Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi all,
Vanilla are planning an update to the site on April 24th (next Wednesday). It is a major PHP8 update which is expected to boost performance across the site. The site will be down from 7pm and it is expected to take about an hour to complete. We appreciate your patience during the update.
Thanks all.
Vanilla are planning an update to the site on April 24th (next Wednesday). It is a major PHP8 update which is expected to boost performance across the site. The site will be down from 7pm and it is expected to take about an hour to complete. We appreciate your patience during the update.
Thanks all.
New evidence on Collins' killing
Options
-
27-10-2010 11:06pm#1
Comments
-
-
My granfather was at Béal na mBláth that day but had left before the ambush happened. It is well known who shot Collins and exactly how it happened. The shooter was Denis O'Neill who died in 1950. O'Neill had been a sniper in the British army in WW1. I have visited the site and it was not a very difficult shot for a trained sniper.
This photo shows some of those involved in the ambush. It was taken on the steps of Macroom castle shortly before it was abandoned to the Free State Army on 18th August 1922. My granfather Dan Joe McSweeney is in the middle row with the trilby.0 -
-
-
velopeloton wrote: »My granfather was at Béal na mBláth that day but had left before the ambush happened. It is well known who shot Collins and exactly how it happened. The shooter was Denis O'Neill who died in 1950. O'Neill had been a sniper in the British army in WW1. I have visited the site and it was not a very difficult shot for a trained sniper.
This photo shows some of those involved in the ambush. It was taken on the steps of Macroom castle shortly before it was abandoned to the Free State Army on 18th August 1922. My granfather Dan Joe McSweeney is in the middle row with the trilby.
That is a very interesting photo and thank you for posting it. Do you know any of the other people in this photo?
What is said locally about how it happened? Was it a deliberate shot or was it just chance - even from a trained marksman?
Collins cap, after the ambush, was taken away and buried, only to be dug up again. Does anyone locally say anything about this?
Also, did you grand-father ever say if DeValera was at Sams Cross on the previous night or is this just theory?
D.0 -
Advertisement
-
I can't answer all your questions. My grandfather was from Macroom, but I am from Cavan so am only an occasional visitor there. He had died before I was born so what I know of it I was told by his brother who died in 1995.That is a very interesting photo and thank you for posting it. Do you know any of the other people in this photo?
What is said locally about how it happened? Was it a deliberate shot or was it just chance - even from a trained marksman?
Collins cap, after the ambush, was taken away and buried, only to be dug up again. Does anyone locally say anything about this?
Also, did you grand-father ever say if DeValera was at Sams Cross on the previous night or is this just theory?
D.
The man in the front middle with the cigarette was known as "Major Looney" but I think this is a nickname rather than a rank. The man on the front right is John Lordan who was a veteran of many of the west cork fights including Kilmichael & Crossbarry. The woman on the right in the middle is Mary Mullins.
O'Neill only fired 3 or 4 times during the fight, 1 shot knocked the hat of a free state solider and the last shot he fired knocked a Free State officer to the ground, which turned out to be Michael Collins, but they did not know this until early the next day. By that time it was almost dark and there is no way that O'Neill could have recognised Collins. Also I don't know if O'Neill had ever seen Collins or would have recognised him even in good light.
Collins hat was not mentioned but I believe it is in the National Museum.
After the volunteers left Macroom on 18th August they went to Ballyvourney where other volunteers from Cork city and from Limerick had retreated in front of the Free State Army. A meeting was organised for Beal na Blath on the morning of 22nd August. A large group of IRA marched over night in pouring rain the 35 miles to Beal na Blath from Ballyvourney and arrived there about 9am just a few minutes after the Collins group had gone through. 1 of the men to march from Ballyvourney was DeVelera. When they arrived the IRA who were already there were discussing ambushing Collins if he returned that way. The story passed down through our family is that Dev was "absolutely opposed" to making any attacked on Collins. Having failed to dissuade those intent on setting an ambush DeVelera along with 5 or 6 others including my grandfather left Beal na Blath and walked to Mourne Abbey near Mallow, where they were by the time the ambush took place. My grandfather went along as a bodyguard for Dev as he was knowledgeable with the local countryside and roads (which were swarming with Free State troops) and also as to the safest place to cross the Lee. So no Dev was most certainly not at Sams Cross.
My grand father was later arrested in Crookstown and interned in the Curragh where he spent 43 days on hunger strike before being released in late 1923.
This photo is taken from where O'Neill was laying on an earthen bank. I have indicated with an arrow the approximate position of Collins. It has to be remembered that the layout of the road was altered in later years when it was widened and straightened so it is possible that it may have been a few meters closer than the current road.
0 -
-
-
My grand uncle said that Sonny O'Neill was behind the earthen bank on Foley's Lane beside the armoured car and behind Collins. He was not there but had heard the stories many times from his brother and other IRA men from the area. I am sure there are many other accounts.
Another thing that I also find interesting is where you place Sonny O'Neill during the ambush.
I had always believed that he lay at the bank of the laneway that is parallel to the main road. If I am correct looking at your image, you put him at the bank of the laneway perpendicular to the main road. This would have placed him as a very easy target for the freestate soldiers but an ideal spot to snipe from (on the flank, away from enemy fire). This would explain the small number of shots he fired. Was it your grand-uncle that told you this?
Regarding Collins cap, it is widely believed that the cap in the museum is not the one that Collins wore that day. I think Tim Pat Coogan mentions this in his book also.
Regards,
D.
As I understand it when the ambush was called off, O'Neill like others left the area. He was some distance away at a farmhouse when he heard the first shots. He crossed a field and took-up the position that the photo is taken from. He would have been well protected by the high earth bank that he was on and also by bushes between him and the road. I think that he would have been in a better position than those on the parallel road. I think that that may have been his original position. As there was a lot of shooting from different directions and O'Neill was on his own by Foley's Lane it is probable that the Free State troops where not even aware he was there or that he fired the shot. None of the troops gave accounts of fire having come from there. Again O'Neills training as a sniper may have helped him to get into position unnoticed. The thing that would have been the most danger to him was the armoured car had the guns not been jammed and had they been aware of his presence.
This photo taken from the same position is looking towards the road where the armoured car was approximately in the same position as my car but facing the opposite direction. I was standing on the earthen bank. Had I been laying down I would have been well covered, behind most of the enemy who were concentrating on the heavy fire from their front. I would have an elevated position with a good view of the enemy and been near enough to them to take some good shots and have a good route for retreat if needed. It was an excellent position.
This one is taken from the road looking up the laneway. You can see the earthen bank which he lay on with the field behind it. He was just the other side of the yellow whin bush.
In this picture you can see the farm on the hill beyond Collins position. Just before Collins was shot some new fire was directed on the Free State troops by some volunteers who had returned to the ambush site. Collins had be firing on the parallel road and upon receiving this new fire from his right he stood up and turned to his right to fire at them and put himself right in the sights of O'Neills rifle who took an easy shot. Collins was hit in the back of his head on the right hand side so the geometry of the shot is right for O'Neill to have been at the position indicated. It is no surprise that some of his own troops behind him came under suspicion and the IRA were in no hurry to publicise the fact that O'Neill had fired the fatal shot from behind.
On a different issue I think it a national disgrace that this site is not preserved as a national monument and that Cork County Council are allowing development in the ambush site (as seen in these photos) beggars belief.0 -
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
There was a saga about any memorial to Michael Collins and even stipulations surrounding his gravestone in Glasnevin , however, you have to take into account that his family have not gone down the memorial route -not yet anyway.
It is a matter of record that for years Johnny Collins, a civil servant, and thus very much at de Valera's mercy, strove unsuccessfully to have a fitting memorial erected over his brother, who, as the first Com-mander-in-Chief of the Irish Army, lay in a military grave. Again McGrath had offered to fund this, but the family insisted on paying for the memorial themselves. Finally, de Valera called Johnny in and stipulated that the cost of the memorial should not exceed £300, and it should be in limestone, not marble. He prescribed a formula of words he wanted used on the cross and ordered that there be no English on the front of it. The cemetery records show, that, on July 31st, 1939, a few weeks before the world went to war, Taoiseach de Valera took time out to sign personally the certificate of authorisation for the design and erection of the memorial cross over his old adversary.
What the certification does not show is the fact that de Valera forbade Johnny to allow attendance at the dedication ceremony, either by the press, the public, or by any member of the Collins family apart from Johnny himself. Only the officiating priest and an altar boy were permitted to be present. Had an out-raged off-duty gravedigger, who tended Collins's grave, not accidentally come across the melancholy little ceremony and hailed a passing tourist with a camera, there would have been no pictorial record of Johnny standing alone, apart from the gravedigger, at his famous brother's graveside. It was published, for the first time, in my biography of Collins. Before leaving the attitudes issue, let me place on public record for the first time another incident from 1966 which indicates that the turning down of McGrath's foundation approach was not an aberration, but an accurate indication of deValera's mindset towards Collins. It was described to me by Gene Foley, a member of President Kennedy's cabinet, whom I interviewed in Washington in March 1997. I still have my reporter's note-book containing the record of our conversation
http://www.generalmichaelcollins.com/Photos_Reports_Stories/Stories_Research_Reports/Begrudging_deValera.html.0 -
Advertisement