To fight the RIC, Collins used the IRA flying columns-small but highly mobile guerrilla groups of poorly armed men, usually no more than 30. On April 20, 1919, the IRA staged its first raid on an RIC barrack, seizing rifles and ammunition. During the next few months, the IRA intensified its attacks on the RIC. As a result, some of the smaller RIC barracks were closed and the troops were transferred to larger barracks in the cities and towns. To fight G Division, in July 1919 Collins organized a small group of young volunteers assigned to the IRA’s Intelligence Department, known simply as the Squad, whose mission was to assassinate detectives and other British spies. The Squad usually gave potential targets a warning and, if they responded by performing their duties less zealously, they were spared. Those who failed to heed the warning were usually killed. The Squad’s first victim was Sergeant Patrick Smith, who had ignored several warnings before being killed on July 30, 1919. The British responded by becoming even more repressive. They banned Sinn Fein in August 1919, and outlawed the Irish Parliament the following month. As a result, the Dail only met once in the next year. On September 12, Dublin Police sacked Sinn Fein headquarters. Collins, who was present at the time, escaped when the police did not recognize him. Unwilling to let the raid go unavenged, Collins ordered the Squad to kill one of its leaders, Detective Daniel Hoey, that very same night. As a result of the IRA attacks, many RIC and DMP members took early retirement, while many others became visibly unenthusiastic in performing their duties. In addition, RIC recruitment plummeted. In an effort to restore order, the British sent in reinforcements from England. The first unit, which would become known as the Black and Tans, arrived in Ireland on March 25, 1920. In September 1920, the British sent additional 1,500 veteran British army officers, known as Auxiliary Cadets or Auxies, to help the Black and Tans in the guerrilla war. Although precise numbers are hard to determine, most historians agree that even at the height of the Black and Tan War, the IRA had only about ,3000 active members fighting more than 50,000 British soldiers, 15,000 Black and Tans, 10,000 RIC and 1,500 Auxiliaries. Moreover, even in County Cork, which was probably the IRA’s strongest area, the IRA only had about 300 active members fighting more than 12,500 British troops (about 11,000 soldiers, 1,150 Black and Tans, and 540 Auxies.) One of the things that caused the British to fear Collins the most was the relentlessness and success with which he tracked down his enemies. For example, when the Irish were being rounded up at the end of the Easter Rebellion, Collins saw one of the British officers, Lea Wilson, mistreated several of the prisoners, including its eldest leader, 58-year-old Thomas Clarke. Collins remembered the incident and swore to avenge it. In June 1920, more than four years after the rising, Collins learned that Wilson was working as an RIC district inspector in Gorey, a small town in County Wexford. On June 15, Collins had Wilson killed. Another RIC district commissioner, Ferguson Smyth, had advocated a shoot-on-sight policy against the IRA. Commissioner Smith was tracked down and killed by the IRA on July 18. When the Lord Mayor of Cork, Tomas MacCurtain-who was also the leader of Cork No. 1 Brigade of the IRA-was killed by the British on March 20, 1920, Collins learned that RIC District Inspector Oswald Ross Swanzy was one of those responsible. The British, in an effort to protect Swanzy from IRA reprisals, transferred Swanzy from Cork, which is in the southernmost part of Ireland, to Lisburn in the north. However, Collins’s vast intelligence network was able to track Swanzy down and a special hit team was dispatched to kill him. They achieved their objective on August 22, as Swanzy was coming out of church. The single most devastating attack on the British occurred on November 21, 1920. Late in the year, the British sent numerous secret service agents to Dublin in an attempt to infiltrate the IRA high command and to kill or capture Collins. Those agents became known as the Cairo gang because they had previously been working in Cairo, Egypt (another story is that they got their name because they hung out at the Cairo Caf in Dublin). Because of his own intelligence network, Collins learned about the plot and he was able to identify many of the agents. Once they were identified, Collins launched a preemptive strike. On the morning of Sunday, November 21, the Squad attacked simultaneously throughout Dublin and, according to differing accounts, assassinated at least 13 and possibly as many as 20 British spies or soldiers. One of those who participated in the killings was Sean Lemass, who would later become Prime Minister of Ireland. In retaliation, the British drove to a Gaelic football match at Croke Park in Dublin later that day and fired into the crowd, killing 13 fans and one player. The days’ events would forever be remembered in Irish history as Bloody Sunday. Collins would later write of it that: ‘for myself, my conscience is clear. There is no crime in detecting and destroying, in wartime, the spy and the informer. They have destroyed without trial. I have paid them back in their own coin.’

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Military History magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to