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ATTACK ON MALLOW BARRACKS

Matt's first real action came in the attack on Mallow military barracks where the Active Service Unit really showed its teeth. It occurred on the 28th September just 13 days since that morning the A.S.U. first paraded.'We were in the Mallow Town Hall the night before and we stretched out on the floor for the night. We were armed with revolvers and there were a few rifles brought in too. I don't know if you ever heard this story. They were covering the R.I.C. barracks on the road up from the Town Hall. There were four lads there and they had rifles in case the police came out, well, an R.I.C.man came out and he walked down the street and your man had him covered, and he was saying to himself, I'll let him come another few paces... I'll let him come another few paces, and all the time he had taken the first pressure on the trigger. All he had to do then was to restrain the breathing,take second pressure and the man was dead. Well when he was about to do it, yer man did an about-turn, walked back and into the barracks. He came out on more. What ever it was he forgot, saved his life. Of course it might have upset other things too, the lad firing a shot'.

'Paddy McCarthy, who was later killed, and who earlier had escaped from Stangeways Prison in Manchester, volunteered to go in to the barracks with Dick Willis and Jackie Bolster at eight o'clock in the morning as an over-seer or clerk of works or what ever you'd like to call him. So you had three I.R.A. men working around the guard room. Bolster was a carpenter,Willie a painter and they both worked in the barracks. Of course it would never have been suspected that they planned it.

'Well they went in that morning and about nine,the Lancers came out to exercise their horses and that was the signal for the Column. We moved in then. You know where the park is in Mallow on the bank of the river,near the Athletic Grounds. We went out the back of the Town Hall, along the back of some houses,and there was a little lane running up to the barracks,so we went up there. Ernie knocked at the wicket and handed in a letter. When the sentry looked at the letter he put dowm his hand and put on the safety catch on his rifle. Then we all rushed in. Lynch was making to be in first but someone gave him a shoulder so that he was about fourth in. I'd say Paddy O'Brien was about the first. I could see Paddy O'Brien was about the first case of "hands-up" then to the guards as the three lads already inside, drew their revolvers.

'There was a Sergeant Gibbs there and he was only Catholic in the garrison, this is the queer part of it now. The Officer had gone out and he was the senior N.C.O. He was supervising the shoeing of a horse just on the left as we came through the gate... and when he got the word "Hands up" he made a dash for the guard room. He knew the machine guns and rifles were there. He was told to stop and there was a shot fired at him. Now I'd say the that the fallow that fired it ment to fire it low, to hit him on the leg, but your man dived for cover and was hit in the wrong place anyway. He lived only about fifteen minutes. The rest surrenderd then and it was only a case of wallking inand collecting all we could take, ammunition, lances, rifles, machineguns. It was a terror to see motor-cars going out of town with those long lances sticking out of them. I don't what they did with them, they must have dumped them on the road somewhere. Well that night we stayed in ballyclough, there's a big creamery there, on the way to Kanturk. The caper at that time with the British by way of reprisal was to attack a creamery and Lynch thought they'd do Ballyclough. But that night we saw flames over Mallow. They brought in troops from Cork and Fermoy and left them run amok. You know the Lancers in Mallow said we could never use the Hotchkiss machine guns we captured for there was no one who had training on them. But a funny thing was that when I was in France I was in a town called Etaps on a special course when some Lancers arrived there and I was fooling around with them one afternoon when we had nothing to do. These fellows were training on stripping and assembling a Hotchkiss gun. That was the first time I had ever seen one. I knew they were in armoured cars alright and out of curiosity this fellow said to, seeing the crossed Guns of the Machine Gun Corps on our lapels, "Oh , you're a Machine Gunner too?" I said "I am", and he said "This thing would be easy for you so", then he showed me.

'Well I took the lesson, never thinking that I was going to see a Hotchkiss again. Little did I think I would have to instruct the lads on using the only two Hotchkiss guns in the Brigade. I was trying to remember what I had learned in those couple of hours way back in 1916 in France and between my little bit of information and the lads own intelligence we succeeded and we were ready to them at an ambush in Ballydrochane seven or eight days later.'