Tommie Keenan.

  “Your day will come,” said Mallin. “Now out of here before I box your ears.”

  Dan and I were swept up in the crowd of departing children. Some of them were very frightened and it was a mercy that some of their parents had started to turn up to take them home. I held tight onto Dan’s hand in case he ran off again.

  But, as she remounted her bicycle, I asked Margaret Skinnider again exactly where Anto Maguire had been sent. He might have more information about Jack.

  “He’s a messenger boy with Findlater’s Grocers,” I added. “He knows Dublin well.”

  She ignored me.

  “Anto and Jack are scarcely fifteen,” I said. “Mallin would send them home. I’ll go ask him, will I?”

  “Anto is on food-procurement duty,” she admitted. “He’s moving between South Dublin Union and Jacob’s Factory over near St Patrick’s.”

  She broke off abruptly and rode off.

  “Are you off home now?” I asked Mary McLoughlin as we skirted the shrubbery and left the park.

  “I am not! Me ma won’t let me out again. I’m going to the GPO.”

  I showed her Jack’s photograph in my locket and asked her to look out for him – and to give him a message that he must head to Oriel Street to see Aunt Elizabeth and we were planning to go to Kingstown. Or if that proved difficult, to go to Hatch Street to Dr Ella Webb.

  As Dan and I hurried past the Shelbourne by Kildare Street, there was a break in hostilities and, when we looked back, the park seemed deserted.