1972 by Morgan Llywelyn

Garland muttered. “The bleedin’ RUC has Land Rovers.”
    Dave O’Connell led the way to a brightly lit farmhouse, where he pounded on the door with his fist. A small, bespectacled man in his sixties opened the door and peered out. Deliberately looming over him, O’Connell told him there were two bodies in his shed and demanded that he send for a priest. “They’re to have the Last Rites, do you understand? If they don’t we’ll know, and we’ll come back and do you. If you tell
the RUC about them we’ll come back and do you anyway!” The wide-eyed farmer nodded strenuously and backed away from him.
    The drone of motors drew closer. The Volunteers fled from the farmhouse and made for the foothills of Slieve Beagh. As they ran, stumbled, fell, got up and ran on, they heard machine gun fire rake their abandoned lorry.
    At last the hills enfolded them. They slumped onto the ground, exhausted. After a quarter of an hour Garland roused himself with difficulty. “Dave?”
    â€œOver here.”
    â€œListen to me. These men have to be across the border by dawn, because come morning they’ll be looking for us with helicopters. Halloran, you still have that compass?”
    â€œI do.”
    â€œHand it here and we’ll take a bearing.”
    The officers consulted Barry’s compass by the light of the electric torch. After a few calculations O’Connell said, “Even going at a snail’s pace for the sake of the wounded, we should reach the border in four hours.”
    â€œYou will, I won’t,” Garland told him. “I can’t go any farther whether you carry me or not. This time it’s an order: Leave me here. The bastards won’t find me, I’ll go to ground like a badger.”
    As the Volunteers were dragging themselves to their feet flares began exploding in the night sky.
    O’Connell had underestimated the time it would take to reach the border. Almost five hours passed before they were certain they were in Monaghan. They collapsed again and lay unmoving while the dawn slowly broke around them.
    True to Garland’s prediction, two British Army helicopters took to the air as soon as there was enough light. Four hundred members of the RUC, together with B-Specials and British Army units, joined in the ground search. 1
    T HE priest who administered the last rites to Seán South and Feargal O’Hanlon had gone straight from the farm shed to the nearest telephone. Within a matter of hours the bodies had been collected and their families notified.

    Washed and dressed in fresh clothing, the corpses were wrapped in blankets and inconspicuously returned to the Republic in the back of a small delivery van.
    Two hearses were waiting at the border with members of the IRA, accompanied by Seán South’s brother. He was openly hostile to the Volunteers, whom he blamed for misleading and destroying an exceptional man.
    The Volunteers tenderly placed the blanket-wrapped bodies in coffins, then covered them with the Irish tricolour. The sombre procession set out. Soon clusters of people began to appear along the roadside. Men uncovered their heads as the hearses passed. Women wept.
    South’s brother observed the tribute with amazement.
    At midnight on the fourth of January, the lord mayor of Limerick and twenty thousand mourners came out to meet the hearse bearing the man from Garryowen. The next day an estimated fifty thousand followed the casket to Mount Saint Laurence Cemetery, where a Celtic Cross was to be erected over Seán South’s grave.
    Within days his brother joined the republican movement. 2
    Feargal O’Hanlon also was given a huge funeral and a graveside eulogy befitting a martyred hero. The Monaghan lad had been extremely popular; his many friends crowded the cemetery. Anonymous amidst the ruddy footballers was a tall young man wearing a woollen cap pulled over his bright hair. There were tears in