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CAPTURE

'I was captured two days before Lynch was killed. There would be generally big round-ups. They'd bring Free State troops from Midelton, Cork, Fermoy and Mitchelstown and they'd surround Araglen. This evening anyway, they came out there in a snow storm. Bill Desmond and myself knew where the Column was going, but the snow got very thick so about four in the morning we reached a house. I don't know who suggested it but we decided to stop there for a couple of hours. It was up in Black, over Ballyduff, Guinevans were the name of the people, anyway. We didn't go to bed or anything. We were wet from the snow so we took off our boots, sat at the fire and changed our socks. The woman of the house was sick and I left the guns hidden in the yard.

'We were sitting at the fire when those fellows walked in the door, with snow on them, and they were Free Staters. When they came in, anyway, I said "We got up to milk the cows ". That was alright, but one of the lads was a Fermoy fellow who recognised me and gave the game away on us. Well, we weren't treated too bad at all when we were captured but they did threaten to shoot us up against a wall. That was because we wouldn't tell them where the machine guns were. They weren't too far from them at the time but they didn't know that. They were almost standind on them in that yard.They were hidden under a heap of furze bushes; you know they used furze for manure at that time. Well they put us up against the gable end wall but I knew from all the tricking the officer had with the gun, the safety catch was on, and that he had no intention of firing. There were about 15 in the party. Then we were marched down to a spot outside Mahony's pub in Araglen.

'We were caught accidently. They missed their way and came down where this boreen where the house was. The snow now was fairly thick that morning and you knnow that in March 1923 there was a fairly severe storm. They probably lost their way on the road and turned down the boreen.

'Anyway we were taken down to this Commandant who was in charge of them. He was a Commandant McGrath from Dublin and he interrogated us individually. There was another named Russell and of course Paddy Daly, he was after leaving us and joining the Free State. That was the crowd that interrogated us anyway outside Mahony's pub, in Araglen. There was several lorries and a couple of armoured cars there. We were brought back to fermoy by the Fermoy bunch and up to the old detention block in the barracks that we knew so well. The part had not been burnt at all. After a stay of one night we were shifted to Cork in an old armoured truck and taken to the county Gaol. But that was full so we were sent onto the Female Gaol in Sunday's Well and sure weren't there about 200 I.R.A. fellows in that gaol too.