Page:A forgotten small nationality.djvu/28

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

of Sinn Fein knowledge and asked him to give information. When the boy refused, he got him to kneel in the street and shot him in the back as he raised his hand to cross himself. Inquiry into this case has also been refused—it is but one of the many.

My husband was buried on Wednesday night, secretly—in the Barracks yarn—his body sewn in a sack.

My Search

Meanwhile, from Tuesday night, when he did not return, I had been vainly seeking him. All sorts of rumors reached me—that he had been wounded and was in a hospital, that he had been shot by a looter, that he was arrested by the police. I also heard that he had been executed, but this I refused to believe—it seemed incredible. I clung to the belief that even if he had been condemned to die he would have been tried first, at least before a jury, for martial law did not apply to non-combatants—and that I would be notified, as were some of the wives and families of the other executed men. Of course, the reason of the silence is now clear. It was hoped that my husband would "disappear" as so many others, that we could never trace his whereabouts, and that it would be taken for granted that he had been killed in the street. My husband's murder was but one of the many—the only difference being that in his case the murder could not be kept dark. On Tuesday, May 9th (13 days after) Mr. Tennant stated in the House of Commons, in answer to a question, that "no prisoner had been shot in Dublin without a trial."

All Wednesday and Thursday I inquired in vain, and on Friday horrible rumors reached me. I tried to see a doctor connected with the Barracks, but was stopped by the police, for by this time the police had been restored and were helping the soldiers. I was watched, as I have since been, carefully under police supervision. Houses were being raided and pillaged. Mme. Markievicz's house was broken into on Wednesday, and all her pictures stolen, and other valuables taken and the door was left broken open. Whole streets were ransacked and the inhabitants terrified while the soldiers thrust their bayonets through the beds and furniture.

On Thursday evening, about seven, I met Mrs. MacDonngh (the wife of one of the Irish prisoners shot by the firing squad) wheeling her two babies to her mother's house; the soldiers had turned machine guns on her house. Soldiers sold their loot openly

22