gloomy’ room in the building known as the Plaza Hotel. He had heard about Dalton but was surprised at how youthful the Director of Training looked. Nevertheless, there was no mistaking the ‘air of authority he exuded’, despite his quiet and pleasant manner.74 Dalton told him to take charge of a training camp for senior officers of the Donegal Brigade, at Dungloe. He was assisted by a former British Army sergeant. Details of the course were set out in the official curriculum. Andrews had his doubts about the sergeant who seemed to have more interest in drink than in republican politics, and the instructor was ultimately sent back to Dublin as ‘unsuitable’.
One of those impressed by Dalton’s performance as Director of Training was Seamus Finn from County Meath, who was Vice O/C and Director of Training of the 1st Eastern Division of the IRA. In his statement to the BMH, Finn said: ‘I believe I have never met anyone so efficient in my life. He was a pale faced, slightly-built man, but gave one the impression of being made of whalebone. I was very impressed by him and I was not alone in that.’ Finn told how, following the Truce, a divisional or central camp was established at Ballymacoll outside Dunboyne, and Dalton sent down two training officers. ‘This camp was kept going right through the Truce period, and was not closed until the British withdrew their troops from the country altogether, and our men took over and occupied the barracks which they vacated.’75 Dalton approached a former schoolmate at O’Connell’s, John Harrington, who had been active in the IRA, to run a training camp at Sligo. Harrington declined the offer, considering that he would be of greater value in an intelligence role in Dublin if hostilities were resumed.76
William Corri, from an Irish-Italian family in Ringsend, Dublin, was one of the men with previous military experience who was recruited by Dalton to give instruction to the Volunteers. Corri, who stood out among the Volunteers because of his Latin looks, came from a most artistic family – his forebears included opera singers, composers and a prominent landscape painter. He had served in the British Army in the Great War in Salonika, Belgium and France. After returning to Dublin he joined the Volunteers, becoming a member of E Company, I Battalion, having previously been rejected by the commander of another unit because of his service in the British Army. He took part in raids and ambushes in Dublin, and was chosen by Dalton for a reformed Active Service Unit (ASU) after the original force’s decimation in the Custom House operation. After the Truce he became a member of GHQ training staff, and instructed officers at training camps in north Roscommon and County Mayo; at Dunboyne, County Meath and at Mulhuddart and Loughlinstown in County Dublin.77 Corri would take the Free State side in the Civil War, and served as governor of the Gormanstown prison camp and of Kilmainham Prison. In later years he continued his contact with Dalton through the Association of the Old Dublin Brigade.
During the summer of 1921 Dalton spent several weeks running an IRA training camp in the Dublin Mountains. Groups of Volunteers would arrive for a ten-day course, centred on a very remote hunting lodge, Glenasmole Lodge, in the scenic, wooded valley of Glenasmole. For many trainees, such training courses, apart from providing military instruction, would have been a welcome break from normal routine, providing a change of scene, a sense of camaraderie, and a stay in a stunning location. Located on the very edge of mountain moorland and heather, the lodge was well chosen for a military training camp. Dalton was pleased with the courses.78
Glenasmole Lodge was the hillside retreat of a prominent Anglo-Irish businessman, Charles Wisdom Hely who had been a Justice of the Peace and whose main residence was at Rathgar, Dublin. It is unclear under what conditions the IRA used his hillside retreat – Hely later re-assumed the use of the lodge. (Wisdom Hely and his printing and stationary business on Dame Street are mentioned in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. The character Leopold Bloom used to work at Hely’s but was sacked because he kept making suggestions to Wisdom Hely as to how to improve the business.) During 1921 another IRA officer Paddy O’Brien worked as an assistant to Dalton in running courses at the Glenasmole camp and he and Dalton got to know each other well. The two men would take opposite sides in the Civil War. Among the instructors at the Glenasmole camp were the two Americans who had initiated the Volunteers into the use of the Thompson sub-machine gun, Major James Dineen and Captain Patrick Cronin. At Glenasmole, they specialised in instruction in the Thompson gun, and one can imagine how the hillside echoed to the staccato sound of the weapon as it was fired during training. Both men were useful additions to the IRA training staff. Dineen was born in Limerick and had served seventeen years in the US armed forces. He took part in operations against the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa and in the Great War in France he had been wounded.
During the period of the Truce, the IRA continued to maintain its organization in case hostilities resumed, and plans were formulated for a uniformed army. Ernie O’Malley recalled how, in the period following the Truce, he was called to Dublin for a meeting of senior IRA officers, in August 1921. Among those present were Michael Collins, Director of Intelligence; Richard Mulcahy, Chief of Staff; Eoin O’Duffy, Deputy Chief of Staff, and Emmet Dalton, Director of Training. Officers from the provinces gave a report on developments in their areas. The question of wearing uniforms was discussed – most were in favour.79 Elements of the IRA were about to move from a guerrilla force to a conventional army.
Getting to Know Senior Figures in the Republican Movement
After joining the General Headquarters staff of the IRA, Dalton came to know some of the leading figures in the independence movement. He became friends with Harry Boland, who had been imprisoned after the 1916 Rising, later becoming Sinn Féin party secretary, and TD for South Roscommon in the First Dáil. Boland also served for a period as President of the Supreme Council of the secretive Irish Republican Brotherhood and was to be a republican envoy to the United States from May 1919 to December 1921. Dalton witnessed the competition for the affections of Kitty Kiernan between Boland and the latter’s good friend Michael Collins, a contest that the Big Fellow would ultimately win. After Boland returned from the United States in August 1921, Dalton tagged along when Boland, Collins and Sean MacEoin showed up in Granard, County Longford where Kitty lived. Boland’s biographer comments that Dalton was a ‘congenial novelty in the inner circle’.80
Dalton was also a guest at the wedding of Tom Barry and Leslie Price in Dublin on 22 August 1921. The guest list reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of the Irish republican movement at the time, and included Michael Collins, Éamon de Valera, Harry Boland, Eoin O’Duffy, Countess Markievicz and Mary McSwiney. The best man was Liam Deasy. The wedding reception was held at Vaughan’s Hotel, Parnell Square, a favourite haunt of Michael Collins. Some of those at the happy event would later take leading roles on opposite sides in the Civil War. Ironically, on the first anniversary of the wedding, Michael Collins would die at Bealnablath, County Cork, in an ambush organized with the approval of the groom’s best man Liam Deasy.
During the Truce period, in his capacity as Training Officer, Dalton came to know Tom Barry well – he visited the West Cork area and was shown around by Barry. He would later recall that he had a ‘good acquaintance with West Cork’.81 This knowledge would come in useful during the Civil War, when the region formed part of the battleground between Dalton’s troops and republican fighters, who included leaders such as Barry. With his personal charm, Dalton made an impression on Kitty Kiernan and her sister Maud, and became friendly with them. Maud seemed to take an interest in Dalton’s love life. By late 1921 Emmet was clearly deeply committed to his sweetheart Alice whom he would marry the following year. But there may have been other romances in the meantime. Maud, in a letter to Harry Boland in December 1921, said she believed Emmet has fallen in love again. ‘I hope this will be the final one.’82 In October 1922 Maud herself would marry Gearóid O’Sullivan, who was friendly with Emmet and very close to Michael Collins. O’Sullivan would serve as Adjutant General of the National Army during the Civil War and in later life became a successful barrister and member of the Dáil.
Dalton attended the wedding of Kitty Kiernan’s glamorous sister Helen when she married County Fermanagh solicitor Paul McGovern. Collins had originally been attracted to Helen but transferred his affections to Kitty when Helen chose McGovern instead. While in London with the Treaty delegation in October
