​TOM MAGUIRE, SON OF COASTGUARD WILLIAM, WAS BORN IN THE COASTGUARD STATION, COURTMACSHERRY IN 1911 AND LIVED THERE UNTIL THE AGE OF TEN. THE FAMILY MOVED ENGLAND IN 1921.  HE EMIGRATED FROM ENGLAND TO NEW ZEALAND in 1953.  TOM MAGUIRE RECORDED SEVERAL AUDIO TAPES OF HIS RECOLLECTIONS OF HIS TIME IN COURTMACSHERRY FOR HIS SONS, GARY, DANNY AND TOM.  THEY WERE RECORDED BETWEEN THE YEARS 1973 AND 1975.  
 
I was born on the 17th of July 1911 in the house in which we lived at Courtmacsherry, Co. Cork, Ireland. I don’t know the population of the town, but I imagine it was and probably still is somewhere about 800. The last time we went there in 1950, which was thirty-nine years after I was born, I couldn’t see any difference whatever. I can’t recall seeing even one new house.  It was exactly the same as when we lived there.
There is only one street, with the houses on one side and Courtmacsherry bay on the other side of the street. It runs the whole length of the town. At one end is the one and only hotel, the Courtmacsherry Hotel. On the other end, on the outskirts at the Timoleague end of the town is the district known as Siberia.
The Coastguard Station was on the hill at the back of the town. It was made of stone blocks, two storeys high, long and right in the centre of it was a square tower about four storeys high, towering well above the roofs of the building. It looked very impressive; in fact it looked something like a castle. It was the outstanding dominant landmark of the town and could be seen from the sea outside Courtmacsherry Bay but also could be seen from all points of the compass inland.
The road leading to the Coastguard Station from the town was never referred to as a road, lane or even a boreen. It was always referred to as ‘the hill’. So you went ‘up the hill’ to the Coastguard Station and ‘down the hill’ to the town.  When we went back there in 1947 and again in 1950, we trudged ‘up the hill’ to the Coastguard Station and there are some photographs somewhere here taken in front of the house where I was actually born.
The Station is now just a burnt out shell. All the walls are standing and the tower, but the inside is completely gutted. It was burnt out by the Sinn Féiners in the Troubles of 1920 after we had left and gone to another Coastguard Station called Ring Bar.  I think it was burnt out about three months after we left there.
Amongst my earliest recollections are those of walking with my grandmother and my father ‘up the hill’ or ‘down the hill’.  Granny appeared to me to be a tall woman dressed in black satin with a little black hat perched on her head. I would clutch her skirt at one side as we trudged ‘up the hill’ or ‘down the hill’ as the case may be.  As regards my father, I can vividly remember walking behind him ‘down the hill’ and attempting to walk in his footsteps.  He must have been well aware of this, but looking back now, I realise he didn’t say a word, he was pretending to be unaware of it.
Granny was my mother’s mother. Her name was Mary Anne Percy. My mother’s maiden name was Percy.  When I was born in 1911, Granny was a widow and living with my mother and father.  I don’t know exactly when she was widowed. Her husband, my maternal grandfather, was a lieutenant shipwright/shipbuilder in the navy and they lived in Devonport. My mother was an only child and I remember her referring to 8, Stuart Terrace, Stoke, Devonport, as being the address where they lived. I do not know my grandfather’s name but I do remember my grandmother referring to her brother, Bob.
My mother’s parents seem to have been quite well-to-do. The house at Stuart Terrace, Stoke, Devonport, was, I imagine, quite imposing and I know my mother had private tuition in piano and violin and in her education.  When my sister and I started learning the piano in Courtmacsherry, my mother told us that she had her lessons from Professor ...somebody.. who used to call at their house.  He had a ruler and if she didn’t hold her wrists or hands properly, he used to rap her across the knuckles.
I never knew my paternal grandparents.  They were both dead before I was born.  My father was born on the outskirts of a town called Clonakilty at a place called Castlefreke. Dad’s mother’s maiden name was Wolfe, Bessie Wolfe, hence the connection with Wolfe’s farm, that will feature later in my story.
His father was already dead when my father left home to join the Navy. He always used to say that he went across the Irish Sea in a pig-boat with the pigs and that his father was dead at that time. While he was in the Navy, he was recalled home by telegram, got special leave and got to Clonakilty just in time to be there when his mother died.
His one and only sister, Annie, was already dead.  She died when she was eighteen and his only brother Tom, was at that time already in America.
My mother and father were married in 1900 when Dad was twenty-one and Mum was nineteen.  That was quite normal in those days, girls would even get married at sixteen, seventeen or eighteen. Mum was just twenty-eight when I was born.  My mother being English and my father being Irish, I suppose you could call us Anglo-Irish.
I started school when I was three. In small villages and towns that was quite usual. I already knew the alphabet. I remember it was Granny that took me. I can remember being prepared; it must have been the conversation and talk of the previous days. We must have arrived after the school had actually started, all the children were in there. Granny and I walked up to the door,  I was very apprehensive but of course I knew all the children that were on the register of that school.  It was the Protestant school. Another name for it was the National School. The greatest number on the register was twenty-five.  The schoolteacher was Mrs. Ruddock. Three of her own children were pupils. 
There were four Ruddock children, the eldest being Edie (Edith). So it was Edie, Jane, Noble and Minnie.  Minnie was four months younger than I; her birthday was the 30th November.  Two cousins of the Ruddocks were also pupils. They were Dot and Charlie Howlett. Their father was killed in the war. He was also named Charlie.  I remember the news coming through that Dot and Charlie’s father had been killed.
I remember Charlie Howlett (we always called him Charlie) being home on leave, possibly 1915. He was tall, in a sailor’s uniform, outside Ruddock’s house, which was next door to Howlett’s own house on The Terrace. I can see him now jumping over the back of a donkey and I thought how marvellous it was that he could do something like that.
Note. He was Samuel Howlett, a Lance Corporal in the Royal Fusiliers (London Regiment) and he was killed in action on 26 October 1917.
I remember that first day at school, going with Granny, walking up towards the door of the schoolroom.  It was only one room, a double-storied house near the Courtmacsherry Hotel, at the end of the town, near the Protestant church. There was just one room downstairs and living quarters upstairs, probably two or three rooms.  I suppose that is where the teacher would normally live although Mrs. Ruddock  who was the teacher had her own home.
Note. Mrs. Ruddock came to Courtmacsherry as a teacher in 1908.  Her single name was Anne J. Gillman. She lived in the teacher’s quarters until sometime after her marriage to Bob Ruddock, at which time they moved to his family home on The Terrace.
Once we got inside the classroom I do not remember anything until a couple of hours later when we had our first play.  The children started a gramophone. I’d never seen or heard a gramophone and I remember being frightened out of my life by the voice coming out of this thing and apparently I took to my heels, out the door and ran home!
Later on, I recollect the children at playtime, seating Minnie Ruddock and myself on the spread out branch of a large tree.  The branch had quite a lot of small branches and leaves spread    out.  They sat us on this branch, we were married and it was our ‘wedding coach’. I didn’t think it was unpleasant so I must have had a crush on Minnie, I suppose.
The teacher that relieved Mrs. Ruddock, when she gave up teaching and reverted to the role of housewife was a Miss Boardman.  I went back to Ireland for the first time after we went to live in England in the summer of 1931.  I had just paid off the dispatch, having spent two years and seven months on the American West Indies Station.  Mum and I went over to Ireland; that was the first time we had been to Ireland since we had left in 1921.  Mum and I went to Courtmacsherry during the week or ten days we were over there.   We stayed with Mrs. Deasy, a friend in the village, who lived near the Post Office. (The Post Office was not just a Post Office; it was a general store also.)  It was opposite the Railway Station.  Mrs. Deasy lived just a little way away from that and she was a real old Irish lady.
We stayed with her because it was inconvenient to stay with Mrs. Ruddock, where we might have normally stayed.  She had Minnie, Jane, Edie and Noble all at home, it being summertime.   I recall that, at that particular time, Jane and Edie were working in Cork and that Jane worked in the Metropole Hotel.  Well, we put up with Mrs. Deasy for the two or three days we were down in Courtmac because they were all home for the summer holidays.
Most of the time we stayed in Cork and visited Uncle Willie; we took him out, we took him all around.  We didn’t take him down to Courtmac with us because I didn’t have a car that time.
We did go to Douglas where Miss Boardman was teaching in Douglas school.  Mum and I went there one afternoon and visited her in the classroom.  She gave the class ten minutes break and came and talked to us.  She hadn’t changed a bit.
Across the road from the school, there was a road that wound up and around the back of the town and it led out to a place called Lislee.  There was also a Protestant church at Lislee and once a month the Rev. Forde, who was our parson, would hold the morning service at Lislee church.  The other three Sundays in the month the service was in the church that was quite near the National School in the town.
Right alongside the school and separating the school from the Courtmacsherry Hotel was the road.  About 100 yards up the road, where it bent away to the right, on the left of it, just there on the bend, was a very large house, like a Georgian mansion. It stood in what must have been five or ten acres of land. It had enormous greenhouses with grapes; beautiful peacocks and peahens strutting around the grounds, and a lodge at the gate. The house was called Kincraigie and the lady who owned it was Lady Johnson-Travers. She must have been a widow, I cannot recall a husband.
Note. Francis V. Johnson-Travers is listed in Guy’s Directory for County Cork at Kincraigie, Courtmacsherry in 1921.
Across this road then, this same road from the school building, there was a little bit of a wood. In this wood there were very large trees and we played there quite often at playtime. I remember summer; lovely sunny summer days and us children playing in the woods where masses of rhododendrons,  bamboo and pampas grass grew wild.
Under some of those trees, I have no idea what kind of tree, we used to dig down about three inches with our fingers, close to the trunk, among the roots that were showing through the ground and we used to get some sort of nut.  The nut seemed to grow in the ground and not drop from the trees. It was as big as a filbert nut probably as big as a thumbnail.
To go back to the register of the school, twenty-five was the greatest number they had there.  In our time it was fairly static, there were three Ruddocks, two Howletts, my sister Doreen and myself. There were the Morgans, the Fairweathers and three of the Love family.
Doreen’s proper name is Dorothy Honor, after my mother who was also Dorothy Honor and - but only by my parents – Judy. I don’t know why they called her Judy,  it was just a pet name for her.
The Loves owned one of the few general shops in the town and it was the nearest one to the bottom of the hill that led up to the Coastguard Station. They were one of the few Protestant families. There were Mr. And Mrs. Love and the children that went to the school were Willie, the eldest; his sister Tina and the youngest was Robbie. All three would have been a few years older than either Doreen or me. Willie and Tina were probably just in their teens, twelve, thirteen or fourteen, because they always seemed big to me and from the photograph I have here, they look as if they were teenagers. That photograph was taken the year the war ended, 1918.
I was very interested in reading and I must have to been able to read at quite an early age, I think by the age of four. I remember being called to read at the front of the class during the reading session.   That was one thing we used to have to do.  We’d have a reading period when we had silent reading and then halfway through the session various members of the class would be called out to read for the remainder of the class. I think that is what enabled us to read at an early age.
We had one period of religious instruction on Friday and the Rev. Forde, our parson, would sometimes attend in the afternoon. There were desks on each side of the room, facing the blackboard, with a gangway up the centre. I can see him now, with his hands behind his back, walking up the centre aisle, between the desks. He wore a black coat with two black tails hanging down the back and right in the middle of his back were two black buttons, cloth covered in the same material as the coat. One of the exciting things I remember was, as he passed them, certain children would, with their pen, go through the motions of putting a cross or something on one of those buttons on his back.  I don’t think they actually touched the buttons.
I was christened by Rev. Forde. When he called on a Friday to the school, well before I was eight, I was able to recite the Catechism and the Lord’s Prayer. They were two things we had to learn and he would question us on them and ask us if we knew them.  We had to learn the Ten Commandments too, that was a must.
My schooldays were very happy and strangely it always seemed to be summery. I can’t remember winter. It always seemed to be warm, with sunshine.    I remember the once a month walk to Lislee church.  That would be about four miles and we would either walk or quite often we would ride with Lady Johnson-Travers or someone else who had a horse or pony and trap. I can remember very well walking along the dusty country road and my father saying to me “Tom, turn your toes out, don’t walk pigeon toed, turn your toes out, and hold your shoulders back”.
There were twenty-five of us on the school register and the town had a population of perhaps 800. The other school in the town was Roman Catholic.
There was never any friction that I can recall between the Protestants and the Catholics in the town.  They respected us as Protestants and we didn’t bother about them as Roman Catholics and we respected them.  I can never recall friction of any sort. I cannot recall any unhappy days at all at school.
Other happy days I can recall were of picnics to Sandy Cove and swimming. To get to Sandy Cove, we walked along the Main Street and passed the Protestant church, the school and the Courtmacsherry Hotel. That was the last building in that direction from the town and then the road ended. There was a grassy track running alongside  the sea, perhaps  fifteen feet above the sea on a cliff and then through the wood. Then came what we called The Point. That was at the entrance to Courtmacsherry Bay, rugged rock cliffs looking straight out to the Atlantic and the famous Old Head of Kinsale lighthouse.
These rocks, the whole coastline there was solid black rock. In some places it would have been as level as a billiard table and almost mathematical dimensions, for example a slab of rock, perfectly smooth, maybe forty feet wide and almost exactly the same width from the shore to where it ended, protruding straight out into the ocean and perhaps the surface of the rock being six or ten feet above the surface of the sea.  It would always be above the sea, except when the sea was very, very rough when it would break over the top of it.  At other parts of the coast would be submerged at high water and exposed at low tide.  We could walk on those parts and we used to fish from them.   It was a rugged coast with black rock and Sandy Cove was just one indentation, about twenty-five or thirty feet wide and probably about forty feet long from the shoreline to the edge of the water.  The water was very clear, you could see the bottom, but it was not very shallow for any distance, after about fifteen feet it would drop away, so as children we were warned not to go more than about six feet into the water.   We were very daring, we used to jump from the side, off the rocks, into the water.  It was probably above our depth but we seemed to have no fear of it.  That was probably when I learnt to swim, because I recollect being able to swim when we got to England in 1921.  I was ten then and I remember I was able to swim.  
Those days seemed idyllic; to a child a lovely summer day and picnicking on the rocks at Sandy Cove would seem like that.
There are two more memories I have of The Point area.  One is of the mackerel, which at certain seasons used to shoal all around that area.  My memory is of the mackerel chasing the sprats; the mackerel would chase shoals of sprats in towards the coast at The Point, between two of those huge rocky promontories that formed a natural bay.  The mackerel would drive the sprats in and have a feast there.  When the mackerel and sprats were shoaling like that, the local inhabitants would rush to The Point.  I can remember running with the others and getting out to The Point.   Men and children would get on to those slabs of rock. The men would have nets on the end of a broom handle with them, like the sort that trout fishermen would have for the final operation of getting the trout off the hook.  They would reach down six to ten feet into the water with the net and bring it up full of sprat and tip it out onto the rock.  Everybody would bait the hooks with the live sprat, putting the sprat straight onto the hooks and drop the hook straight into the water.  As quickly as you could drop the hook, you would haul it up again with a mackerel on it.  You would literally catch scores of mackerel.
The other recollection I have of The Point is not from the shore but being out on a boat.  The Coastguard had its own boat, a twenty-seven foot whaler. Occasionally, during the summer, they would take the whaler and either sail or pull it out into Courtmacsherry Bay and fish.  It was a day’s outing and on the odd occasion I was allowed to go along with Dad.  We would fish from the boat for a fish called pollock and other fish too. It was lovely out there in the boat.
Another name for the Coastguards that you would never hear now was ‘the Gobbies’.  I do not know why.  It may have come from the Navy, there is some origin for every word, every name in the Navy.
At that time the Coastguard was a naval service.  It was run by the Navy and the Coastguard was active service men.  They were simply appointed as Coastguards by the Navy.  In nearly all cases they were volunteers.  They would volunteer for service in the Coastguard. It depended on the circumstances of the individual.  They were selected very carefully.  Years after we got to England, the Coastguard ceased to be a branch of the Navy and was taken over by the Board of Trade.
As I said, I was born in the house in which we lived in the Coastguard Station in Courtmacsherry and I remember my mother and grandmother speaking about the time when I was born and how the doctor, lived in a house across the bay from Courtmacsherry.   There were just a few houses over there.  Apparently the local nurse was on hand but it seemed there were complications and the doctor had been consulted beforehand and was on tap, if you can call it that.  Somehow or other he was summoned and he came across by boat.
I recall my mother and grandmother telling me in later years about an episode that concerned me and our donkey, called Betsy.  On the rising ground at the back of the Coastguard Station were fields and Betsy was grazing in the first field behind the Coastguard Station. I wandered away without being noticed and made my way up there without being noticed, oh it would only be fifty or seventy yards away, I suppose.  When my father noticed me, he saw me sitting on the grass underneath Betsy, between the four legs.  In a panic, he shouted at me ‘Don’t move’ or something to that effect. He was terrified I would get kicked or stepped on. I just crawled out from underneath Betsy. I stood up and cupping my mouth with my hands, I shouted out in a childish voice, “I won’t touch Betsy, Daddy boy”!
At this time, the family consisted of my mother and father, my grandmother, my eldest brother Willie, my brother Harry, my sister Doreen and me. 
My brother Willie was born in 1903, making him eight years older than me; my brother Harry was born in 1905, making him six years older than me; my sister Doreen was born in 1908, making her three years older than me.
My brother Willie was born paralysed on the left side and as a result has never walked but otherwise was perfectly normal.  My brother Harry was perfectly normal when he was born but after a fall from a high-chair had meningitis which left him deaf and dumb.  This was one reason why Dad was appointed to the Coastguard, on the recommendation of the senior officer and friend, Admiral, The Hon. Lionel Lambert.
My brothers Willie and Harry (his name was actually Henry) and my sister Doreen were born in Devonport, Plymouth. Devonport is about two miles from Plymouth. The dockyard is at Devonport. My parents must have moved to Courtmacsherry therefore between 1908 and 1910, because I was born in Courtmacsherry in 1911.
I recall my mother speaking of the regular meetings of the young naval wives in Devonport and it was through these meetings that she got to know and became very friendly with an Admiral’s wife, or in fact, at that time, a Captain’s wife.  That was the wife of The Hon. Lionel Lambert, later to be promoted to Admiral.  When Dad was called back at the outbreak of war, Admiral Lambert, as he was then, sent for Dad and he became his Coxswain.  It was through the recommendation of Captain Lambert, on the advice of his wife, she knowing my mother, that Dad applied for, and was accepted for the Coastguard, and they went to Courtmacsherry.
Dad served as Coxswain with Admiral Lambert either aboard the Grafton or the Diamond. Dad served on both these ships during the war.  When my brother, Lionel, was born at  Ring Bar on the 18th of January 1921 and was christened in that little Protestant church at Ring Bar, he was christened Lionel, because of the friendship of my mother and father with Admiral, The Hon. Lionel Lambert and his wife.
Captain Lambert’s wife suggested the Coastguards because of the handicaps of Willie and Harry.  With Dad being in the Coastguards and being ashore all the time, it would reduce the burden on Mum of looking after them.  Both Willie and Harry were at home until the outbreak of war in 1914.  When Dad returned to sea, Willie was put into the H.P.I., Hospital for Protestant Incurables in Cork City.  Harry, who was less handicapped because he could walk, stayed at home.
That was the family position until Dad returned from the war in 1919, shortly after which we moved to Ring Bar, where he was appointed Station Officer.
We were burned out in Ring Bar in March 1921 and were transferred to England, arriving there in April/May 1921.  We took Harry with us but left Willie in the H.P.I. in Cork. 
My father, having applied and being accepted for the Coastguard, was asked if he had any preference for a district and he said that he would like to be stationed in the south of Ireland and if possible somewhere near Clonakilty in County Cork.  That is how he came to be appointed to Courtmacsherry.
Looking back, I cannot really remember that we treated Harry as any different to us.  He had a very happy nature, was always laughing and was very friendly; he had a very loving disposition.  I know everyone loved him very much.  He had a normal life.  He played with us in every way and I cannot recall thinking of him as being different to us.  We used to make ourselves understood with the alphabet for the dumb, we all knew that.  I still remember most of it. Harry understood everything.  He was very intelligent.
I will go on now with more reminiscences of my childhood in Courtmacsherry.  One memory seems to be about a boat and it involves the time from when I was about five until we left Courtmacsherry when I was aged eight.  I remembering pestering my father constantly, saying to him “Daddy, I want a boat” and I know they used to take me off – Obviously I had a very pronounced brogue then – and they used to repeat what I said “Daddy I want a booaat!” 
I remember playing with the other boys at the waterfront, in this little harbour we had.  It consisted of a mole – a breakwater.  If you stood on the shore, it would be like crooking a person’s left arm, raised across the body and crooked at the elbow.   Just the one mole and I can remember seeming to spend an awful of time down there playing in the boats with my friends, Noble Ruddock, Robbie Love and the Morgan boys.  The boats would be drawn up on the beach or even some of them just anchored off in the water.
The mole was actually called Courtmacsherry pier.  I remember being at the end of the pier at low tide so that leaning over the outer side of the pier one could look down and see the mud at the bottom of the pier.  I remember us boys looking over the top and seeing three or four men below us and they had what looked like wooden broom handles and secured to one end was a steel hook.  They would push these hooks into the holes between the stones at the bottom of the pier and hook into huge conger eels that lived there. They would drag them out at the end of the hook.  Oh, some of them must have been about twelve feet long! It was quite an exciting thing for us boys to lean over the top, watching them catching the conger eels.
I have a vivid recollection of a lifeboat from the Lusitania on that pier. The Lusitania was sunk right off the Old Head of Kinsale, just along the coast from Courtmacsherry.  She was torpedoed by a German submarine and the lifeboat must have been picked up just outside Courtmacsherry Bay, brought in and hoisted on to the pier. Half the population of the town were having a look at it on the pier. I remember looking into this lifeboat the day it was brought in or perhaps the morning after and seeing water in it.  I must have been hoisted up; I can remember leaning on the boat and seeing biscuits floating around in the water inside, all swollen, ship’s biscuits.  I would have been only three years and ten months old but I have a vivid memory of that lifeboat on the pier at Courtmacsherry.
It was a lovely Spring day when the Lusitania was sunk. It was the 7th of May 1915 and the time was 2.13 – 2.15 in the afternoon. She was sunk approximately twelve miles off the Old Head of Kinsale.  The torpedo that sank her was fired from a German U Boat, Underseeboot, commanded by Kapitan Lieutnant Walter Schweiger.  The U Boat’s number was U 20. She was one week out of Emden in Germany when she first spotted the Lusitania.  She was surfaced about fifteen miles south.  This was Schweiger’s first patrol and the war was not yet one year old.  The U 20 had, in the previous twenty-four hours torpedoed and sunk two Hurson Line steamers and shelled a sailing ship. Also in the same waters was the U 27 that had sailed from Emden with the U 20.  The U23 was also somewhere around the Irish coast and it sank three British fighting ships in the opening months of the war to become Germany’s number one submarine.  It was commanded by Kapitan Lieutnant Hershing.  The U21 was also there, passing through on its way to the Adriatic.  The U29 was also somewhere in Irish waters and had sunk ships off Scotland a little earlier.   The crew of the U20 were thirty-five men and three officers.  It was 650 ton displacement and the torpedoes carried a 290lb. warhead each.
They were using a new explosive called Troikle.  The torpedoes had a range of about four miles.  The U20 was running on the surface, re-charging her batteries when, shortly before 2 o’clock, through binoculars, Schweiger sighted the masts and upper works of the Lusitania, coming in from the south-west and heading towards the Old Head of Kinsale.  He immediately dived to periscope depth of about thirty feet and got up full speed, took up a course that he hoped would be an interception course toward the Lusitania, that would enable him to fire his bow-fish.  The Lusitania was doing about eighteen knots, although she could do twenty-five. Her engines steam turbine, something comparatively new that had revolutionised the transatlantic run.  She could do it in about four and a half days.  She was 790 feet long and had four funnels.  She carried on this particular trip 1,257 passengers.  Eventually about half of these were lost when she was torpedoed.
Schweiger, on an interception course, came in from about fifteen miles of the Old Head of Kinsale to about twelve miles.  At that time Captain Turner, who was the captain of the Lusitania, a real old sea dog who had spent all his time on sailing ships, had decided he would take a four-point bearing on the Old Head of Kinsale.
To the west of Courtmacsherry Bay lay the Seven Heads and beyond that the Galley Head. The Old Head of Kinsale was on the east of Courtmacsherry Bay and it protruded about three miles into the sea. On the easterly side of The Old Head of Kinsale, was the town of Kinsale and the mouth of the river Bandon.  The town of Bandon, lay further inland, in fact, quite near Courtmac.  We knew Bandon very well.
The torpedoing of the Lusitania, before even a year of the First World War had elapsed, was one of the greatest disasters the world has ever known.  It shocked every country throughout the world, especially the United States. The Lusitania had, of course, sailed from New York and there were some very prominent Americans on board, in particular one of the world’s richest men, the thirty-eight year old Alfred Vanderbilt.  He was among some very important people who lost their lives as a result of the sinking. It shocked the whole world.
Captain Turner decided to take a four-point bearing on the Old Head of Kinsale and to do that, coming in from the south-west, he would have been heading north-west.  He hove to around a bit to starboard, steering a course of about 0.87˚ - almost due east – to get his four-point bearing and it was this alteration of course to starboard that brought him into what was a perfect firing position for the bow-fish from the U20.  This is what happened at about 2.15-2.20.  Schweiger fired a fish from one of his bow tubes and got a hit.  That was an event of great historical importance that took place near Courtmac and though it did not bring the Americans into the war just then, I think it was touch and go.  What it did do was leave them free to supply masses of equipment to the Allies.  In fact, they did not enter the war until shortly before the end of the war. Co-incidentally a similar event took place during the Second World War when the ship, Athenia, was sunk about 300 miles north-west of Ireland, the day after the Second World War was declared, the 4th September, 1939.  That ship was taking a lot of children to America, getting them out of Britain twenty-four hours after war was declared and included in the passengers were about 600 your American girls.  She was torpedoed with a great loss of life.
Note.  SS Athenia was sunk with the loss of 128 lives comprising civilian passengers and crew.  Twenty-eight of those lost were U.S. citizens.
There is something else that I remember and looking back now it was probably the first time in my life that I was conscious of feeling a sense of achievement.  This is the only time that I remember from my childhood in Courtmac that I felt I had done something big.  Courtmacsherry pier was, as I have mentioned earlier, like a person’s left arm, bent at the elbow.  When it was low water, at Spring tide, the harbour inside that pier dried out and it was just mud.  One of the things that was quite THE ACHIEVEMENT of the boys around my age in the village was to walk from the beach side across to that elbow of the pier where there were some steps going up.  That meant walking through this mud, you see.  For a long, long time, I wanted to do this like some of the other boys had done but it took me some time to make up muster up the courage.  I can remember the day when, at last, I rolled up my trousers, although we had only short trousers anyway, and stepped out.  Once I stepped out, there was no going back, I just had to go on.  The thing that caused us to be apprehensive about doing this particular thing was the fact we were forbidden to do it because of the danger of stepping with bare feet on broken bottles in the mud, although bottles were not used and discarded a lot in those days, especially in a village like that. Nevertheless there were some around and there was always the danger of having your foot gashed with a broken bottle.  Of course, when we walked across there, a distance of about sixty or seventy paces I suppose, we sank down ‘till the mud was up to our knees, so you had to take one laborious step after another.  I remember reaching those steps at the elbow and climbing up on to the pier with this tremendous feeling of achievement, of having done something really important.
We had no electricity and would have an oil lamp burning on the kitchen table and maybe one or two others around the room.  The old-fashioned coal range would be glowing in the winter evenings and we would be scattered around that table, singing or doing lessons perhaps or having stories told by Granny or Mum or Dad even, but mainly by Granny or my mother because, during that impressionable time between the age of three in 1914 and 1919, when I was eight, my father was away at the war.
Most of the memories of that sort of thing, being in the kitchen on winter evenings seem to revolve around my mother and my grandmother.   I remember singing certain songs, like ‘Clementine’ as young children, we all knew the words.  I could recite the 23rd Psalm, the Ten Commandments, the Apostles Creed and the Lord’s Prayer.  I must have known a couple of dozen hymns, word perfect.  We had a piano and we used to quite a lot of that and singing, having to read aloud, and having stories told to us.
I remember suffering in two ways.  One was from agonising earache.  My grandmother and my mother prepared slivers of onion by putting them on the front of the coal range to heat up. When they started to turn brown, they took them away, allowed them to cool slightly and wrapped them in cotton wool. They quickly put this in my ear.  I suppose it was some sort of old fashioned remedy, perhaps the vapour given off by the onion would effect a cure.
There was another thing that caused me more distress than earache.  I remember the atmosphere of the room when it happened.  It would be evening and it happened in winter time. I used to get severe pains up the front of both shins; halfway between the knee and the foot, on the shin bone.  I got these terrible pains there and Granny would always refer to them as ‘growing pains’.  They were terrible and nothing could be done about them, there was no remedy.
A lot of the songs that we used to sing seem to have had their origin in the States, for example ‘John Brown’s Body’ and ‘Old Black Joe’; songs about the negroes in the American South that were written by Stephen Foster that had become popular.  I still remember the words of them now.
I remember my Uncle Tom calling at Courtmac.  It must have been after the war ended; Armistice Day was 11th November 1918.  It must have been after that date but may have been before my father got back from north Russia, because as far as I can remember, Dad was not at home though I am not absolutely sure of that. Uncle Tom had been over to France with the American Forces and now that the war was over, he was on his way back to the States.  When he had left Ireland, he went to Boston, Massachusetts. He was still single then and when he called on my mother, or my mother and father if he was actually home, he asked that I be let go to the States with him, adopting me I suppose. I  only heard about it years later.
I also remember that Lady Johnson-Travers from Kincraigie expressing a wish that my  mother would allow her to paint my portrait.  Lady Johnson-Travers must have been a bit of an artist, not a professional artist but an amateur whose ability may have been equal to that of a professional.  It never materialised but who knows, something important may have been lost for posterity. I suppose the reason she didn’t get around to painting my portrait was due to the upheaval of war. I am pretty sure that I was around the age of three, in 1914, when the war started and I still had my curls, that she first expressed the wish to paint my portrait.  After that it probably got put off by my mother and then as I got older it probably died a natural death.
In 1921, we went to England and in 1923 when I joined Greenwich school.  Sometime after that, perhaps 1924,  I remember my mother saying that Lady Johnson-Travers lived at Kensington in London, so apparently she had moved to England too, she and her husband (if there was a husband, I cannot remember that), in 1921 or 1922.
There were a lot of landed gentry, aristocracy in Ireland at that time.  Every county in Ireland, without a doubt, would have had a Lord, an Earl or a Knight, at least one of those I should say.  Some lived in castles, more of them lived in very big houses, sort of Georgian mansions with acres and acres of grounds.  Quite a lot of the aristocracy lived in Ireland and had done for hundreds of years and most of them seemed to be Protestants.  There are still of them left over there, even nowadays.  The present, newly elected, President of the Olympic Games is Lord Killanin, an Irish peer.  I know there was a Lord Bandon, Lord Wexford, Lord Waterford, oh, there were a lot of them.
I remember a character called Johnny Mick.  Johnny Mick was a man that, periodically, we would see in Courtmac, with a donkey and butt (a cart was always referred to as a butt).  He made periodic visits to Courtmac in the donkey and butt.  I have no idea what his other name was, probably Johnny and Mick were his two Christian names and everybody called him that.  As children we never spoke to him, in fact we wouldn’t get within ten or fifteen feet of him.  I don’t know of any reason why we were all afraid of him, but we were.
There was another character, whose name I cannot remember; I cannot put a name on him.  I’ve got an idea he was linked up with Johnny Mick, in fact, he could have been Johnny Mick’s son, but I am not sure on that point.  He was a crippled boy and was probably a little older than me.  Both his feet were turned in and he wore black boots with very thick soles.  Both feet were so completely turned inwards that one foot had to be lifted over the other as he walked or ran and believe me, he could run too.  Again, we children never spoke to him and we always gave him a wide berth.  It is probably because he was a cripple that we were afraid of him.
Now, the town of Courtmac ran along one side of Courtmacsherry Harbour, just a long straight road running alongside the harbour.  At one end of the town was the Protestant school, the Protestant or national school and the one big residential hotel.  Continue further along and you came to The Point.
If you entered the other end of the town, from the direction of the town of Timoleague, on the left was the harbour and the one-track railway line.  As you entered Courtmac, there was also a row of houses on the left.  In fact these were the only houses on the left in the village.  I should say there was probably about twenty or thirty houses there, no more than that.  They were all in a sort of terrace, joined to each other, all exactly the same and for some reason or other (I haven’t the foggiest idea why) they were known as Siberia.  You would talk about the Siberia end of the town or just so and so,(a child) lived in Siberia.  Of course, they were all Roman Catholics.
Incidentally, at that end of the town, at the opposite side of the road from these houses, was the Roman Catholic church.  It was the first building on the right hand side as you came in from Timoleague.
On the right, past the church, and running towards the town, were just ordinary houses, all joined together and the front of each house was on the footpath.  That was the standard practice.
When we went back there in 1947 (me, your mother, Gary and Danny – Tom was only six months old and he stayed with Auntie Doreen), I got a car and we stayed at Dillon’s Crossing which is just on the outskirts of Cork city.  We stayed on a farm there with a family named Rice.  I got a car and we went down to Courtmacsherry during the holiday and we stayed at the hotel, that’s the Courtmacsherry Hotel, the big residential one out towards The Point. In fact our accommodation was not in the hotel itself, but in an annexe across the road, a lovely little annexe there.  One day, in the hotel itself, where we had our meals, I said something or other to one of the waitresses and she said “Oh yes, I remember you, I know you Mr. Maguire. I live in Siberia and we were children together”.  She remembered me well but I didn’t know who she was because the Protestants and the Catholics didn’t mix, except very, very occasionally at play maybe, if I happened to be down by the railway station or something, but not deliberately, just sort of an accident.  We always seemed to keep together as two communities.
During that summer of 1947, it was a lovely summer when we went over there, we called on my old teacher, Mrs. Ruddock.  She still lived in the same house and we had tea with her.  There were two public houses in the town, I know for sure of two, no more.  Coming in from the Timoleague end of the town, there was the Roman Catholic church, then some houses and then you came to some shops, the little tiny shops of the town. Opposite the railway station, which was the only other building on the left past Siberia, was the Post Office and a little further along, maybe one or two little shops and a pub.  I don’t know if it had a name or not. Next was Mrs. Love’s, Mr. And Mrs. Love’s grocery shop.  Then you came along eventually to the Hill which led up to the Coastguard Station and on the other side of The Hill were again residential houses. These were set back from the road and on a slightly higher level.  I should think they were three or four feet higher than the level of the road and set back maybe thirty or forty feet.  I should think there were fifteen or sixteen houses, something like that and they were always known as The Terrace.
As you stood on the road looking at the houses of The Terrace, it was the left hand house that was Mrs. Ruddock’s and the one next to it would have been the Howlett’s.  There The Terrace ended and you came back down and the houses were again beside the road, running along to the Protestant church. About halfway along was another pub.
During the time we were there on that holiday in 1947, I went in there one hot day for a drink and just to get the atmosphere and look around.  As far as I know, none of my family ever used it, when we lived there.  Dad might possibly have gone in for a drink in the pub near to Love’s, but not along there, which was further away.  Anyway, I went in there and by now everybody knew that Tom Maguire,, his wife and two boys were in the village and staying at the hotel.  The buzz would have got around, I am sure.  It was a tiny little pub with just two rooms, there were two little bars and you could go from one to the other through a door and the bar itself was common to both, separated by a little partition.  Anyway, I went in and I asked for a drink and the fellow behind the bar called me by name.  I said “Oh, you know me” and he said “Yes, but I knew your father”.  Then he said “Just a moment” and he went away. There wouldn’t have been more than a half a dozen in the bar. He came back with a photograph of Dad and the other Coastguards and he said “There you are, there is a photograph of your father”.  He said “ Fine man, fine man, broth of a boy”.  He was very eager to talk to me and recalled the times when I was a boy and he seemed to think a great deal of Dad.
After ’47, we went back, twice again for a holiday. On one of those visits we went by car right across Cork, through the county of Cork and out into the county of Kerry and right over to Killarney. Your mother and myself went over without you children in December 1952, because we were coming here to New Zealand in the March, three months later. We nipped over to see Uncle Willie for a last visit. On those other visits we also called on Mrs. Ruddock and had tea with her.
I am speaking now on 10th February 1973. I had a letter just before Christmas from Aunty Doreen.  She had been over in Ireland in September (1972) and she stayed there for two weeks.  During that time she went down to Courtmacsherry and she said there had been at least two new houses built since our time, in the vicinity of the school.   She said one of those, a particularly lovely bungalow was owned by Jane Ruddock, who had been Aunty Doreen’s great friend.  Jane and Doreen were bosom pals at the time.  Doreen called and had tea with Jane.  These were probably or possibly the only new houses built since we lived there.  Doreen said that when she called on Jane, she learned that Mrs. Ruddock was now dead, that she had died maybe two or three years previously.  She was over ninety when she died.
I don’t suppose you boys remember a great deal of detail about those trips over there but Gary tells me he remembers sitting in the open boot of the car with Danny as we drove the whole length of Courtmacsherry.  Gary would have been six then and Danny would have been four.  Gary also remembers riding that pony of Rice’s, across the road and up the hilly paddock at Rice’s farm.  I do too, I thought he was going to drop off for sure, that pony galloping up there.
Now, here’s a story I should tell.  The road between Courtmacsherry and Timoleague has, on its right, as you go from Courtmac to Timoleague, the upper reaches of Courtmacsherry Harbour.  On the left, there are fields and paddocks.  Coming the other way, it is the reverse.  The distance between Courtmacsherry and Timoleague is about three and a half or four miles.
This particular story took place during the war when my father was away.  My mother took my sister, Doreen, to visit some friends in Timoleague one Sunday.  I stayed at home with Granny.  My mother intended to leave Timoleague and get home before dark, but for one reason or another she didn’t leave Timoleague until it was later than she intended. Coupled with that, there was a gale blowing, there were strong winds, thunder and lightning and heavy rain. As they left Timoleague, they crossed over a small bridge and there on the outskirts of Timoleague, on the left, on the seaward side, back a little were the ruins of an old abbey.
Note.   Timoleague Abbey or Abbeymahon?  Details are not accurate for either.
There are ruins of old abbeys dotted all over Ireland. This was one with headstones and graves in the graveyard and as my mother reached the abbey, she saw the figure of a woman cross the road in front of her, from the abbey towards the hedge on the road.  The figure was dressed in the usual dress of the Irish countrywoman; a long black dress almost reaching the deck with a black shawl over her head, held under the chin.
When my mother got to the spot where it appeared to go into the hedge, she saw there was no boreen or lane there and she wondered where the apparition, this woman, had gone. It had disappeared.  A few yards further on she became aware of a movement on her right and saw what appeared to be the upper half of a woman just gliding along the hedge and keeping well in line with her.  My mother kept Doreen well on the seaward side and covered her over with her voluminous skirts to try and keep her from seeing this and also to protect her from the weather.  So she continued to the outskirts of Courtmacsherry, not in a panic, because of Doreen.  As they reached the outskirts of Courtmacsherry, the first building on the right is the Roman Catholic church and this apparition wheeled right and disappeared there.
My mother went to one of the first houses there, knocked on the door and asked for a drink.  She was feeling faint at this stage. Reaction was setting in and the people said “You’ve seen it” and Mum said “What”?  They told her the story and she asked “How did you know”? They said “You are not the first one that’s seen it, by a long way”
They said it was the spirit of a woman who was in purgatory, half-way between earth and heaven and couldn’t rest.
The sequel to this story is that my father had a couple of days leave during the war and the same thing happened to him.  He had to leave the train at Timoleague because there was a gale blowing and the sea had washed over the railway tracks between Timoleague and Courtmacsherry, so had to walk that three miles home. 
When the war was all over, it came up in discussion.  My mother mentioned it and my father was able to finish off the story.  She said to him “How did you know?” and he said that the same thing had happened to him.  Of course it has been definitely established that there are such things as poltergeists; that’s a German word and I think it means mischievous ghost. They throw objects around the room and that sort of thing.
A well-known character that I remember in Courtmacsherry was Paddy the Post.  He was the postman, hence ‘Paddy the Post’.  I have no idea what his real name was. He lived in a cottage, on the left, at the bottom of the hill leading up to the Coastguard Station. I can see him now, running along the gravel towards the first house in the Coastguard Station, waving a telegram and shouting and all the women being excited, dancing around and shouting for joy and saying “The war is over”.  That must have been the 11th of November 1918.
Dad didn’t come home for another year after that.  He was one of the unfortunates.  He was sent to an icebreaker and because of the Russian Revolution, which at that time was in full swing, he was sent to the north of Russia, in this icebreaker, to Archangel in Murmansk.
I can remember when he did get home in 1919, he telling tales of some of the terrible things that happened up there, the atrocities and of them taking on board the people who were escaping from the Revolution. They would mostly have been the middle class and the aristocracy of Russia.  They were known as the White Russians as opposed to the Bolshies (now known as the Communists) – the Red Russians.  I can remember him tell of one girl of about eighteen, that she was a walking skeleton, starved, skin and bones and he said the ship’s surgeon who weighed her said she was only six or seven stone.  The surgeon had to put rubber gloves on; to try and avoid bruising her flesh, I suppose.  He said there were some shocking sights.
I remember the evening Dad got back, in 1919.  He arrived, unknown to me, and possibly to my sister as well.  I remember my mother calling me in and saying “Go into the sitting room.  There is somebody in there who wants to see you”.  Whether it was intuition or not, I don’t know, but before I walked into that room, I seemed to know who was in there.  As I walked into the room, I saw somebody laying on a sofa, a form on a sofa, covered with a naval greatcoat.  Of course it was just an act put on for my benefit.  I can remember my mother saying “Well, who is it?” and I remember saying “I know who it is, it’s Daddy”!  I was just eight at the time.
Another clear memory of my childhood in Courtmac is my sister and I going to Wolfe’s farm at the back of the Coastguard Station.  It was probably three-quarters of a mile or maybe a mile across the fields and we had to go there for our milk.  The Wolfes were relations on my father’s side.  They had this farm there.  Doreen and I used to have to go though the small wood at the back of the Coastguard Station to reach the first field.  Then we went through several more fields before we got to the farm.
It always seemed to be summer to me and I can remember my sister and I helping to turn the handle that churned the butter.  I can also remember going out into the hedgerows and bringing back baskets of eggs that were laid by the hens and ducks underneath the hedges and even goose eggs.  They were in one of the fields we passed through and we were always very careful to give the geese a wide berth because the ganders used to fly at us.  They didn’t take off the ground actually but used to spread their wings and come for us, flat out, making that characteristic gander ‘gobble’ and they would give you a nasty nip.
I remember quite well that when a schooner, a small sailing ship, would to come alongside the little jetty at Courtmac and discharge wheat, Mr. Ruddock (Bob Ruddock, our schoolteacher’s husband) who owned the local sawmill, would also use the mill to make flour from the wheat.  It was just a small affair, and I would to go in there with Noble after school.  I cannot remember the exact details of how the thing worked but I remember we would to tip a sack of wheat into a wooden hopper, it would travel down and be churned up in some way, come out at the bottom as churned up wheat that was part flour and then it would travel on to a very fine mesh wire-table that was vibrating and anyway it would come out in the end as flour.
I don’t know what the whole procedure was, but it didn’t seem to be a very big mill to me.  I can remember those schooners, or whatever they were, coming alongside and discharging the wheat.
Also, I can remember a favourite thing to do was to be down at the tiny little railway station, which was near the jetty; of course everything was because it was only a small village.  This small little railway station had just the one little building and it was the terminus for the Cork city to Courtmacsherry railway.  The train used to come from the previous village – town in fact, bigger than us – of Timoleague.  It used to come from Timoleague to Courtmacsherry and then they would uncouple the engine, it used to move along to the turntable and then they would turn this by hand to get the engine facing the other way and then they used to shackle it on to the carriages for the journey back to Cork city.  That was a favourite thing for us; we used to stand there and watch, or in fact, sometimes, ‘give a hand’, to turn the turntable with the engine.
The nearest town to Courtmac, three miles away, right alongside the water of the upper reaches of Courtmacsherry Bay.  We walked the three miles to Timoleague on a Sunday to visit friends of ours there.  We had friends who were also distant relations of my father’s called Hegarty – Mr. and Mrs. Hegarty – in Timoleague.  There was also a Maguire family and we used to call on them occasionally, they must have been quite distant relations. They weren’t close relations of Dad’s, I know that.  They couldn’t have been because Dad had only one brother and one sister, Annie, and she died when she was eighteen.  I would have known if they were Dad’s uncle or other close connection.
Going to town -you couldn’t call it a town I suppose, it was a large village or possibly a town - meant going to Skibbereen and that was out in the other direction, towards Lislee.  It was, in fact past Lislee.   Lislee was just a collection of just a few houses and the Protestant church. Skibbereen was a little further on and over on the coast, but it had a nice sandy beach and as children it seemed to us to be quite a large place as did Timoleague, in fact.
Note.  Seems to be confused here.  Probably means Clonakilty.
There was the occasional trip up to Cork too.  We had a dog called Kitch, short for Kitchener – Lord Kitchener – who was a great General in the war.  You would see representations of his photograph now with the famous finger pointing – Britain needs you –the recruiting drives - that was Lord Kitchener.
Anyway, the dog was called Kitch and it was a brown Irish terrier.  I can remember the time I went with my Granny to Cork city and taking Kitch with us.  Even though I was a child, I thought it was odd and strange to be taking Kitch with us.  I suppose I overheard whispering and that must have given me some inkling of things not being quite normal.  I was ill at ease; there was something in the wind.  What it turned out to be is that Granny and I were taking the dog to Cork to have him put to sleep.  I remember vividly, as if it were yesterday, going into this building and going into a room and around the room were cages, and in the cages were dogs and cats.  I got into a bit of a panic, realising things weren’t as they should be and started to cry and Granny saying “It’s alright; we are just going to leave Kitch here for a little while”.  We left the building and Granny said to me “Don’t cry, there is nothing to bother about. All they are going to do is put Kitch to sleep, that’s all they are going to do, put him to sleep”.
I don’t know why this had to be but I imagine it was some illness he must have had.  I know they wouldn’t just have had him done away with and it couldn’t have been old age, he couldn’t have been that old.  There must have been something radically wrong with him for them to go to all that trouble to make the journey to Cork city to have him put to sleep.  I know all the family loved him very much and it must have been a last resort.  I was very upset about that.
From when I first remember, I was always shy, not just shy, but painfully shy. I was shy right up into my early twenties, so shy in fact in my teens that if there was a knock at the door and anybody was calling, I’d immediately either go upstairs or into another room; anything to avoid meeting them, though they might only be neighbours from two or three doors away.
I would not dare to speak if my mother was talking to somebody. We would never interrupt as children.  We would wait and then ask if we might speak and then say what we had to say.  We would never dream of interrupting an adult and we treated adults with great respect.
I was three years old when war started and my father went away.  My mother was a member of the Red Cross.  I have certificates that were presented to her after the war for her work for the Red Cross.  A concert was organised they the Red Cross members of the village before Christmas in 1916 and Doreen and I performed at it.
I still had my curls then and I was to be dressed as a sailor for the concert and of course, I couldn’t have long hair.  I had them cut off by the lodge-keeper, the gardener, of Kincraigie where Lady Johnson-Travers lived.  He lived in the lodge at the entrance to the grounds of Kincraigie and I remember sitting on the table in the lodge and crying like hell because he was going to cut my curls off, which he did.
I was dressed as a sailor and my sister was dressed as a Red Cross nurse, with a big Red Cross on the front of her apron and a Red Cross on her nurse’s cap.  We sang the patriotic song ‘Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue’.  My sister had another little sketch of her own, when she was dressed as a Japanese girl and did a little Japanese fan dance and sang a song about Japan.
The concert was held in a very large room in Kincraigie but through the eyes of a child it seemed like a huge theatre.  There was a stage, a built up stage in this very big room in the house.  We rehearsed for a few weeks before.
       “Three cheers for the Red, White and Blue,
       Three cheers for the Red, White and Blue,
       ‘Tis the army and navy forever,
       Three cheers for the Red, White and Blue.”
I remember vividly my mother and grandmother saying to Doreen and me, before the concert “Now don’t forget, you two children, you’ve got to really sing loud enough for Daddy to hear, so you’ve got to really sing tonight”.
So they are some episodes and memories of childhood in Courtmacsherry – Courtmac.
The next thing was the trouble with the Sinn Féiners. The uprising as they call it or The Troubles in Ireland started Easter weekend in 1916.  The war was on and briefly the origin of the trouble was that the Irish people, the Catholics actually, that’s what it boils down to; the Catholics of Ireland resented the British being in the country.
It was part of the British Isles and as such was ruled from Britain, always had been, at that time for hundreds of years.  It was part of Britain.  It was ruled from Britain.  The Catholic Irish of the south resented this and wanted ‘Home Rule’.  It really boiled up Easter weekend of 1916.  When things flared up, they started a campaign against anything that was British and of course Coastguard Stations were part of the British Government, part of the Navy and so one of the targets was the Coastguard Stations.  The police stations were also targets, anything to do with the Government was.  So these troubles flared up in 1916 during the war and then died a bit but they started at it again and it came to quite a high pitch in 1919 and reached boiling point in 1920.
It was at that time that the British Government called for volunteers from those demobilised from the army to go to Ireland as a force. Those who signed up were given a uniform of black jackets and khaki britches, black and tan, and that is why they became known as the Black and Tans.  The Irish of the south, the Catholic Irish hated anything Government but they particularly hated the Black and Tans because they were recruited to fight them.
While Dad was still away, up in north Russia, as well as the Black and Tans recruited because of the trouble with the Sinn Féiners, there were troops sent to Ireland.  We had Royal Marines billeted at the Coastguard Station in Courtmacsherry.  They were billeted in the watch room and the tower and I remember very well that they used to ask me to go down to Mrs. Love’s shop and buy them things; packets of Woodbine cigarettes among other things.  It was a great thrill to have the Royal Marines there.
At that time the Royal Marines were divided into two, the Blue Marines and the Red Marines.  I am not sure which those with us were but about a year later that was done away with and they were just the one corps of Royal Marines.  Oh, they were great fellows!
All around the Coastguard Station in Courtmacsherry they put coils of barbed wire and hanging on the barbed wire they empty put tin cans, anything that would make a noise, so that if anyone attempted to come through the wire at night-time they would set the cans rattling and perhaps give a warning.  They had armed sentries at all times, day and night, all around the Coastguard Station and that is how it was for the last year after the war finished.
There was a really comic episode before we left the Coastguard Station in Courtmac.  There were always several sentries on guard, inside the wire with loaded rifles.  One dark night, one of the sentries saw something moving outside the wire.  Outside the wire and adjacent to the Coastguard Station was a small wood.  This was the wood that Doreen and I used to have to go through when we went to Wolfe’s farm. The sentry saw movement among the trees and he watched it.  It came closer and when it got close to the wire, he challenged it.  “Halt, who goes there?”  There was no answer and the thing came closer again; this white object. He challenged it again and there was still no reply and all of a sudden the cans started rattling.  The sentry opened fire and this white thing dropped down.  It turned out to be white donkey!  He shot a bloody donkey!
In 1920, Dad was transferred to a place called Ring or Ring Bar, which is about three miles outside the town of Clonakilty, which was Dad’s town.  We got transferred to this very small Coastguard Station.  Dad went there as Station Officer and there were four other ‘Gobbies’ there, so there were five houses.
The difference in age between Mick (Lionel) my youngest brother and me is nine and a half years.  He was born on 18 January, 1921 and he was christened in the little Protestant church on the outskirts of Ring Bar where the following incident took place, I think just a little before he was born.  The reason I think this, is that my mother was not with us and perhaps it was getting near her time.
On this particular Sunday, Dad, Doreen and I left home to walk to this little church.  It was about twenty minutes walk and I remember it was a lovely sunny morning.  The organist and the vicar came from Clonakilty and they drove from Clonakilty in a pony and trap to hold the service.  We got there a little early so we walked past the church and further along this little country road.  When Dad thought it was time for the vicar and organist to be arriving, we turned and headed slowly back towards the church.  We saw the vicar and the organist arriving, heading towards the church and just after they got there, we arrived.
There was a got leading into this churchyard; it was about four feet wide with two stone pillars on either side. It was hinged on one side and shut to the other.   As we were approaching the vicar and the organist, a man suddenly appeared from the hedge alongside the gate.  Dad was ahead of us two children. I saw the man lift his arm and the next thing I heard shots fired. With that the man turned, took to his heels, back through the hedge and away over the fields alongside the church, with Dad after him.  Of course, he was one of the I.R.A.  He missed Dad, the vicar and the organist and I am pretty sure that I am right that in the left-hand stone pillar of the gate there were two bullet holes.  There was no church that day. Anyway, I think there would have been only about four of us in the congregation; Dad, Doreen and myself there and the vicar and the organist.  I remember they came only once a month. There were hardly any Protestants around that area, so service was only held once a month.
They never caught this fellow, it was just another ambush.  They went on daily all over the place.  Some were bigger and some smaller, where just one individual was shot. There were others where they ambushed the army, the Black and Tans or shot up police stations.  It was going on all the time.
We did hear afterwards that this gunman was actually after the organist.  The I.R.A. had some particular reason to try and kill him.  Dad could well have been shot that time because the gunman aimed at each of them in turn.
I remember another incident at Ring Bar, before we got burned out.  It must have happened on a Saturday because we children were at home.  Mum and Dad were in Clonakilty shopping.  I was playing around on the road in front of the Coastguard Station and all of a sudden I heard rifle fire from the direction of Clonakilty.  It must have come from there because it was the only town along the road in that direction.  Knowing that Mum and Dad were in there, I got into an unbelievable panic and started running towards Clonakilty.  I was convinced they were caught up in the attack.
Anyway, I ran towards Clonakilty and when I got about half way, there were Mum and Dad, quite safe, heading towards home and surprised to see me.  They said they were quite alright.  It turned out to be a raid on the police barracks.
Police Stations or police barracks as they were quite often called were quite large buildings, made of stone.  At that time in towns like Clonakilty, they would have possibly thirty police and maybe forty or fifty Black and Tans, even Royal Marines or the regular army, stationed there. As well as raiding police barracks and places like that because they were Government, the I.R.A./Sinn Féiners also raided them in the hope of capturing arms and ammunition.  All over the south of Ireland now are the ruins of these police barracks, similar to the ruins of the abbeys.
We were at Ring Bar about six or eight months when we got burned out.  The Sinn Féiners came one night, ordered us out and burnt the place down.
Six weeks before we were burned out, we were raided.   Now there were only five men in the Coastguard Station, Dad and the four Coastguards.  One Coastguard was on watch all the time - day and night – in the Watch-Room.  The Watch-Room was over the Boat Shed; it was a double-storey building.  The whaler was kept in the Boat Shed.  To launch the whaler, it was rolled out of the shed, across the road and down into the water. Above the Boat Shed was the Watch-Room.  This building was separate from the five houses of the Coastguard Station, which abutted on to it.
That night, two armoured cars -armoured cars mind you, they had armoured cars – drew up and about forty or fifty Sinn Féiners hopped out.  They got the man out of the Watch-Room, they knocked on the doors with their rifle butts and got Dad and the other Coastguards out and lined them up against the wall of the Boat-house.  That was at the end of the Coastguard Station and it also served as the Watch-Room.  They told Dad that they were giving him a warning, as Station Officer, “We have come here now” they said “we have raided you tonight as a warning.  We are telling you that we are coming back in four to six weeks time and we are going to burn the place to the ground.  We are going to burn you out”   They all had masks on, but Dad, who went to school in Clonakilty, knew some of them.  He could tell them by their voices though they were masked.  He said “Michael Flanagan (or whoever the person’s name was) I know you, we went to school together.  Why are you doing this?”  The answer was “Well, that’s exactly why we are giving you a warning.  It is because we went to school with you that we are giving you a warning”.   Dad said “Look it is my duty and I am going to do it.  The moment you have left here, I am going to inform the police in Clonakilty and I am going to tell them you have threatened to burn the place down.  I am going to do my damnedest to get some guards out here so that if you do come back, you can expect a hot reception.”   They said “That’s alright, it’s your duty.”  And that was that, the raid was over, they got in their armoured cars and disappeared.
Now, for weeks before that; because of the Troubles and because Coastguard Stations were getting burned all round the
place and police stations were getting bombed and raided and shot at; we children went to bed every night with a bundle of our personal belongings, clothes and all that, put by the side of our bed.  We children were trained in the routine that if we were woken up during the night, each one was to grab our own bundle and then follow orders and do what Granny, Mum or Dad told us to do.
But when the raid came we were told to stay inside, the raiders just lined the men up against the wall outside and spoke to Dad, so we didn’t have to leave the house that time.
The next morning, Dad got in touch with the police in Clonakilty and told them of the raid.  He informed them of what had been said, that they had threatened to come back within four to six weeks and intended to burn the station down.  Dad told the police that he would position the 2lb. Signal Rocket, with which the station was equipped and that would be signal that the station was being raided, because the Sinn Féiners would have cut the telephone wires. You could see the thing fifteen miles away.
The police agreed to watch for the signal and also to have patrols there.  They couldn’t spare anybody to permanently guard the place but undertook to have patrols there at all times.
The Sinn Féiners stuck to their word and came back four weeks later. It was the middle of March, 1921. They arrived at one o’clock in the morning.  We were woken up and told by Granny to get our bundles. We went down the stairs and outside.  I was terrified because, lined up against the wall of the Boat Shed was Dad and the other Coastguards.  About five or six men had rifles and pistols pointed at them and I thought they were going to be shot.
My brother, Lionel, was only six weeks old at this time.  I remember my mother saying “Why are you doing this to me and here’s me with a baby only six weeks old?”  She knew some of them and called them by name.
We had to move straight away along to the one and hotel in the place.  Ring Bar was a much, much smaller place than even Courtmacsherry.  I suppose there were only about twenty or thirty houses in the place.  We were ordered to go into there and the Sinn Féiners who were ushering us along said “When you get inside, you are not to light a light of any sort and you are to keep the blinds and curtains drawn.  No light and keep the windows blacked out.”    The next thing I recall is peeking through the curtains - I think we all eventually took a turn and peeked through the curtains – and seeing the sky lit up with the flames of the burning Coastguard Station.  Our belongings, our home, were all going up in flames.  Sparks which seemed to be as big as my head or fist were flying through the night air.  I was terrified that they had shot Dad.
The next thing I recollect is it being morning and Dad being there and us being overjoyed that he was alright.  I remember going back to see the smouldering remains of the Coastguard Station and that was it.  That was how we got burned out.
Incidentally, when the Sinn Féiners arrived, Dad happened to be in the Watch Room.  He wasn’t on watch, he didn’t do watch.  The other four did the watch between them and he had a sort of roving commission.  What he had been doing is going out about every two hours seeing if everything was alright.  He just happened to be outside when they arrived. He did manage to fire off one of the rockets.  They were already in position and all he had to do was to light the fuse of the rocket.  He managed to get it off but the police never showed up.  I mean they didn’t show up even hours afterwards.  Dad had to have a message sent to them to tell them the place had been burned out two or three hours previously.
After that, we were shifted by road to Queenstown.  Queenstown was at the mouth of the river Lee, which runs up to Cork city.  A ship going to Cork would pass through the mouth, the outer limits of the river Lee, and pass up the river to Cork.  At the mouth was this place called Queenstown, now called Cobh.  Of course, when they got Home Rule, they wouldn’t have Queenstown, because it was Queen, you see.
We went to Queenstown by road and we were billeted in a hotel there until passage was arranged for us to go to England. I think we were there for about six weeks, living in this hotel.  Then passage was arranged for us and Dad was appointed to a Coastguard Station in England at a place called Sandgate, which is about three or four miles away from Folkestone in Kent.  It was on the south coast, not far away from Dover and Deal.  It was about three miles from Sandgate to Folkestone and was about another three or four miles to Dover.  So that’s the part of the Kent coast to where we went.
When my brother Willie died last year in the Home for Protestant Incurables, St. Luke’s, Cork city (it has now been re-named St. Luke’s Hospital), I discovered that the secretary is, in fact, Edie, from our childhood.  She is a widow now, with a grown up family who are married.  I wrote after Willie’s death and funeral, thanking her and got a reply for her.  It is now mid-1975 and Uncle Willie died last year, February 1974.  Auntie Doreen was informed that he was slipping away and she had time to fly over to Cork, saw Willie and was there two days before he died.  He was the longest resident of St. Luke’s, having been there fifty six years. Willie had gone there, in 1919 I think. When we left Courtmacsherry for Dad to take up as Station Officer in Ring Bar, Willie wasn’t with us.
He was very well loved by all the staff, the matron, the Canon, that’s like the Vicar, old friends of his that had come to know him through visiting, everybody. They all went to the funeral service which was held in the hospital chapel.  The hymn that was sung in the hospital chapel (and I thought ‘How appropriate’ when I read it), was ‘the Day though gravest Lord is ended’. Then the funeral took place at Douglas, which is a suburb of Cork.  Poor Uncle Willie!  After a lifetime like that, he passed away last year. I don’t know if you know the tune of that hymn, ‘The day Thou gavest Lord is ended’, but I always think it is one of the nicest hymn tunes.
Thomas Maguire ends tape by singing
 “The day Thou gavest Lord is ended,
                           And life’s long shadows pass away”.
That’s how it goes.