The Tourmakeady Ambush Back to www.tourmakeady.com
Article taken from The Mayo News 12 May 2008 written by Mr John Healy
EIGHTY-SEVEN years ago this month, the first serious Mayo engagement in the War of Independence took place at Tourmakeady.
An ambush party of the South Mayo Brigade IRA, lying in wait on Tuesday, May 3, launched a surprise attack on a detachment of RIC men and Black and Tans, inflicting severe losses on the enemy before making good their escape through the Partry mountains.
That engagement has gone into folk history as an unquestioned success for the IRA volunteers, whose battle achievements were exceeded only by their escape from certain capture and death by a force of several hundred British troops combing the mountains in search of the rebels. In so doing, the Flying Column of the IRA claimed that it had been surrounded by up to 600 troops, but that the volunteers had fought their way out, inflicting up to 50 casualties.
Those accepted facts, however, have come under severe scrutiny in a new book about to be published and written by a Mayo author. ‘The Battle of Tourmakeady – Fact or Fiction’, from the pen of Captain Donal Buckley, is certain to raise serious debate about the entire episode and the conflicting versions of what really happened on that May day in 1921.
Captain Buckley, a retired Irish army officer with service of 22 years, is nothing if not thorough in his research and field work. His conclusions raise serious doubts about our understanding of the War of Independence and, equally, of the reliability of the sources so often used as definitive records of what actually happened.
Buckley claims that while the undisputed facts of the Tourmakeady ambush speak for themselves, the accounts given by each side leave more questions than they do answers. The facts tell that a 60-strong Flying Column of the South Mayo Brigade, under the command of Commandant Tom Maguire of Cross, ambushed a police patrol in Tourmakeady. The patrol was a supply detail bringing provisions from Bermingham’s shop in Ballinrobe to the isolated Derrypark RIC Barracks, seven miles south of Tourmakeady. After the ambush, the Flying Column withdrew into the Partry mountains, where a further engagement took place with British troops.
But it is from here on in that Captain Buckley finds it hard to reconcile the accounts of events as given by each side. Fact, fiction and propaganda were subsequently mixed to give conflicting and false pictures of the event.
Much of the misinformation, he says, is a result of deliberate spin. Dublin Castle and British Army GHQ were quick to issue statements that bore little reference to the facts. Citations for decorations awarded for action on the day were, Buckley says, conflicting , inaccurate and misleading.
But, controversially perhaps, ‘The Battle of Tourmakeady’ also examines the accuracy of statements issued by the IRA, and in many cases, it finds them equally wanting and questionable.
“This is not to cast aspersions for the sake of it,” says Buckley, “but after 87 years it is good to look at these events with an open mind and, bearing in mind the intense propaganda war that was raging in those years, to separate the fact from the fiction.”
The main problems in studying the Tourmakeady ambush, he says, is that the available secondary sources are rarely definitive and are quite often contradictory. And it is in separating the fact from the fiction, the potentially inaccurate from the proven facts, that ‘The Battle of Tourmakeady’ strips away the veneer of nine decades to come face-to-face with the stubborn truth.
The conflicting accounts are sometimes so distorted as to defy belief. One British intelligence report on the engagement states that “the successful round-up of a large body of rebels in Toumakeady, in which two were killed and 13 seriously wounded, was the result of an agents’ information that the rebels were lying in ambush at the spot.”
Another author, Michael Hopkins, makes the totally inaccurate claim that the “West Mayo Brigade arrived too late to help anyone in the ambush.”
Even Ernie O’Malley recounted that a radio transmitter at Derrypark RIC Barracks had been used to summon reinforcements when in fact no such transmitter existed.
“To date, nobody has published an accurate factual account of the events of May 3, 1921, or has addressed the inconsistent versions that the published sources contain,” explains Buckley. “In the interests of presenting an accurate account based on the available evidence, I have outlined in detail the ambush in Tourmakedy and the subsequent action in the Partry mountains.
Buckley examines the sequence of events, the numbers and weapons involved, and the casualties that both sides suffered, as well as the number of reinforcements that were summoned.
“I also explain why various versions of these events emerged and why they were given a deliberate spin given the intense propoganda war which was also being conducted,” he says.
‘The Battle of Tourmakeady – Fact or Fiction’ will be available in June. It can be ordered from the author, Captain Donal Buckley, at Woodfield, Derryhick, Castlebar, on 094 9031344.
Thanks to The Mayo News for allowing us to use this article
EIGHTY-SEVEN years ago this month, the first serious Mayo engagement in the War of Independence took place at Tourmakeady.
An ambush party of the South Mayo Brigade IRA, lying in wait on Tuesday, May 3, launched a surprise attack on a detachment of RIC men and Black and Tans, inflicting severe losses on the enemy before making good their escape through the Partry mountains.
That engagement has gone into folk history as an unquestioned success for the IRA volunteers, whose battle achievements were exceeded only by their escape from certain capture and death by a force of several hundred British troops combing the mountains in search of the rebels. In so doing, the Flying Column of the IRA claimed that it had been surrounded by up to 600 troops, but that the volunteers had fought their way out, inflicting up to 50 casualties.
Those accepted facts, however, have come under severe scrutiny in a new book about to be published and written by a Mayo author. ‘The Battle of Tourmakeady – Fact or Fiction’, from the pen of Captain Donal Buckley, is certain to raise serious debate about the entire episode and the conflicting versions of what really happened on that May day in 1921.
Captain Buckley, a retired Irish army officer with service of 22 years, is nothing if not thorough in his research and field work. His conclusions raise serious doubts about our understanding of the War of Independence and, equally, of the reliability of the sources so often used as definitive records of what actually happened.
Buckley claims that while the undisputed facts of the Tourmakeady ambush speak for themselves, the accounts given by each side leave more questions than they do answers. The facts tell that a 60-strong Flying Column of the South Mayo Brigade, under the command of Commandant Tom Maguire of Cross, ambushed a police patrol in Tourmakeady. The patrol was a supply detail bringing provisions from Bermingham’s shop in Ballinrobe to the isolated Derrypark RIC Barracks, seven miles south of Tourmakeady. After the ambush, the Flying Column withdrew into the Partry mountains, where a further engagement took place with British troops.
But it is from here on in that Captain Buckley finds it hard to reconcile the accounts of events as given by each side. Fact, fiction and propaganda were subsequently mixed to give conflicting and false pictures of the event.
Much of the misinformation, he says, is a result of deliberate spin. Dublin Castle and British Army GHQ were quick to issue statements that bore little reference to the facts. Citations for decorations awarded for action on the day were, Buckley says, conflicting , inaccurate and misleading.
But, controversially perhaps, ‘The Battle of Tourmakeady’ also examines the accuracy of statements issued by the IRA, and in many cases, it finds them equally wanting and questionable.
“This is not to cast aspersions for the sake of it,” says Buckley, “but after 87 years it is good to look at these events with an open mind and, bearing in mind the intense propaganda war that was raging in those years, to separate the fact from the fiction.”
The main problems in studying the Tourmakeady ambush, he says, is that the available secondary sources are rarely definitive and are quite often contradictory. And it is in separating the fact from the fiction, the potentially inaccurate from the proven facts, that ‘The Battle of Tourmakeady’ strips away the veneer of nine decades to come face-to-face with the stubborn truth.
The conflicting accounts are sometimes so distorted as to defy belief. One British intelligence report on the engagement states that “the successful round-up of a large body of rebels in Toumakeady, in which two were killed and 13 seriously wounded, was the result of an agents’ information that the rebels were lying in ambush at the spot.”
Another author, Michael Hopkins, makes the totally inaccurate claim that the “West Mayo Brigade arrived too late to help anyone in the ambush.”
Even Ernie O’Malley recounted that a radio transmitter at Derrypark RIC Barracks had been used to summon reinforcements when in fact no such transmitter existed.
“To date, nobody has published an accurate factual account of the events of May 3, 1921, or has addressed the inconsistent versions that the published sources contain,” explains Buckley. “In the interests of presenting an accurate account based on the available evidence, I have outlined in detail the ambush in Tourmakedy and the subsequent action in the Partry mountains.
Buckley examines the sequence of events, the numbers and weapons involved, and the casualties that both sides suffered, as well as the number of reinforcements that were summoned.
“I also explain why various versions of these events emerged and why they were given a deliberate spin given the intense propoganda war which was also being conducted,” he says.
‘The Battle of Tourmakeady – Fact or Fiction’ will be available in June. It can be ordered from the author, Captain Donal Buckley, at Woodfield, Derryhick, Castlebar, on 094 9031344.
Thanks to The Mayo News for allowing us to use this article
