still at the wheel of the vehicle, drove to a rendezvous in the area of North Richmond Street, off the North Circular Road, where O’Connell School was located. Michael Lynch, the abattoir superintendent who had supplied vital intelligence for the rescue operation, was there when the armoured car arrived. He later recalled Emmet Dalton sitting on the platform at the back of the car, ‘lying back as an immaculate British officer, with his knees crossed and smoking a cigarette’.46 ‘I can never forget that moment,’ Lynch said of Dalton’s cool attitude. ‘He was completely unperturbed even though only a few moments before he had undergone an experience that would have driven most men crazy. Let me say at once that this was no pose, no bravado, but sheer unadulterated nerve.’47
Meanwhile, Paddy O’Daly arrived on a push bike with the wounded Walsh, blood streaming from his hand, hanging on the back of the bicycle. Lynch provided some emergency first aid, bandaging Walsh’s wound. As often happens in Dublin when an unusual event occurs, a crowd of children gathered. One urchin said to Lynch, ‘Hey, Sir. Give me the wounded man. I live around here and we’ll look after him.’ Lynch thought it was time that Dalton should get away from the area as quickly as possible. He asked Dalton if he was going to stay there all day. ‘No,’ Dalton replied, ‘I might as well get off and get out of these duds.’48
Standing by at the rendezvous, in his taxi, was Joe Hyland, Michael Collins’s faithful driver. The original plan was that he would drive Sean MacEoin to a secure hiding place. Now his job was to take Dalton, Leonard and Walsh away to safety. He drove the three men to the pleasant seaside area of Howth, a safe distance away from the excitement. As previously mentioned, Dalton had been staying at a house in Howth with other Volunteers. Hyland dropped off his three passengers at a secluded convent, Stella Maris, on Howth peninsula, run by the Sisters of Charity. Leonard’s sister had friends at the convent, set in spacious grounds with woodland paths and a panoramic view of the sea.
A nun was initially startled to open the door and find two men in British Army uniform on the doorstep. All was explained and the callers were welcomed into the convent. Walsh received further treatment for his wound, and the visitors were given tea, served in the convent’s best china. Dalton and Leonard needed to change from their British Army uniforms into civilian clothes. A messenger was sent to Cassidy’s public house on Howth Summit and returned with two suits. Now in civilian clothes, Dalton and Leonard returned to Dublin city centre by tram.
Pat McCrea ran into problems with the armoured car after dropping off three of his passengers at North Richmond Street. His experience was mainly with Ford cars, and he did not realize that the armour plates covering the radiator should have been opened while the car was moving. As a result, the engine badly overheated and the vehicle ground to a halt in the seaside suburb of Clontarf. The original plan had been to drive the armoured car to a farm between Swords and Malahide, in the Fingal Brigade area, where it would be hidden in a barn but now the vehicle had to be abandoned.49 The crew stripped the vehicle of its two Hotchkiss machine guns and ammunition belts, set fire to the engine, and made their getaway with the machine guns and the rifle dropped by the shot sentry. The British were so concerned about the loss of the armoured car that they deployed a low-flying aircraft to search for it. The vehicle was eventually located on a secluded road near Clontarf railway station, and towed back to town. Meanwhile, the placid and iron-nerved McCrea returned to his day job delivering groceries on behalf of his brother (a merchant on South Great George’s Street) to the Auxiliaries in Portobello Barracks. He is said to have been ‘quietly amused’ by the furore caused there by his activities earlier that day.50 The following day, Sunday, Charlie Dalton went to see Pat McCrea to find out what went wrong with the operation, and was pleased to find Emmet with him. Emmet told him it was ‘hopeless’ from the moment the firing started – if that had been delayed for a couple of minutes they might have got MacEoin out.51
Members of the IRA group were extremely lucky to escape, but they were devastated at the failure to rescue MacEoin. On the evening of the rescue attempt Dalton met Collins who was also deeply disappointed, but even then Dalton found the Big Fellow ‘was generous in his thanks for the effort that had been made’.52 He told Dalton that he would always consider it ‘a successful failure’. Collins was clearly impressed by Dalton’s performance – all that could have been done, had been done. For his part, Dalton felt that Collins had come to trust him and thereafter Dalton had ‘infinite faith’ in Collins.53 It was the beginning of a close, working relationship between the two men. The operation had enhanced Dalton’s reputation for courage and coolness under pressure. He himself insisted that it was Collins’s leadership qualities that encouraged people like himself to undertake major operations that they would otherwise have had their doubts about.
As it turned out, the IRA gained considerable publicity and prestige from the daring rescue attempt. The Times described the rescue operation as ‘the most daring coup yet effected by Republicans in Dublin’.54 Details of the identity of the soldiers who were killed during the rescue attempt did not immediately enter the public domain. The soldier fatally wounded in the abattoir was identified in recent years as Private Albert George Saggers (20), of the Royal Army Service Corps, of Stanstead, England.55
Had Dalton and Leonard been captured they could have faced a draconian sentence in a military court. The hi-jacking of the armoured car was a matter of great concern to the British military commander in Ireland, General Macready. He reported on the incident in one of his regular weekly reports to the War Office and the Cabinet. Macready said that a court of enquiry was being held. The whole incident had caused him to consider seriously ‘the adequacy of the personnel at present available for manning the armoured cars…’56 Meanwhile, security arrangements were tightened, with instructions issued to the British military that armed men or armoured cars were not to be allowed to enter any barracks or quarters until their identity had been thoroughly established.57
MacEoin went on trial in a military court on 14 June and, as expected, was sentenced to death. Michael Collins insisted on MacEoin being released when arrangements for truce negotiations with the British were being put in place later in 1921. In later years, Emmet Dalton commented on the rescue attempt: ‘It was, I suppose, suicidal but it nearly came off, probably because it was so outrageously silly.’58 Dalton and other members of the IRA rescue group remained loyal to Collins and some, like Dalton himself and Paddy O’Daly, would play significant roles on the Free State side in the ensuing Civil War. The sole woman participant in the rescue attempt, Áine Malone, a glamorous young Dubliner who had been shot in the hip while carrying dispatches during the 1916 Rising, took the republican side in the Civil War.59
Eventually, the British identified Emmet Dalton as one of the bogus British officers who had entered Mountjoy in the attempt to ‘spring’ MacEoin. In the months following the Truce, Dalton’s name entered the public domain in connection with the operation. If the British did not know already, they knew it now. The Dublin Castle file on Dalton includes two press clippings from 1922 that refer to Dalton’s role in the affair. The British also suspected Dalton’s involvement in organizing the February 1921 escape of three republican prisoners from Kilmainham Jail, Frank Teeling, Simon Donnelly, and Ernie O’Malley. The Dublin Castle file details a conversation between a British officer and ‘a captain of the republicans’ in which the latter claims that Dalton was responsible for the escape.
According to the report, the whole Kilmainham escape ‘was arranged by Major General Dalton’ (his Civil War rank). The republican referred to Dalton as an ex-British officer, and said Dalton drove up to Kilmainham Jail in a lorry about an hour before the escape, dressed as a British officer, and entered the jail. He also said that Dalton had entered Kilmainham Jail ‘several times’, dressed as a ‘British officer’.60 The British Administration appeared to give credence to this account, and included the remark in Dalton’s file. In the file there is a summary of Dalton’s career which includes the remark: ‘Organized the escape from Kilmainham Prison of one TEELING a prisoner convicted of murder and awaiting execution… Said to have been responsible for many of the escapes from prisons and is regarded as an expert at such work.’ However, Ernie O’Malley’s first-hand account of the
