hand while Dalton produced his revolver, saying ‘Hands up, gentlemen please.’ The governor and his colleagues were so shocked they did not immediately comply. Leonard addressed them more forcefully. ‘Put up your f…ing hands.’ The three raised their hands and the Governor was so astonished at this turn of events that his monocle fell from his eye, and broke on his desk. It was one of those details that stayed engraved in Dalton’s memory. Dalton told Leonard to tie up the three men. Leonard asked with what should he tie them up. Dalton said to take their handkerchiefs and tie their hands behind their back. Leonard proceeded to do so. Dalton’s idea was that he would put his head out the door and ask for MacEoin to be sent to the Governor’s office immediately. Just then, they were startled to hear the sound of gunfire.
Mingling with a large crowd of people waiting outside the prison to visit relatives were members of a second section of the rescue group – Frank Bolster, Tom Walsh, and Cumann na mBan member Áine Malone, who carried a prisoner’s parcel.42 When the wicket gate was opened to allow the parcel to pass through, Bolster and Walsh drew revolvers and grabbed the gate-keeper’s keys. They then opened the main gate, to facilitate the escape of the party inside the jail. A sentry on the roof saw the commotion and fired a shot that wounded Walsh in the hand, thus raising the alarm. Before the sentry could fire again, Tom Keogh shot him dead from inside the courtyard with a Mauser C96 ‘Peter the Painter’ pistol. The soldier’s rifle fell to the ground and was picked up by Bill Stapleton.
Dalton and Leonard heard the gunfire in the Governor’s office. They knew now that they had to abandon the rescue operation. In his RTÉ interview with Pádraigh Ó Raghallaigh, Dalton recalled turning to Leonard and saying, ‘Let’s get out of here.’ They managed to lock their captives into the office as they emerged into a corridor full of Auxiliaries and warders milling around, clearly on full alert due to the gunfire. Dalton murmured to Leonard, ‘For God’s sake, don’t run.’ They walked out into the yard where Pat McCrea was ready to drive off. McCrea was relieved to see them but disappointed that MacEoin was not with them. McCrea recalled that they asked, ‘Who the hell started shooting?’, and said it had spoiled the job.43 Dalton ensured that everyone was on board. Then Dalton realized there was little room for himself inside the vehicle. He and Frank Bolster sat on the outside, at the back. Dalton remained calm and said to McCrea, ‘Pat, home please’ or words to that effect – like a gentleman addressing his chauffeur. With little time to spare McCrea drove out through the front gate and down the avenue to the North Circular Road. A troop of British soldiers ran out after the vehicle but did not open fire – apparently they thought the occupants of the car were British Army personnel. The British later reported that the car, with its occupants, ‘still unrecognized as hostile, was permitted to depart’.44
The armoured car moved south down the North Circular Road. As he sat outside at the back of the vehicle, Dalton lit a cigarette. Meanwhile, the Governor, locked in his office, managed to break a window to raise the alarm, and also phoned military headquarters. Soon troops in lorries were out on the streets looking for the armoured car.45 McCrea, still at the wheel of the vehicle, drove to a rendezvous in the area of North Richmond Street, off the North Circular Road, where O’Connell School was located. Michael Lynch, the abattoir superintendent who had supplied vital intelligence for the rescue operation, was there when the armoured car arrived. He later recalled Emmet Dalton sitting on the platform at the back of the car, ‘lying back as an immaculate British officer, with his knees crossed and smoking a cigarette’.46 ‘I can never forget that moment,’ Lynch said of Dalton’s cool attitude. ‘He was completely unperturbed even though only a few moments before he had undergone an experience that would have driven most men crazy. Let me say at once that this was no pose, no bravado, but sheer unadulterated nerve.’47
Meanwhile, Paddy O’Daly arrived on a push bike with the wounded Walsh, blood streaming from his hand, hanging on the back of the bicycle. Lynch provided some emergency first aid, bandaging Walsh’s wound. As often happens in Dublin when an unusual event occurs, a crowd of children gathered. One urchin said to Lynch, ‘Hey, Sir. Give me the wounded man. I live around here and we’ll look after him.’ Lynch thought it was time that Dalton should get away from the area as quickly as possible. He asked Dalton if he was going to stay there all day. ‘No,’ Dalton replied, ‘I might as well get off and get out of these duds.’48
Standing by at the rendezvous, in his taxi, was Joe Hyland, Michael Collins’s faithful driver. The original plan was that he would drive Sean MacEoin to a secure hiding place. Now his job was to take Dalton, Leonard and Walsh away to safety. He drove the three men to the pleasant seaside area of Howth, a safe distance away from the excitement. As previously mentioned, Dalton had been staying at a house in Howth with other Volunteers. Hyland dropped off his three passengers at a secluded convent, Stella Maris, on Howth peninsula, run by the Sisters of Charity. Leonard’s sister had friends at the convent, set in spacious grounds with woodland paths and a panoramic view of the sea.
A nun was initially startled to open the door and find two men in British Army uniform on the doorstep. All was explained and the callers were welcomed into the convent. Walsh received further treatment for his wound, and the visitors were given tea, served in the convent’s best china. Dalton and Leonard needed to change from their British Army uniforms into civilian clothes. A messenger was sent to Cassidy’s public house on Howth Summit and returned with two suits. Now in civilian clothes, Dalton and Leonard returned to Dublin city centre by tram.
Pat McCrea ran into problems with the armoured car after dropping off three of his passengers at North Richmond Street. His experience was mainly with Ford cars, and he did not realize that the armour plates covering the radiator should have been opened while the car was moving. As a result, the engine badly overheated and the vehicle ground to a halt in the seaside suburb of Clontarf. The original plan had been to drive the armoured car to a farm between Swords and Malahide, in the Fingal Brigade area, where it would be hidden in a barn but now the vehicle had to be abandoned.49 The crew stripped the vehicle of its two Hotchkiss machine guns and ammunition belts, set fire to the engine, and made their getaway with the machine guns and the rifle dropped by the shot sentry. The British were so concerned about the loss of the armoured car that they deployed a low-flying aircraft to search for it. The vehicle was eventually located on a secluded road near Clontarf railway station, and towed back to town. Meanwhile, the placid and iron-nerved McCrea returned to his day job delivering groceries on behalf of his brother (a merchant on South Great George’s Street) to the Auxiliaries in Portobello Barracks. He is said to have been ‘quietly amused’ by the furore caused there by his activities earlier that day.50 The following day, Sunday, Charlie Dalton went to see Pat McCrea to find out what went wrong with the operation, and was pleased to find Emmet with him. Emmet told him it was ‘hopeless’ from the moment the firing started – if that had been delayed for a couple of minutes they might have got MacEoin out.51
Members of the IRA group were extremely lucky to escape, but they were devastated at the failure to rescue MacEoin. On the evening of the rescue attempt Dalton met Collins who was also deeply disappointed, but even then Dalton found the Big Fellow ‘was generous in his thanks for the effort that had been made’.52 He told Dalton that he would always consider it ‘a successful failure’. Collins was clearly impressed by Dalton’s performance – all that could have been done, had been done. For his part, Dalton felt that Collins had come to trust him and thereafter Dalton had ‘infinite faith’ in Collins.53 It was the beginning of a close, working relationship between the two men. The operation had enhanced Dalton’s reputation for courage and coolness under pressure. He himself insisted that it was Collins’s leadership qualities that encouraged people like himself to undertake major operations that they would otherwise have had their doubts about.
As it turned out, the IRA gained considerable publicity and prestige from the daring rescue attempt. The Times described the rescue operation as ‘the most daring coup yet effected by Republicans in Dublin’.54 Details of the identity of the soldiers who were killed during the rescue attempt did not immediately enter the public domain. The soldier fatally wounded in the abattoir was identified in recent years as Private Albert George Saggers (20), of the Royal Army Service Corps, of Stanstead, England.55
Had Dalton and Leonard been captured they could have faced a draconian sentence in a military court. The hi-jacking