Kilgobinet Landmine, July 1921

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

MOD: I'm opening a separate thread on this, as I think there might be a decent discussion here. On that note, it must absolutely be kept historical and about this specific incident, I don't want to see a single sentence that refers to anything or anyone else.



I would like to show this PhD Thesis which on page 232 proves that civilians were killed not IRA, some IRA forced civilians to dig the trench. Some IRA were injured in the blast alright.

https://ulir.ul.ie/bitstream/handle/10344/5397/ORuairc_2014_anglo.pdf?sequence=6

You have shifted the goalposts. Your initial claim was that the IRA forced civilians to work at gunpoint.
The link you give is not as explicit as you claim and in it reference to Kilgobinet is heavily qualified. Furthermore, nowhere is it stated that the civilians were forced to ‘work at gunpoint’.
Your source states-

Sometime during the night of 8 July, or the morning of 9 July, a handful of local IRA volunteers from H Company 1st Battalion of the IRA’s Waterford No. 2 Brigade began work to re-open the trench. The IRA were assisted in this task by a large group of local civilians. (It is unclear whether these civilians were republican sympathizers who willingly assisted the IRA or were unwilling participants who had been forced to cooperate.) The attempt to reopen the trench set off a booby trap which had been set by members of the Royal East Kent Regiment.

The PhD document is accurate because the ‘unwilling participants’ bit has always been questionable. In all the BMH statements it arises from just one single SOURCE, an ambiguous statement that suggests the civilians were ‘commandeered’ but then calls them ‘helpers’. No doubt that is where Mr. PhD obtained the info, because local historians and all other BMH records make no mention of coercion. It is generally accepted that the ‘helpers’ re-opening the trench were local IRA sympathisers brought in to help. See for example the Waterford County Museum SITE that has considerable detail on this explosion and makes no mention of ‘gunpoint’, simply stating –

Later when members of the Colligan Company I.R.A came to reopen the trench, they disturbed the mines, which exploded, killing six and wounding several others.

The monument at the site lists one of the dead as an IRA member. As one would expect in subsequent reporting (official and media) both the RIC and Army refer to all the dead as ‘rebels’; the IRA claimed that they were ‘civilians’. That is typical of the propaganda war played by both sides. The strong balance of probability and what is believed locally is that the dead were IRA supporters, civilians who assisted in re-opening the trench after it had been filled in to allow the passage of a funeral.

I never claimed no civilians were killed, I wrote about the Colligan Company of the IRA and disagreed with your claim that civilians were forced to work at gunpoint.

You even get the train of events and numbers wrong above - when the Kilgobinet ‘mine’ exploded it immediately killed two, seriously wounded 12, four of whom subsequently died.

The use of booby traps by both sides up to the Kilgobinet explosion was infrequent and not a ‘planned’ British strategy – that came later. Most at that time were very basic devices and usually were Mills grenades with the pin removed – when they were disturbed they exploded. They were not ‘defused’, they were made safe by replacing the pin, as was done months later at a bridge in Cork. Later again the IRA used more appropriate material, such as guncotton at the warehouse in Cork when both troops and Auxiliaries were killed.

At the date of the Kilgobinet explosion neutralising booby traps was not widespread. Frequency of booby trap use (and making them safe) happened later in the WoI and was usually limited to IRA members mainly with city backgrounds and who had been engineering students at university. Michael O’Donoghue from Cork was one, another Corkman (O’Kennedy?) was an MSc who showed how to make bombs. The IRA generally did not randomly use booby traps, their devices were controlled by wire to prevent alienation of the civilian population through inadvertent deaths.

Your assertion of an IRA man at Kilgobinet ‘defusing’ a booby trap while being watched by an attendant company of volunteers and civilians is absurd because it is totally without foundation and not based on any historical fact.