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  “This is an army, Seventeen, with a definite chain of command. We’re fighting a war and no mistake, you have to understand that from the beginning. The Army Convention meets every four years, or when the need arises, and is our supreme policy-making authority. It’s very democratic. Senior officers serve as voting delegates representing their men. They elect an executive body composed of veterans, and the committee appoints the Army Council. The council in turn appoints both the chief-of-staff and the headquarters staff. In the field the IRA is organised into brigades, each with its own staff, and a brigade may be divided into battalions. You got all that?”

  “I do, sir.”

  “Unh-hunh,” said McCoy, sounding unconvinced. “Be warned: This new campaign’s not going to be a stroll in the sunshine. There’s a lot of hard and dangerous work to be done. I’m talking about kill or be killed, Seventeen. Think you’re able for it?”

  “Indeed I am!”

  THAT same afternoon Barry took the oath of the Irish Republican Army. Reverently holding a folded Irish tricolour in his hands, he recited, “I do solemnly swear that to the best of my knowledge and ability I will support and defend the Irish Republic against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. I further swear that I do not and shall not yield a voluntary support to any pretended government, authority, or power within Ireland hostile or inimical to that Republic.”

  McCoy shook his hand with grave formality. “Congratulations, Volunteer Halloran. You’re a member of Oglaigh na h-Éireann.” i

  Barry had felt ten feet tall that day. Entering the company of giants.

  A week later found him on a lonely hillside in County Leitrim, listening to the echoes of the second rifle shot dying away. Then it was quiet. Too quiet. Warily, Barry edged out of the hazel thicket.

  The rifle barked again. This time he felt the wind of the bullet’s passage.

  Someone was trying to kill him! This was for real!

  He flung himself facedown on the ground. As he pitched forward he accidentally dropped his weapon.

  Over the pounding of his heart he heard the thud of running boots. Coming closer.

  Barry grabbed for his rifle. His fingertips just brushed the stock, but it was enough to send it sliding away from him down the icy slope.

  For the first time in his life he knew what fear was. Fear squeezed the breath out of your lungs. Fear locked your muscles and left you helpless.

  Barry struggled to remember the words of the Act of Contrition, but all he could think was, God. Oh God.

  Then someone was standing over him. Helplessly, he waited for the bullet in the back of the head. Time telescoped into one heartbeat, his last on earth. And then another.

  And another.

  No great adventure for me after all. Suddenly he was angry. Go ahead and shoot, damn you! Don’t drag this out any longer!

  “Seventeen!” bellowed a familiar voice. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Rolling onto his back, Barry stared up at Séamus McCoy. The scale of Barry’s relief told him how frightened he had been. Cowering on the ground like a baby. Disgust scalded him.

  “When you’ve been ordered to stay still, stay still,” the officer grated. “Don’t move, don’t even blink. D’ye understand?”

  “I thought the unionists were trying to kill me.”

  The officer briefly glanced heavenwards. “Come down off the Cross and put me up there, I’m crucified by stupidity!” He lowered his eyes to the young man on the ground. “We’re still miles from the border, Halloran. It was me shooting to give you the experience of being under fire. If I’d meant to kill you you’d be dead by now.

  “You broke every rule there is, d’ye know that? You disregarded orders, you stepped into the line of fire, and you threw your weapon away.” He looked pointedly at Barry’s crotch. “I’m surprised you didn’t piss your pants for good measure.”

  Barry heard a loud guffaw. The rest of the column was coming over the crest of the hill. He realised they had been there for quite some time, just out of sight. Laughing at him.

  At that moment Barry made a vow to himself: I’ll never let anyone see me afraid again. I’d rather die first.

  Something shifted in his eyes; long-lidded grey eyes from which the youth suddenly vanished. Someone older, sterner, savage, glared up at McCoy. “Is this how you train recruits? By shooting at them?” Even Barry’s voice had changed. It was a low growl, curiously unnerving.

  McCoy squared his shoulders in a conscious effort to reassert his authority. “Unh … better me than the enemy, Halloran. A soldier’s no use’til he’s been shot at a time or two. Then we know what he’s made of.” He reached a hand down to Barry and was relieved when the boy accepted it. “On your feet now, avic.j We have a way to go before nightfall.”

  Still laughing, the other Volunteers gathered around Barry. Feargal O’Hanlon gave him a ferocious punch on the shoulder. “Ye’ve been baptised good and proper now, Seventeen.”

  Barry tossed his hair out of his eyes. With a reckless, devil-may-care grin, he returned the blow in full measure. His fist was hard and his arm was strong and the blood was singing in his veins.

  He felt all alive under his skin.

  Chapter Three

  WHEN Ursula realised that her son was missing she went looking for Ned’s rifle. It was missing too.

  “I’m sorry I ever gave that gun to Barry,” Ursula told Eileen. “Now he’s run off to join the IRA.”

  The two women were in the kitchen, the one place where their separate worlds overlapped. The farm was Ursula’s dominion. Eileen, the youngest of Ned Halloran’s sisters, kept house.

  Ursula Halloran was thin. A small woman with greying hair cut like a boy’s and an abundance of nervous energy. The angular planes of her face were ageless. Ursula wore that face like a shield with the real woman hidden behind it. Only in rare unguarded moments did her eyes reveal banked fires.

  Eileen Halloran Mulvaney was fat. In her youth Eileen had been pretty, but she had married a drunkard and borne eight children in quick succession. One had died in infancy and two more succumbed to tuberculosis before her husband beat her into a final miscarriage and deserted her. Since then she and her family had been dependent on Ursula’s charity.

  The surviving children, who should have been a consolation in Eileen’s old age, had left home as soon they could. The boys had emigrated; Ursula paid their fares. The girls had married as soon as they were old enough; Ursula paid for their weddings.

  Eileen sought solace in her faith and comfort in her food. She ate too fast to taste her meals. The important thing was swallowing, cramming material into an emptiness that could never be filled.

  As she spooned thick cream onto a scone slathered with butter, she reminded Ursula, “You had to give Ned’s rifle to the boy, he made you promise to. But why do think he’s gone to the IRA?”

  “Barry’s been impulsive ever since he could walk. Half the time we never knew where he was. Do you recall the day—he wasn’t more than six years old—when he strolled all the way to Ennis without saying a word to anybody?”

  Eileen chuckled. “When you finally found him he was exhausted, but indignant that you’d come after him. He claimed he just wanted to know where the road went.”

  “He’s taken some other road now, I’m afraid,” said Ursula, “and God knows where it will lead him. He’s disappeared along with the rifle and the compass Henry Mooney sent him for Christmas. What do you think?”

  Eileen swallowed and reached for another scone. “I think you’re proud of Barry. There’s nothing would please you more than having a son in the IRA.”

  “I am proud of him,” Ursula conceded. “More proud than I’ve ever been of anything in my life. But if he gets himself killed I’ll never forgive him.”

  Two days later she found Barry’s bicycle leaning against the side of the barn, returned anonymously in the night.

  IN the years
leading up to Operation Harvest, the IRA—or the Army, as it called itself, ignoring the fact that the Republic had a national army under government control—had been acquiring new ordnance. Daring arms raids were staged on military installations in both England and Northern Ireland. Sympathisers abroad were purchasing arms and arranging to have them smuggled into Ireland. In smoky Irish pubs in New York and Boston and Manchester the children and grandchildren of immigrants sang songs about Ireland’s tragic history, then passed the hat to buy guns for The Boys.

  In the Republic of Ireland, members of the IRA were arrested on a sporadic basis by a government which did not know what else to do with them.

  ON the day that Barry was sworn into the Volunteers, men from Cork and Limerick began arriving at McCoy’s encampment. By nightfall there were a full dozen of them. A few were new recruits but most were veterans. They came from varied backgrounds. Students, farm labourers, a schoolteacher, a shop assistant, a bank clerk.

  Barry had fancifully imagined the IRA as a uniformed army marching in formation like the British or American troops in the newsreels. However, the reconstructed IRA was a guerrilla force. The officer in command was called the O/C rather than the C/O because, as McCoy said scathingly, “C/O is the British term.”

  They would be a column in name only. No uniforms, no marching in formation. “You’ll wear your own clothes,” McCoy informed the new recruits. “GHQ’s provided us with light arms, a few rifles and pistols and some ammunition. Not enough, but some. Any of you know how to shoot?” He did not wait for an answer. “Once we’re across the border we’ll have target practice. As for transport, you’re going to walk. I want every one of you as fit as a butcher’s dog by the time we reach the border. There’ll be no hitching rides.”

  Walking was still the most common form of travel in rural Ireland. Men thought nothing of driving cattle on foot for twelve miles to market, then returning home by the same method.

  “You’ll carry everything you need on your backs,” McCoy said. “You may not know how to put together a comfortable pack now, but I guarantee you will by the time we get there. Walk in groups of two or three, no more than four at the most. You’ll be less conspicuous that way. Remember to keep an eye out for the gardai. If a garda stops you for any reason, you don’t know the names of the lads walking with you, understand? They’re just some men you met on the road. You know nothing about them. If you’re questioned be polite, but give no details.

  “Which brings up an important point. As a Volunteer the first lesson you must learn is: Whatever you say, say nothing. Even to your families. That’s safest for everyone.

  “We’ll spend the night in safe houses when we can, but we’re just as likely to be billeted in hedgerows. The important thing is to keep out of sight. We have plenty of friends on this side of the border who’ll see that you don’t go hungry, but in the Six Counties it’ll be a different story.”

  At dawn the next morning the column set out for the north. The pistols were concealed beneath their clothing. McCoy stowed the rifles and ammunition, together with a shotgun belonging to a Volunteer from Cork, in a large handcart. He covered them with a tarpaulin and piled turnips on top. “If anyone asks, you’re taking these to market. If we’re discovered, try to get the weapons safely away. If for some reason you can’t, disable them.”

  Pairs of men took turns pushing the cart.

  McCoy chose a route that followed farm roads for the most part, avoiding towns and large villages. At unexpected moments he would order the men to run. Sometimes he did this when they were cutting across open fields, which was hard on the men pushing the cart. More than once they had to stop and go back for their turnips.

  During that first day the veterans regaled the recruits with their Army experiences. Their exploits reminded Barry of games he had played as a small boy. Cowboys and Red Indians. This is fun!

  Hard on the heels of that thought came another: But if no one enjoyed soldiering, how could we have wars?

  The makeup of the small groups changed frequently. Some moved forward, others fell back. When it was Barry’s turn to help push the cart he was teamed with a Limerick man called Seán South. South, who was twenty-seven, came from the republican stronghold of Garryowen. He was a member of the Irish-speaking branch of the Legion of Mary and preferred to speak that language.

  Barry took the opportunity to practice his own language skills. “How are you employed when you are not with the Army?” he asked in careful Irish.

  “I am a social worker in Limerick. I paint, and play the violin. And go to Mass every day of course.”

  Before Barry could frame a response South continued, “I also publish an Irish language magazine, An Gath. We address such topics as the decline of the Irish language, the problems of western Ireland, and the future of the nation. In the last issue I wrote, ‘There is an end to foolishness; the time for talk has ended!’1 So here I am in the Army. The true Irish Republican Army, the only one dedicated to this island as a whole.”

  Confronted by a man who was living his life so fully, Barry fell back on his one asset. “Perhaps you have heard of my grandfather, Ned Halloran? He was in the GPO in 1916 with Pádraic Pearse, and during the War of Independence he fought the Tans in Limerick.”

  “You’re leaving out the most important part of the story,” South replied. “Without Ned Halloran the IRA might not have survived. In the late thirties and forties we were holding on by our toenails. It was your grandfather, working in secret, who kept the scattered fragments of the Army in contact with one another.”

  The cart slewed to a halt as Barry stopped in his tracks. “My granda did that?” he said in English. “He never mentioned … How’d he do it?”

  “Halloran knew just about everyone in the Volunteers and where they were at any given time. He even had connections in America, or so I’ve heard. Perhaps he held all the information in his head, but more likely he kept written records. That would have been desperately dangerous, of course. But if what they say about him is true, he paid danger no mind.”

  “Did you ever meet him?”

  Seán South replied, “I never had the privilege; Ned Halloran was before my time. I envy you, being his grandson.”

  AT twilight they made camp in a secluded strip of woodland. McCoy collected the weapons and stashed them away under the tarp and a pile of brush, keeping out his own pistol in case of emergency. Barry was reluctant to surrender his precious rifle. McCoy said brusquely, “This is Oglaigh na h-Éireann. Discipline is all-important. You respect the rank, not the individual, and if your commandant says do something you do it. Accept the rules or go home, Seventeen.”

  Barry handed over the rifle.

  “Another thing,” said McCoy. “In 1954, Standing Order Number Eight was incorporated into the IRA’s General Army Orders, and I want every one of you to memorise it. ‘Volunteers are strictly forbidden to take any military action against the twenty-six county forces in any circumstances whatsoever.’”2

  “Does that mean if the Free State Army shoots at us we can’t shoot back?” someone asked.

  “Indeed it does. And if the gardai arrest you, go quietly. We have no quarrel with them, no matter what they think about us. Our enemy is the army of occupation in the Six Counties. Which brings up another point. Our enemy is not the Protestants. This isn’t about religion, not with us. Religious wars have caused too damned much trouble as it is. The Protestant civilians across the border are Irish just the same as we are, and don’t you forget it.”

  There were other rules to learn. McCoy drilled them into his men from the beginning. Piety, courtesy to women, and sobriety while on active duty were imperative. “The Brits accuse the Irish of being ignorant, drunken louts,” McCoy said, “so the Volunteers have to prove them wrong. Anyone who lets the Army down is gone.”

  Once the day’s activities were over, rank was set aside. The evening was devoted to conversation. Topics ranged from discovering familial connections to swapping amu
sing anecdotes to “country matters”—the euphemism for sex.

  When Barry asked about his accent, Séamus McCoy said, “I was reared in West Belfast, but now I have a wee bolthole in a village in Tipperary. Place called Ballina.”

  “What brought you down here?”

  “To be closer to the heart of the campaign. These days the Belfast IRA consists of little more than one man with a rifle—and that an old Martini Henry. There’s the Felons’ Club, of course, but …”

  “What’s that?”

  McCoy smiled. “The Irish Republican Felons’ Association, comprised of what you might call retired Volunteers. They have a clubhouse on the Falls Road. A friend of mine, Gerry Adams, Senior—he has a young son by the same name—was one of the founders. He was shot and wounded by the RUC in forty-two. When the last major release of republican prisoners took place in the north, Gerry and some others decided to organise a place where they could meet and socialise. Talk about old times, tell each other war stories. To thumb their noses at the Brits they named it the Felons’ Association, turning an insult into something to be proud of.”

  Barry grinned. I’m part of this! he silently congratulated himself. This spirit. These men.

  Conversation circled and spiralled while McCoy smoked cigarette after cigarette, listening to his little group talk about old times, tell each other war stories. Watching his charges coalesce into the band of brothers they must become. Occasionally he threw in a few words of encouragement. “We’re going to have the Irish Republic yet, lads, don’t ever doubt it.”

  “I thought we’d been a republic since 1949,” one of the recruits said.

  McCoy gave a snort. “Don’t you believe it. The Twenty-Six Counties are just the Free State under another name, they don’t begin to measure up to the republican ideal. The government down here’s still run along British lines, aping the British Parliament, with British-style bureaucrats determined to preserve the status quo.”