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THE BEGINNING

Matt and Margaret Flood

All of them held ranks in their battalion except the tall youth who acted as a right marker for the parade. The young man, just twenty years of age,was Matt Flood of Fermoy. In spite of his youth he had an exciting career so far,he was an expert machine gunner,had been wounded in action while fighting with the British army in Flanders and now he was on parpde with the Volunteers. Matt explained his position to me in simple terms "There was only enough arms for a certain number and it was a case of being picked out. They were nearly all officers and I suppose they picked me because I had some training.I never took rank, the only thing I was down on the list as was Machine Gunner, Brigade Machine Gunner, so I never looked for a rank. Still, with all that I was recognised all the time, unoffically of course, as an officer. Even when I went up for the pension, years later,they asked me what I was and I said,'Just a volunteer'.I suppose I would have done better financially if I said 'An Officer'.

It was September,a time of year that was always exciting for Matt Flood. He was wounded in France in September 1916, joined the Irish Volunteers in September 1917, took part in the Arms attack near the Fermoy Wesleyan Church in September 1919 and now became a member of the elite Brigade Flying Column in September 1920. Matt was to have a long active career,but let us switch back in time to his school days in Fermoy, when it all started.

The Flood family lived only about fifty yards from the gateway of the New or West Barracks in Fermoy. In those years British Military Might was at its highest and the Empire was a great sweeping mass of countries on which it was said,'The Sun Never Set'. His father was a scaffolder and Matt attended Barrack Hill School where Jim Hackett was headmaster. In his hours of play on the streets near his home he was always conscios of military activity in the two great military barracks that flanked the hill. But still Matt joined the Fianna Boy Scouts where he met Paddy O'Shea, who was Officer in Command. The second in command was a postman, Jim Nutley, and even though at that time there was a troop of Baden Powell Scouts in the town, the boys on the hill wanted to have something in opposition to them. When the early Summer came round the happy little band went on hikes around the beautiful countryside near the town. Carrying home-made hoversacks and water bottles they marched to Castlelyons, Rathcormac and Glanworth.

In the long evenings one of their great entertainments was a visit to an old shed, at the bottom of Princes (Connolly) Street, where Paddy O'Shea had a make-shift cinema and gave magic lantern shows twice a week. For boys of ten or eleven it implanted exciting dreams in their fertile minds. The years went happily by Matt left school at fourteen. When he was apprenticed as an Iron Moulder at an Iron Works, that stood where Cavanagh's Garage is now built and an Uncle of Paddy O'Shea. It was a guelling job, diry and monotonous and Matt was not to stick ot for long.