Clonmany : It's Us They're Talking About 1999

There are times when Charlies memory could legitimately be described as photographic, and never more so than when he is recounting a situation which was more than usually tense or dramatic. One such occasion (an encounter with the infamous Black and Tans) combines so much of the life of the community - the church, the school, the public houses and, most obviously, the political strife of the time - that it is worth retelling, even if it touches upon a troubled memory for the people of Clonmany.

During the course of conversation about feast days and priests, Charlie remarks that it was customary for the young people to make their First Communion and their Confirmation in the same year. He recalls that he made his First Communion on Ascension Thursday, which was the 5th of May, 1921. He made his Confirmation on the following Tuesday, May l0th. According to Charlie's recollections, this event coincided with a more momentous occurrence in Clonmany.

"We got out of the Chapel - it was all Urris and Clonmany - and my mother and father were waiting outside with biscuits and lemonade. When we got out on the road there was a line of Black and Tans sitting on the wall and a Black and Tan lorry at the gate. We got past them as quick as we could. It was a market day at the Cross and there was cattle coming down the road and up from Urris. We dillied at the school.

The next thing this cart came up the road, with a man holding the horse's head and a crowd of policemen around it. We got very excited then wondering what did this man do. He was led into the Barracks. What was it only the finding down at Binion, of the Black and Tan who was shot. The man had been gathering seaweed. The seaweed was all hanging out of the cart and the water was dripping out of it. The Tans were over at the chapel gate because they suspected a prominent IRA man of the time, and thought he might be in Mass."

As was common in the country at the time, the Black and Tans returned to Clonmany to exact revenge for the death of their comrade.

"I was in school the day they came to burn The Cross. It was in June and I min' rightly t'see the little petrol lorry they had with them. It was a bit bigger than a pick-up truck and it was stemmed as full as it could hold with petrol tins. There were no petrol tanks in them days and Pratt was the name of the firm that supplied the petrol. How I know that is that the only man at the Cross to have a car was Campbell. I used to go into James Quigley's, he was the shoemaker, and then we'd go into Campbell's and I would see these tins out in Campbell's and we'd wonder what the word Pratt was. So Pratt's was written on the lorry the Black and Tans had with them. They had 300 soldiers came with them into the barrack yard.

Maloney, the headmaster, was living in Ballyliffen and had three sons. He used to make tea for them in the school and someone would have to go over for a kettle of water to the pump, and the pump was on the day-room side of the barrack. It was painted red too, the English colour. There'd be a fight some days to get out for the kettle of water. You could be out ten minutes!

That day I scamped the kettle, and when I came down all these soldiers were in the yard. They split in two to let me past. It was a very warm summer. I went over to the pump and was pumping away but there came no water at all. I couldn't do it hard enough. So one of the soldiers came over and pumped like hell and got the water going and filled the kettle. They let me through again and I went back over to the school. The next thing I saw was Fr Maguire and the doctor going into the barrack. Big Campbell, who was married to Susan Kearney, was the Chief Constable in the Strand Road RIC barracks in Derry. Apparently he wired the barrack from Derry and said to the Tans that there were no IRA men in Clonmany to his knowledge, but that if they burned The Cross, every man in it would be an IRA man. Fr Maguire worked hard pleading with them as well, apparently. Whether they took that or not I don't know. We came out at three o'clock. We hadn't been told anything but we could see Maloney was as white as a sheet, looking out the window, and there was no teaching done.

When we came round the school, all these soldiers were coming out of the barrack yard, with the tin hats pushed back off their heads, hanging onto their necks by a piece of string. The Commanding officer put some of them into Barney Sarah's, some into Johnny Harkins, some into Big Hannah's, into Gallon's and McCauley's, into all the pubs - down to Crampsey's too. They all went in there and drank their beer and we headed home from school. We could still see the wee lorry packed with petrol."

The rest, of course, is history. Who or whatever persuaded them to spare the village, Clonmany was not burned out. I enquire somewhat naively as to how real the danger had been and Charlie assures me that there were many villages that weren't as lucky as Clonmany, referring me to "Dan Breen's book".