The Irish Band of Brothers

This is an extract from R.M. Fox's book in the aftermath of 1916. After being released from Frongoch (and other internment prisons) the citizen army men regrouped, and had a new mission. This was a task to rearm themselves after the rising. This is the amazing story of what they did; Dublin dockers at work loading up the boat wondered at the extraordinary precautions taken. By each gangway was an armed guard of United States Marines. Other guards were placed in position by the deck and the hold. No man could get off the ship without a permit, and he had to run the gauntlet of the guards. The dockers looked round and discovered the hold contained piled up cases of revolvers, rifles and ammunition that were being shipped from England back to America. The Citizen Army was instantly on the alert. Seamus McGowan, the arms expert, was smuggled in as a docker, to arrange about getting some of this stuff ashore. The cases had to be broken open in the hold by dockers without being obs

Captain Christopher Poole formed an important part of the honour guard during the iconic raising of the harped flag over Liberty Hall in the run up to Easter 1916. This account of that event is from “The History of the Irish Citizen Army” by R.M.Fox (1943); “In front of the hall itself, the Citizen Army cleared a space and formed up on three sides of the square. Inside the square was the women’s section, the boy scouts corps under Captain W. Carpenter and the Fintan Lalor Pipe Band.  Captain C.Poole and a colour guard of 16 men escorted the colour bearer, Miss Mollie O’Reilly of the Womens Worker’s Union who was also a member of the Citizen Army. With her were three young girl dancers known as ‘The Liberty Trio’. The flag was placed on a pile of drums in the centre of the square. Commandant James Connolly took up his position with Vice-Commandant Mallin on his left and Lieutenant Markievicz on his right. The colour bearer advanced from her escort, received the colours from the c