— What are you doing? roared a comrade.
I shot four times, straight ahead, standing with my legs apart like during drills. I aimed at the moving chaos, the confusion facing us. I reloaded. I was thinking of nothing. Gut empty, head empty. Just the powder and the din.
— Get back on the ground, Meehan!
Danny came up to my level, standing, like me. A third got up in turn. I saw nothing. I made my weapon heard. We were shooting at the same time, calmly. When they returned fire, Danny dragged me to the ground. The police were firing back aimlessly. Lead wasps flew overhead. I engaged my last magazine. And then we suddenly heard the terrible voice of the Browning. Steel detonations, staccato, dry, violent.
— Look out, machine-gunfire! Fall back, ordered our captain.
We had no casualties, only the wounds Danny and I had received from the thorns. Our unit crossed back to the Republic just before daybreak. We were ordered to surrender without fighting if we were intercepted by the Irish army. The IRA Army Council had decided that our bullets were for the British enemy, not for our brothers from the Free State.
Across the border, at the edge of the village, a coalman’s truck was waiting for us. We gave back our weapons. I handed mine over with regret. A soldier is nothing without his gun, just a defeated man. Two men wrapped them up in black blankets and buried them under the coal.
Around us, the first of the early-rising residents were appearing. They lowered their eyes when they passed. No enthusiasm, but no hostility, either. I found neither the Belfast winks nor the wide-open doors. For many Irish from here the war had been over for more than thirty years. If it continued in the North, ‘on the other side’, it was none of their business.
Some members of the unit left for home on foot across the fields. They were farmers, local men. Others had left their bicycles in ditches. Two got into the truck, guns at their belts. The officer gripped our hands, Danny’s and mine. He wasn’t in any hurry. He wanted to show us that he had nothing to fear. That in this region, the Republic was sovereign. That’s when two gardaí appeared at the church corner. They spotted us. One stopped the other with his arm. Without a word, they turned on their heels and left unhurriedly.
— We’re not chasing you away, I hope? the IRA captain asked them out of earshot.
He laughed. A car arrived and he got in with four others. With his hand on the open window he shouted, ‘Éirinn go Brách!’
I shuddered. The last time I’d heard that cry was when Padraig Meehan had beaten George, old McGarrigle’s donkey. I was a child. I had been ashamed of my father, ashamed of that ‘Ireland Forever!’ And yet here I was today and it was my whole life.
Danny and I went back to Belfast by bus. We crossed the border separately. I hated the first British flag that appeared on the road, planted in a winter garden. I hated the Christmas decorations twinkling mockingly behind the white curtains of wealthy homes. I looked at my frozen country. Its beauty. Its misfortune.
I felt nothing. I was exhausted. I dozed. I wondered whether I had killed anyone during the attack. I was prepared to die, but not to kill. I hoped never to have to look a dead man in the face. I was on borrowed time. A victim on borrowed time, an assassin on borrowed time. That was really what we all were, every one of us. And I was very aware of it.
I was interned on 16 May 1957, at thirty-two years of age. Arrested along with hundreds of other nationalists from both sides of the damned border. Once again without evidence, without trial, and without so much as the hope of a conviction.
There were three of us in my cell at the Crum. British prisons no longer had the space for solitary confinement. The hygiene was beastly, the food excremental. We had no way of knowing whether we were there for a month or for ten years, imprisoned temporarily or locked up for life. So the weakest gave themselves up — the oldest, those without hope. In exchange for an anticipated release, around a hundred of our group renounced violence. Seánie was one of those. Captain Seán Meehan, my brother. He had been damaged by the battles, by prison. He didn’t like the socialist murmurings that had been running through the ranks since the end of the war.
— I’m an Irish patriot, not a communist! he would respond when we used to dream about a different country.
He no longer believed in our path. He said the IRA was a mosquito vainly circling a lion. He even ridiculed our weapons.
— Three men to a gun? We’ll go far with that!
He wasn’t afraid, that wasn’t it. He’d refuse to lift his arms up during searches and spit in the screws’ faces, not allowing them the satisfaction of seeing his pain when he was beaten. He was simply tired. He was letting go of the burden of our Republic. He didn’t want to be involved in any more combat. He was laying down arms. There had been Malachy Meehan, our grandfather, a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood who was killed by the British in 1896. And then Padraig Meehan, our father, dead from having lost a war. And then him, Seánie Meehan, and me, Tyrone Meehan. And who would be next? Who else would fill English prisons or die from a bullet shot from an English gun? Niall Meehan? Brian Meehan? Wee Kevin Meehan? Why not go ahead and offer up baby Sara?
We spent a long time talking. Hours. He gripped my head between his big hands, trying to get through to me. He was going to sign the pact. His surrender. He would go back to be with our mother. He would send those of our family who could be saved far away. He asked me to do the same. I said things I shouldn’t have said, dead men’s words. I shouted that a Meehan didn’t leave his country. He laughed viciously.
— My country? What country? And what is Ireland doing for us? What has it done for us, tell me? Your problem, Tyrone, is that you look at the world from the end of your street. When an old man winks at you crossing the road, or a kid admires you, when a door opens, you think that the entire population is behind you. Bullshit, wee brother! What is Republican Ireland, Tyrone Meehan? Two hundred Belfast streets and a few measly nationalist areas in Derry, Newry, Strabane? Scraps of villages! The Protestants are the majority in their Ulster and that’s the way it’ll stay. Dublin is no longer on our side. The Irish hunt us down with the same hatred as the British. We spend our time behind bars and when we get out, we can only cry in misery. And for what? Who is there to hear our cries? What country would defend us? Germany? Fantastic! What a great political lesson! Support everything our enemy fights? Is that it? The dance with the devil till the end of time?
I was crying, in distress and in rage.
— Open your eyes, Tyrone! Wake up! It’s not a battle that we’ve just lost, it’s the war. Our father’s war. It’s over, wee soldier! Over, do you understand? We are a few thousand trapped men surrounded by billions of people who are deaf to our cause. We have to give in, Tyrone, save what we have left — your life, our lives. I want to see Áine wearing a dress that doesn’t shame her for once. Do you understand that, Tyrone? I want laughter, new faces, streets without soldiers. I want nothing more to do with what we are, wee brother. Ireland has worn me out. She’s asked too much of me. She’s demanded too much. I’m sick of our flag, our heroes, our martyrs. I don’t want to exhaust myself any longer just to be worthy of them. I’m giving up, Tyrone. And I know that you will, too. One day, when you’ve suffered one wound too many. I’m going to breathe. Do you understand? I’m going to live like a passer-by on the street. A nobody. A hero of today. Someone who brings his wages home on a Saturday and goes to Communion on Sunday with his head held high.