Civil War in the region 100 years ago

By the spring of 1923, the Civil War had been going on for eight months and the Republican resistance to the treaty was slowly being overcome. The Free State military were gaining the upperhand throughout the country as the conflict had developed into a guerrilla-type campaign. Despite the fact that the anti-treaty opposition was depleted, the Free State continued pursuing the war with relentless brutality. Known Republican activists were being hunted down and either killed or arrested. In the northwest, Republicans had mounted a serious challenge to General Seán Mac Eoin’s forces and succeeded in capturing his armoured car, ‘The Ballinalee’. However, the car had to be abandoned later near Benbulben when pro-treaty troops were surrounding the area.

Subsequent to the encirclement, which happened in September 1922, four prisoners were captured on the mountain by pro-treaty troops. After the capture, the officers commanding the troops, Captain Charles McGoohan, Leitrim and a Captain Sexton from Longford, had a discussion among themselves regarding the captured men. A decision was taken there and then to execute the four prisoners. When some of the soldiers were asked to form a firing squad, they voiced their opposition to the demand. McGoohan told them it didn’t matter as he would do it himself with a Lewis machine gun. The main body of troops were ordered to move away a distance and the four men were then machine-gunned to death on the mountainside.

Later that day, two more prisoners were captured at another location on the mountain and they were also shot dead. The six executed prisoners became known as ‘Sligo’s Noble Six’. Their names were: Seamus Devins, a brigadier in the 3rd Western Division, IRA (he was also a TD for the constituency of Sligo/Mayo East); Brian McNeill, son of Eoin McNeill, who was a member of the Free State government; Patrick Carroll and Joseph Banks; Harry Benson and Thomas Langan.

This style of summary execution was repeated many times by government forces throughout the country in the last months of the civil war in 1923.

In Arigna, an active service unit drawn from the area had been active against the treaty forces in the north Roscommon/ Leitrim/west Cavan area earlier in the conflict and it was in this region that some brutal acts were carried out by government troops. On February 27th, 1923, a centenary ago this week, one of the most harrowing events took place during the Civil War in north Roscommon.

Two members of the active service unit, Seamus Cull and Paddy Tymon, had been involved in confrontations with Free State forces in the border region of Cavan and Fermanagh and it was here that Seamus Cull’s brother, Michael, lost his life in January 1923. Seamus Cull and Paddy Tymon had returned to the Arigna district to get some rest and respite in February of that year. They retired to a secret dugout deep in the hills northwest of the village, close to the Arigna River, which flows through the valley that lies between the Corry and Kilronan mountains.

Free State troops were combing out the region, hunting down the Republican resistance, when they came upon the hideout. Knowing there were men inside who refused to come out and

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Seamus Cull surrender, one of the soldiers threw a Mill’s hand grenade into the entrance of the dugout. A Mill’s hand grenade was a British make that was used in WWI.

It contained over a pound weight of explosive enclosed in a castiron casing and was designed to fragment on detonation. Therefore, the resulting explosion in the enclosed space of the dugout would cause multiple shrapnel wounds to anyone in close proximity to the blast. The explosion of the grenade which was heard all over the Arigna valley killed the two men instantly.

The badly disfigured corpses of the dead volunteers were retrieved later from the dugout; they were placed on a rail wagon, part of the Leitrim/ Cavan narrow gauge rail line that ran through the valley and transported to the village. The remains of the two were laid out in repose in the Arigna village hall that night and their burial took place the next day in the local cemetery.

Adding to the tragedy of the two deaths coming so close after the death of Michael Cull (Seamus’s brother), was the poignancy of the fact that the coffins for the two men were made by the Tymon family, who were coffin manufacturers in the locality and whose son had died in the explosion. Seamus Cull was aged 24 years and Paddy Tymon was just 22 years old at the time of their deaths. Today, a limestone memorial honouring the Cull brothers and Paddy Tymon stands on the hillside overlooking the Arigna River valley where the tragedy took place. More articles later, An Staraí Áitiuil

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