Marino le linn na Réabhlóide

We were stopped and the police officer demanded that we give up the rifles. There was a short struggle between the men in front and the police, and the remainder of us were ordered into the Marino Estate, the walls of which adjoined the road at that time. Some shots rang out and a soldier fell near me. Stones were also thrown from behind a wall. In the field of the Marino Estate word was passed round that we were to get away if possible across country and I proceeded in what I thought was the direction of the city. On my way I picked up two rifles that had been discarded by other men and I eventually found myself behind a hedge bordering a road with three rifles in my possession where I remained for nearly an hour when I decided to ask a passing car or motorist for a lift.

Somewhere about this time a few cars were seized from the Army and Navy Canteen Garage and, after the seizure, I remember we were in a fix to find a garage for one. Fortunately I knew of a large shed in the grounds at Charlemount House, Marino, which was not in use at the moment. At that time the grounds of Charlemount House were used by allotment holders to help the drive for food. We formally applied to the Corporation, using fictitious names, for the use of the shed for storing tools for allotment holders. The car was only two nights in the shed when I was raided at my home in Charlemount House – a flat to which I had only removed a few weeks before. There was a hole in the side of the shed which we had not yet repaired. The number of the car could be read through this hole and I was sure it would be discovered. Yet it escaped.

The first two Thompson machine guns were brought into Ireland from America by two Irish-Americans with military rank, whose names I cannot recall. One I believe was Colonel Dinneen. These guns were, I think, shortly after arriving here, brought to the Squad at Morelands in Abbey St where I remember were had a very happy time dismantling and putting them together and learning their mechanism. The Colonel and his friend gave us instruction on them but we learned all about them very rapidly as we were in our own rights, something of specialists in the use of small arms generally. In fact I was an instructor for the 2nd Battalion in small arms and automatics.

It was decided to take the Thompsons to the Casino at Fairview, in which there were a number of tunnels, and one afternoon some of the squad and myself and I believe Mick Collins and Oscar Traynor tried the guns out at the Casino. We fired live ammunition from the small vertical and large round magazines. The tunnels were well below ground and some members of the squad went outside watching and listening but very little sound could be heard. We succeeded in completely familiarising ourselves with these two guns.

…The first time i think that the Thompson guns were brought into action was shortly after testing them at the Casino when we endeavoured to ambush the military train conveying troops from the North Wall to somewhere in the north of Ireland, on the Drumcondra main line. The first attempt was made on the Drumcondra road.