house. Two officers were shot dead and four wounded, one of whom died the following December. The memory of the shootings would remain with Charlie. Altogether fourteen members of British intelligence, or suspected members, were shot dead in Dublin that morning. It would later emerge that not all were intelligence officers. Some were shot in their pyjamas or in the presence of their wives. On the afternoon of the Bloody Sunday killings, in revenge for the massacre, the Auxiliaries fired on the crowd at a match in Croke Park, killing ten and injuring about sixty, four of whom later died. In Dublin Castle, two IRA prisoners, Dick McKee and Peadar Clancy, as well as a young man Conor Clune, who was not involved in the IRA, were killed. The classic excuse was given, that they were ‘shot while trying to escape’. In nationalist Ireland, nobody believed it.
After the assassination of the British officers, Charlie Dalton was in a state of great nervous agitation. One of his colleagues Matty McDonald said Charlie could not sleep on the night of Bloody Sunday: ‘He thought he could hear the gurgling of the officers’ blood and he kept awake all night until we told him a tap was running somewhere.’6 Sean Lemass was present and was also concerned about Charlie’s state. In later life Charlie Dalton was a very troubled man, and experienced persistent mental health problems that required spells in hospital under psychiatric care. Emmet attributed Charlie’s troubles to his youthful involvement with the Squad.
Raid on the Dalton Home
In early December, in the wake of the Bloody Sunday killings, there was another raid on the Dalton home. In his memoir, Charlie gave an account of the raid as told to him by his mother.7 It was after midnight, and everyone in the household had gone to bed. Lorries could be heard coming up the road and then a loud knocking on the door. Emmet went down to answer the door. There was a sound of men charging up the stairs. The door to the bedroom of Mr and Mrs Dalton burst open and about a dozen men entered the room. They began searching the room and throwing questions at the couple. They were looking for Charlie. Mr Dalton said, ‘Do you know who I am?’ He informed the raiding party, a mixture of Auxiliaries and military officers, that he was a Justice of the Peace. They did not seem impressed. They took away James F. Dalton and Emmet. Mrs Dalton spent the next couple of days trying to establish the whereabouts of her husband and son. Eventually she found they had been taken to Collinstown Aerodrome north of Dublin for questioning. Emmet later recalled that as he and his father were being taken away, the Auxiliaries fired a couple of shots in the air. His father had a habit of blowing his nose loudly and now proceeded to do so – apparently as a signal to his wife that he was alright, that he had not been shot.8
Prisoners arrested after raids or by military night patrols were often processed at a detention centre at Collinstown. An IRA man who was being held there, Joseph Lawless, who would later serve as an officer in the National Army during the Civil War, recalled two of the prisoners to whom they were introduced in this way – one was Emmet Dalton, and the other Peadar Kearney, who wrote the lyrics for The Soldier’s Song (Amhrán na bhFiann) which became Ireland’s National Anthem. Dalton apparently secured his release by a plea of mistaken identity and a display of his British Army discharge papers.9
The British intelligence officers in Dublin Castle began compiling a file on Emmet. According to this file, Emmet and his father were arrested on 9 December and released on 18 December. ‘Dagger, bayonet, helmet and seditious documents were found in the house when they were arrested,’ the file stated.10 However, no charges were brought against the two. Apart from the documents, the items listed may well have been war souvenirs brought back to Ireland by Emmet. The elder Dalton’s status as a Justice of the Peace and Emmet’s service to the British empire in the Great War may have helped to secure their release. It appears from the intelligence file that while the British were aware of Charlie’s intelligence activities their information was limited. The file noted: ‘Either this man [Emmet] or his brother Charles, who is believed to be an IRA Secret Service man, was with a Flying Column.’ The file added: ‘Sister a courier.’ This may be a reference to Nuala who was aged only seven at the time.
While in detention, James F. Dalton acted as ‘Chaplain’ to the other prisoners by leading the Rosary. Emmet made use of his military training to drill his fellow-prisoners. They were both incensed over being detained. Emmet would later tell, with some amusement, how his father’s role as ‘Chaplain’ was short-lived. They were placed in a hut with up to eighteen other men, and on the first night the Volunteer in charge called for night prayers and everyone knelt down and said their prayers before going to bed. The next day Dalton senior asked if he, as the older man, could give out the prayers and this was agreed. That night he proceeded to give out the rosary, with a homily on each mystery. This was clearly too much for detainees who were delayed in going to bed – they just wanted to get to sleep. The next day some of the hut inmates got together and it was decided that in future the prayers would be given out in Irish. As James F. Dalton did not have the language, he was excluded from leading the prayers, much to the relief of inmates. It was a diplomatic way of dealing with the problem.11
It was unusual for a duo with such a respectable background, a JP and his war hero son who had served as a British Army officer, to be pulled in for questioning. The Irish Independent reported the arrests with the headline ‘Ex-Army Captain and J.P. Arrested’.12 When Charlie Dalton reported on the raid on his family home to Liam Tobin, the Deputy Director of Intelligence, Tobin told him he already knew all about it. Tobin and Michael Collins and one or two staff officers happened to be spending the night in a house overlooking the Dalton residence, and observed the raid and all the commotion. As a result they had a rather sleepless night, with the enemy so close at hand.13
Training the IRA
In late 1920 Emmet Dalton became involved in training the IRA. Oscar Traynor, Commander of the Dublin Brigade, was seeking to improve the level of training in the Volunteers. J.J. ‘Ginger’ O’Connell was Director of Training but he had also been appointed Assistant Chief of Staff, and found it difficult to give enough time to the training role. O’Connell, who had served in the US armed forces, asked Traynor to keep an eye out for somebody who could replace him as Director of Training. Charlie Dalton had been telling Traynor of the outstanding abilities of his brother Emmet who had fought in the British Army all through the Great War and who was sympathetic to the Volunteers. A newspaper profile written in the summer of 1922 suggested that Dalton had to ‘fight his way’ into the movement, owing to the reluctance of senior leaders to accept a former officer in the British Army, though they quickly recognized his resourcefulness.14 The fact that Emmet already had a brother active in the Volunteers may have helped dispel any lingering doubts about his bona fides.
Traynor asked Charlie to bring in Emmet for an interview. It was not unknown for Irishmen who had fought for the British in the Great War to throw in their lot with the Volunteers, the West Cork guerrilla leader Tom Barry being a notable example. When Emmet Dalton came in for interview, Traynor asked him if he would be prepared to give a series of lectures to members of the Dublin Brigade. He replied he would be willing to do so.
He began lecturing members of different battalions, with map-reading one of the areas covered. One of those he encountered during this work was his former school friend, Sean Lemass. O’Connell attended some of the lectures and reported back that he was impressed by Dalton’s abilities.15 Dalton became Assistant Director of Training in the IRA General Headquarters staff, and later assumed the role of Director of Training, around June 1921. Meanwhile, he dropped out of his engineering course, and also left his temporary job in the Office of Public Works. Dalton’s previous military experience had included roles as an instructor, which made him a valuable addition to the GHQ staff. O’Connell introduced him to various senior figures in the Volunteers, including the Chief of Staff, Richard Mulcahy. He got to know Piaras Béaslaí, the editor of the Volunteers’ journal, An t-Óglach, and in February 1921 helped him secure an office on North Great George’s Street. A disadvantage was that the room could only be used during the day – by night it was used for dancing classes.16
A young Volunteer,
