My Irish Holiday

... Sometimes, for those who make a living in the hours when you are asleep, there comes, towards the end of a watch or shift, an errant image from the depths of the past and their psyche. Images built on bits of memory or snatches of an old song - Jungian archetypes or " a bit of undigested gristle". One that comes to me is the image evoked by a song entitled "The Valley of Knockanure". It is a ballad, the story of the death of six young men during the "Troubles" in Ireland in 1919-21.

On day in 1920 some half dozen young men-16 or 18 years old- ambushed an English convoy. In response near two companies of regulars and more Tans hunted them o'er the hillside (Ireland, once forested, is a land of fields, the trees gone to build the British a navy. A French chronicler once wrote " Ireland would be unconquered so long as the trees have leaves", for a reply the Brits cut down all the trees to build a Navy), a deadly afternoon of "Fox and Hounds". The boys had a couple old rifles and pistols and a shotgun with perhaps twenty rounds among them.

The song is played in a moderate conversational tempo, the pace of a poet or storyteller, the lyrics simple and in the manner of the man at the window.

This is the image that song creates in my imagination.

I was born with the new century, in the time of Mr. Roosevelt; my early memories are of the building of the great Panamanian Canal. My people were of the West of Ireland; mother's father was the only child of his mothers six to survive the great hunger. At home we learned little of the old country- I suspect there was too much pain in the parting.

My childhood was much the same as others of that time; done with school at 14, I was apprenticed as a millwright and by 16 I was driving a truck at the mill. Mr. Wilson's war in '17 gave me the chance of travel and adventure so I enlisted and was assigned to the new motorized artillery. We arrived in France early in '18 and spent months training on the French 75's. It was a good time for a lad of 18, leave in Paris and enough in your pocket for a bottle and a girl (all it takes to be full when you're a young man at war).

At the summer's end we were sent up in support of one of the endless assaults-it was my fate to never arrive. A great German shell took a piece out of my thigh. Piece? Hell! You could have made a Sunday roast of it. I was near a year in hospital; twice I had to fight off the sawbones who would have just had it off. But in the summer of '19 I was judged fit (enough) and released.

I took my discharge and back pay in England; it was in my mind to visit Ireland, to meet my cousins and to see the land of my people. By the time myself and my crutch came to the Valley of Knockanure, the home of my ancestors, rebellion was stalking the hills. Britain had again reneged on Home Rule and the rebels, though thin on the ground and ill equipped, had wide support, especially in the country. I holed up on the farm of my father's brother's wife's...oh hell, some cousin.

The valley was a lush pasture, river cut between high ridges, overlooked by a high moorland. The village, resting on a knob halfway up one slope, had a single graveled street lined with shops, pubs, and a few houses. It was straight out of one of those litho books you see in the States, "Irish Country Scenes". The street was the post road, it ran up the valley and over the pass and down to the ocean.

Seemed everyone in miles was "some cousin" or another and I could not keep track of which was who or who was which. I idled the summer in regaining my strength and learning of the land and people. One of those people was Molly, some cousin or another of mother's folk. She was a red head and tall, creamy skin and a face full of freckles, blue eyes you could swim in, and legs that could walk me to exhaustion. And as it turned, out the friendliest thighs since Maeve, or Bridgit, or whoever it was in the old stories.

She was sixteen that summer, grown beyond my years, a practical woman who had set her sights on the "American Cousin", no plowboy with straw in his hair for her. She was kind and giving in her caring, but she could be quite harsh in turn-at times her tongue had an edge sharp enough to shave. We walked the hills and the valley in the weather, sunny or soft (Irish for rain) and talked of my home and hers (she had a bit of a cottage and land from her gran). Generations of foreign occupation and wrack rents had left their mark, she was a gentle, loving woman with an overriding fear of her descendants living as she had, it left a hard veneer on her heart. Sometimes the talk would turn to my war and the one coming. She thought the lads in the hills fools to think they could face the British Army, mere boys with no training or decent arms and I had to agree. Fools!

We would take a basket and a blanket, much the scandal and talk of valley were we. But Molly, always tall and proud, would take me up into the hills, for my leg she would say and there we would walk and talk, take a lunch and spread our blanket, and there she would take me. I thought I had learned something of life and women in France but I learned better (and more) there in those hills.

In the autumn of that year she took me to her cott, to show me her land, she said, and tell me of the future (I didn't know we had one). I began to plan my escape; it would have to be a dark night and I quick, but I wasn't sure my heart was in it. My strength returned, she set me to mending the cott, "Idle hands..."she would intone, but she sweetened the dose and played me like a trout. Before winter I had learned to lay thatch and had whitewashed the walls. Molly had scrubbed the flags and cleaned the chimney, the winter saw smoke rising from the cott.

Over the winter I built a new door, reglazed the windows and repaired the shutters. I added a fence for her garden to be, and in the village I heard talk of a "Scott's marriage"- the priest was eyeing me strange.

The spring saw her settled in her home. I'd dismantled, refinished and moved her bedstead. I had labored to move her and all her "treasure". But now I seemed to be unwelcome, she had decided, she said, "If none will have me, I'll live on my own." To my confusion I'd been given the edge her tongue-"...and who did I think I was to shame a defenseless spinster?" Defenseless??.

I took to spending my afternoons in the pub, a couple pints, talk in the afternoon, a song or two and more talk. Fenian songs (the last failed rebellion) and talk of the "Lads" on the run- out from Dublin or Cork with the Tans behind them, the countrymen would hide them but few could risk joining. There was a dozen or so of the local boys up in the hills playing at the patriot game but there were more boys than guns (they had to take turns) and near no ammunition- a fools game.

As spring warmed myself and the others, we took to taking our ease on the benches outside the pub. There was a view of the valley; you could follow the road with your eye all the way to the pass. I would look out on Molly's place and wonder what I had done. From the old men I learned- and not without a bit of an eye from them- that a Scott's marriage is " a year certain, and no stain on a girls character, >less God's Will made a child and then for life".

The spring of 1920 saw an increase in the "Troubles" and an increasing presence, there in the west, by the Tans, the worst of the Brits. We heard talk of farms burnt and women raped before their families, on the rumor of aid to the rebels. The rebels were active back in the mountains and the authorities took to moving in convoys, an army escort in Rolls Royce armored cars.

I was sitting, one sunny afternoon, as had become my habit, on the bench outside the pub when a convoy passed; the army was sending men up into the hills to clear the rebels. The scene comes to my mind today as if it were yesterday. The RIC sergeant and one of his constables had stopped for a pint (and I suppose to keep the peace), a couple old men, a one legged veteran on a crutch, a Dalton, I thought, and myself there outside the pub. As the trucks passed by and the old men wished them bad cess, Dalton muttered that it was an ill day for them, the constable was looking the other way, Dalton took from his coat an old pair of army field glasses. After near a year among them, I was still, to these men, "the fair stranger", there was something up but I was not privy to it.

All eyes were on the convoy, and more gathered, as it sped away, silence hung over the street. Then, in the distance, the trucks stopped, smoke puffing from the Lewis guns atop the armored cars-three, maybe four seconds, then came the ripping sound of the machine guns. I heard a murmur-"Damn! The mine didn't work."

In the distance I could see a familiar sight - truckloads of regulars, unloading, forming up as skirmishers and advancing up the hillside. Mere specks they were to me, but the old veteran had stepped out in the street, leaning on his crutch and raising his glasses. He began a monologue.

"The lads are firing, there's a Tommie down, another..."

I heard again the rip of the Lewis guns, the armored cars had moved away from the trucks to cover the flanks of the infantry. The sergeant and his constable were examining the greengrocer's goods, their backs to the scene.

From the crutch came "...the lads are up now. They're off and up the hill. The bastards are pressing them on the left..."

The infantry was trying to push them back towards the road. I could hear the scattering of rifle fire as the soldiers sought the boys in the moor.

About then a car came rushing into the street stopping at the post office, the only telephone in town. An officer rushed in the door, reinforcements, no doubt. At the pub we watched the hill, quiet now, the lads were out of our sight and seemed lost to the soldiers also, the skirmish line was scattered and the men were wandering, searching I suppose for some sign.

We sat in quite tension; the young officer paced and watched the road. They were his men up on the hill, his responsibility, in a way, though younger than most of them, they were his children and in harms way. The constables were still down the road about some officious errand. The old men sat, glasses in hand and waited, it was their sons or grandsons up there. Dalton stood his ground in the center of the street.

It must have been an hour or more when we heard them coming up the valley road, five, no, near ten trucks, loaded with Tans. They came though the village without slowing, Dalton barely dodged the lead, jeering and shouting. One tossed a Mills bomb-a grenade- at the old men, Thank God, he was too drunk to have pulled the pin-it disappeared.

The young regular was back in his car and off after them. There'd be real hell if the Tans got out on their own. The regulars must have flushed one of the lads at that point or perhaps he just tired of hiding, but we heard firing again.

"He's up and running, up by the knob, it's McBride, I think. He's down--no, he's up--they're onto him--bloody fucking pommies--shitecrist, it's an ambush--they've three - no four of the bastards down. It was the Dalton boys, I think."-A touch of pride, I thought, or perhaps envy.

I could see the trucks of Tans, unloading and milling about, forming up and moving up the hill. The Lewis guns were at it again, trying to flush the boys. There were some four or five hundred men on the hill, Christ's breathe, what a waste. Six boys and five guns, perhaps twenty rounds between them, that little ambush must have been the end of it for them.

"They've flushed'em! Oh God, that was McBride..."

The ripple of rifle fire joined the ripping of the Lewis guns.

"...There's Pat's boy, he's in the tarn, they can't see him - Holy Mary, they're on him--Oh! God's Love-they're using the bayonets, just shoot him, Dammit..."

Without the glasses all we could see were little black specks skittering about the hill. One here pursued by a swarm, one there behind a rock, safe for a moment. Two runners absorbed into a swarm.

"... Its the Dalton lads! They've one down, a Tan--they're on him now-Oh! For the Love of Mary- the Daltons are gone..."

The firing died, the specks wandered, searching, counting the casualties, seeking stragglers, the lad behind the rock was still there, the prayers were a physical presence. Then in the quiet there came one shot and he was gone.

"That was Hugh's boy." came from Dalton and he hobbled off.

We sat in silence, watched the soldiers collecting the bodies, loading the bodies-Irish or English is all the same in death. Finally the soldiers were off, later I heard it cost them two dead and three in hospital. But the Tans were with us; two truckloads came into town, burst into the public bar and bullied the landlord. They were looking for trouble, any excuse or none to burn him out. Up the valley we could see the other trucks spreading out. Someone would pay, it would be a night best forgotten in the valley.

I rose, leaning on my stick more than I had any need- the Tans were eyeing me.

"A hot days work", said I in my best Yankee, "have one for me."

I walked off, the stares of the old men stabbing my back- well; it'd do me no good to be put down by the Tans. I had concerns of my own; I made my way back to the farm, to my rooms; it would not be a night to be about.

While on the road I watched the valley, already there was smoke. First, I think, was the Dalton place. But then I saw my fear, the old McBride place was in flame, it had been Molly's twin up on that hill. That I had known and so it seemed did the Tans. I was in my room in a flash- the stick was a habit these last months and not a need. I was a Yank, and out of my bag came my Army Colt and spare magazines. Then I was off down the hill, Mary's place was in the bottoms, good land and not too far.

Not far but it seemed forever before I was at the gate- the cott was aflame-damn all, I had sweat over that thing. But where was Molly? There! There were three of them; they had her stripped. God, she had put on a gut. Strange what comes to you in a rush, but striped or no she was giving them hell. They had her cornered in the garden, laughing at her, knowing they would take her when they wished. It hit me then, her belly-the talk and stares in the village, why is it the father is always the last to know?

God's breath, I felt dumb. Dumber than dumb! Then it was anger-cold, dark anger. I stepped into the gate-built with my hands only a few months before- and raising the Colt, I murdered them. Three shots, three dead.

Molly looked at me, "You took your time," said she, as she stepped over the closest, "I near thought I'd have to do them m'self."

Then she fell into my arms weeping, I carried her near the house (damn near had to drag her, she was no wee lass), laid her down and covered her with my coat.

"Dammit, girl, why didn't you tell me!"

" You're an idiot, you great lummox, and why'd you never ask? What did you think we were doing? Playing at hurley? What'll I ever do with you?"

"Marry me", spoke I, "now, tonight." It's decisive I am, at least after I've been struck about the head three or a hundred times. "We must be off tonight. What with those boyo's in the garden we'll be worth damnall here."

We roused out the priest, we arrived with her in naught but my jacket (showed her legs off nice but I don't think the good father approved). He asked only why I had waited so long, that we shouldn't have to hurry so. Molly's gown was a sheet from his bed, our witnesses, the old housekeeper and Dalton (he seemed to be ever on the spot), who cursed me for a fool and an idiot. You'd have thought him Molly's brother instead of just "some cousin".

The deed done we were stuffed in a bolthole under the altar. We dozed our honeymoon wrapped in the priest's sheet. That night one of the ladies of the Altar Society brought Molly a shift and a dress and brogues for both of us. Another night and Dalton came with food and directions; we were wanted now and on the run.

Our son was born in a "skalp", a sort of dugout up in the mountains. I carried him out into the sun one cold winter morn, to show him the world he would one day own. That first winter was a hard one, on the run, one step ahead of the Tans. Molly got the first of what we had, but there were times young Pat and I fought for her breast, no, that's a lie. I always gave him firsts, but more than once I supped on his leftovers-Sweet Molly.

It was more than a year-nearer two- before we came down out of those hills. We had worked at revolution, I was made a captain, at least the lads had better training, and Molly set to tending the hurt. At least we lost only a few more.

We survived, defeated the British, near defeated ourselves in the civil war and finally Molly, Pat and I came back to the valley, to the ruins of her home. We stood and looked on her estate- tumbled walls, weed-grown garden. She stood and cried, I calculated the cost, and little Pat just played in the dust. I started at a rumble in the lane, turning I saw Dalton of the crutch on the step of a lorry. It was a load of stone for the walls and, behind it, a line of men. That night we slept under the stars but the next we had a roof, an old tarp but it was on our rafters.