Coogan - Michael Collins : a Biography

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For Barbara, her mother Mabel, my father Eaman Coogan, who worked for Collins, and my mother Beatrice

Michael Collins was a name that crackled in the background of my childhood, in the Ill tell you all about it when youre older category like the occasionally seen revolvers, hidden in a drawer under the mirror on the dressing table. But my father, Eamon Coogan, died before I reached the age of political awareness of phenomena such as Partition, the IRA or the fact that, while some men practically blessed themselves, others spat when de Valeras name was mentioned. So I had to find for myself what Collins had to do with all these things.

It was David Neligan, a friend of my father and one of the best raconteurs in Ireland, who most fired my imagination, in 1965, during what was intended to be a short interview on the Troubles but which grew into a lifetimes preoccupation with contemporary history. Along the way I read everything I could find on Collins, augmenting my information through many sources, from two old men I met at a funeral to former friends or enemies of his, like Eamonn Broy, Gerry Boland, or Vivion de Valera.

Vivion de Valera entered my life after he chanced to adjudicate at the one and only debate in which I ever spoke as a student of Blackrock College. He was subsequently approached, without my knowledge, by my history teacher, Fr Michael OCarroll Cssp. to say, he had a boy here who would either turn out a genius, or break his heart. I did neither, but I eventually wound up editing the Irish Press, the paper founded by Collins greatest opponent, and Vivions father, Eamon de Valera. Thirty-three years after Fr OCarrolls fateful phone-call, my old teacher again entered my life decisively: Your next task must be to write a biography of Michael Collins, he wrote. By then I had learned at first hand how the twelve-year-old Vivion used to keep nix when Collins, at risk of his life, came each week to de Valeras home in Greystones with the money that fed the family while de Valera was away on his eighteen-month propaganda tour of America.

I knew that Mao Tse Tsung had studied Collins tactics and that a Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzak Shamir, had used the codename Micail during the Israeli War of Independence. One night in Jerusalem the editor of the Jerusalem Post, Ari Nath, summed up the position of the state Shamir helped to found, saying, If they ever get a Michael Collins well wake up one morning to find theres not a supermarket left in Israel. For Michael Collins was the founder of modern guerrilla warfare, the first freedom fighter, or urban terrorist. It was a role that sometimes took priority over sensitivity. When he heard that his cousin Nancy was returning to their native Cork because her father was dying, Collins expressions of sympathy were accompanied by two large parcels of guns destined for the IRA in her area. Unnerved by the presence of the guns in her cases and weeping for her father, Nancy was further traumatised when, on the last leg of her journey, British troops held up the train. Some of Collins legendary luck touched her however; her tears and the chivalry of a British officer resulted in her luggage being the only pieces to escape the search.

Collins troops were few: one of his principal units, the Squad, numbered no more than twelve men, their only weapons being revolvers. Examining these guns Parabellums, .45s, Mausers and Lugers I was chilled to be told that Each of those guns killed at least six men. But in the scale of wartime casualties, such numbers are not large. How did Collins create an impact sufficiently powerful to propel him into Downing Street to negotiate with the leaders of what was then the superpower of the British Empire? Part of the answer lies in the selective nature of his targets, men singled out through information supplied by friendly detectives like Neligan. Part lay in the circumstances of the time, in pro-Irish sentiment in America and the Dominions, and in widespread public support at home in Ireland. But a vital factor was Collins energy and organisational ability, his courage and charisma; the way he used these qualities to extricate himself from difficulties and to perform herculean tasks, such as the launching and successful implementation of an illegal National Loan which could be neither advertised nor openly subscribed to. Yet everyone got their receipts.

To the British he was the most wanted man in the Empire. But the ordinary people of Ireland fed, sheltered and ran messages for him. Without their confidence and support he could have achieved nothing. Maos fish in the sea, Michael Collins safe houses, are the essentials of guerrilla warfare what the military men term civilian support. What did the civilians see? Key Collins supporters, the ODonovans of Rathgar, saw a boyish, friendly, but uproarious man. Eileen ODonovan, an elegant, attractive woman in her eighties as this book was being written, remembers him playing games with her brothers and sisters and sharing a back bedroom with Gearoid OSullivan, a distant relation of her mothers. Collins had to be given the back room, away from the road, because he had a habit of initiating noisy, impromptu wrestling matches, by unholy tricks such as pulling a hair out of someones leg or pouring a jug of cold water over a sleeper. She still recalled with wonderment a day of metamorphosis for the wrestlers. Three resplendent figures arrived in a state car at her home. Michael Collins, Commander-in-Chief of the first Irish National Army, had come with his generals OSullivan and Eoin ODuffy (my fathers best man), to show her mother their new uniforms. She also remembered a morning of horror a year later when OSullivan led another group to her home at dawn to tell them Collins was dead.

In microcosm, her mothers regular table perfectly illustrated the tragedy that had befallen Ireland and those Irish Gascons. On Sundays Mrs ODonovan prepared a lunch for Collinss associates; usually Neil Kerr and Sam Maguire over from Liverpool and London to discuss arms smuggling, with figures from Dublin such as Dick McKee, Rory OConnor, Emmet Dalton and Kevin OHiggins. The lunches were light-hearted, hospitable affairs; Collins pouring out Mrs ODonovans whiskey liberally for everyone except himself. But one never knew when there might be a raid, or a sudden phone call like the message that came one afternoon from one of the insignificant but vital people who helped Collins, a porter at Kingsbridge Railway station. A parcel of eggs had broken open and he couldnt trust the man that was coming on duty. Whipping up the family pony, her twelve-year-old brother went off to collect a consignment of guns in torn wrappings, from under the noses of armed detectives, soldiers and spies, with the observation, Oh well, theres one pony will be able to say he died for Ireland.

The pony survived but fate touched each of the guests at the lunches. Collins was killed in an ambush in Cork by some of the men for whom Nancy had smuggled the guns. His friend Emmet Dalton, who adored him, pleaded fiercely with him not to set out that day, but Collins insisted. Ironically, one result of his stubbornness was that Dalton unjustly bore criticism for complicity in his death ever after. Dick McKee was tortured and shot in Dublin Castle by the British; Rory OConnor was executed by the Irish by order of another regular guest, Kevin OHiggins; and Neil Kerrs son was killed accidentally, testing a revolver destined for Collins.