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CIVIL WAR

'The fighting built up. Our headquarters was in Araglen and when we'd want a rest, we'd retreat therefore a few weeks. We often met Lynch there and we had to do guard while he rested. We used to stay all over the area and mostly when Lynch arrived he'd be going on through the Tipperary way, that was his route, and then most of the Column would move up to a place called Ballinahoun in Araglen , it was on the Tipperary side of Araglen, as you go on to Doon. Lynch generally stayed at a farmhouse owned by a people called Myles and also Donovans. Connie Donovan, who is chairman of the Liam Lynch commemoration committee, his house was often used as head-quarters too. Liam often slept there so did most of the column fellows. That was his route and I'd say that was the last route he took before he was killed'.

'The Barracks had gone by this time. The night of the burning I was with the column and we were down the Waterford side. About three o'clock in the morning a dispatch rider came in, Jim Coss, on a motor bike and he said the column were to report back to the New Barracks, Brigade Head-quarters. As we were moving back at about six in the moorning and were coming on by Tallow we could see a blaze in the Cork direction and we discovered after that it was Cork Barracks going up that night. We arrived anyway into the New Barracks at seven in the morning we got a bit of breakfast and had a rest. When we got up we were told that the Barracks were going up that night, and that we were going out with the columns. This was about the month of August 1922. It would be about the 13th or 14th the Barracks were burned.

'We moved anyway and I remember, the active service unit I was with, we were resting at the cross of Corrin, the two mile cross, when we saw the first blaze of the barracks. It was really the Fianna boys that burned it-to be honest about it. They used petrol and whisky; there was a consignment of whisky brought for the Northern Distilleries. It was captured. I don't know what you'd call it, but it was over proof whisky anyway. Strong stuff. It was stronger than the ordinary stuff. There were barrels of it above in the old the old barracks. I think some of our lads were able to tap some of the barrels and get some of it out, but most of it went up in the blaze. It added, as the fellow said, fuel to fire. That was the old barracks. There were no explosions and they used an amount of petrol. They sprinkled the petrol around and through bedding and furniture on top of it. The last thing I can remember, was one fellow who was an awful bloody man for taking shots at things. But, just as we were marching out the gate he said, "I'm going to have one bang at the clock ". So he turned around and fired three rounds through the clock in the New Barracks. So that put the clock out of action. 'Both barracks went up that night and the Aerodrome as well.'

'We were retreating in front of the Free State Forces and we were held up in different places. You'd retreat like, and then form a line and have a bang at them, and they'd fall back. It was only hit and run. The action was fair enough and hot enough in parts. I mean there was shell fire and all, in some places when the Free Staters brought in the eighten-pounders. I was going through it myself when I was down as bodyguard to Lynch; Dick Willis and myself did that in turn. I was in Carrick-on-Suir the night the Free Staters shelled it. There is a yarn that one of the gunners almost hit his own house. he lived there. it was held by the I.R.A. Dick Willis was body guard and when Dick was on leave I took over.We had a Crossly touring car and there was a four inch strip of glass taken out of the front winndow near the driver so that we could use the Thompson gun through it. Dinny Sulliva, the late bus driver,was the driver of that car. It was a grand car. I remember one night, about two in the morning , we came through not far from Lynchs home and he said to me,"Matt, if we went a few hundred yards back that way, I'd be in my own home".That was near Anglesboro.

'We were in several ambushes. At Rathcormac we held the Free Staters for half a day, a Miss Curtin was killed there when she was closing the shutters in a window. We also had a couple of ambushes around Watergrasshill, on the Cork side, Trantstown. Also a couple in Araglen.

'Dinny Lacy, a Tipperary man who always wore a hand hat, was in charge of an Active Service Unit in the open warfare , before we went into the geurilla warfare was a very humane man. It was after the capture of Urlingdord; the lads coming back from it were in old trucks, and buses and everything. Jerry Ryan and his party ambushed and there was a lad o'Dea from Mitchelstown, he was a Lewis gunner; he was killed there. Jerry Ryan and his Free State crowd ambushed the lad. The order that Lacy gave our ellows was 'Fire high lads". He didn't really want to kill. I was there and that was the order he gave. "Fire high".

'The last time I saw lynch in Araglen was about six weeks before he was killed. Moss Twomney and himself were together. They came on through Araglen from the Mallow-Glanworth side and they were going to Tipperary.