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FERMOY, CO.CORK
IRELAND



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THE BEGINNING


The fight for freedom was to take on a terrible new dimension.Liam Lynch was forming his first Brigade Flying Column who were going to carry the fight to the enemy in a professional way but on that brisk September morning in 1920 ,on the driveway outside Mrs.Hickey's house in Badgers Hill in Glenville all was quite and peaceful. Late flowering were in evidence all around and cattle grazed contented in the fields nearby.The men who formed up in rank knew they were taking on a rough task, a task in which failure could only mean an early death.But they were men with a great deal of experience in volunteer activities and and had been preparing for this moment for years.The men lined up in front of Ernie O'Malley then a G.H.Q.Staff Captain and already a living legend in the fight. He was in charge of training and he ran his eyes over their keen faces. All the men present were officers from Millstreet, Kanturk, Charleville, Castletownroche, Newmarket and Fermoy.


Matt Flood

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.





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