Sean Lemass: 'I remember 1916'

Seán Lemass was Taoiseach in 1966 for the 50th anniversary of 1916. Here he describes his memories of the Easter Rising

On Easter Monday, 1916, my elder brother, Noel, and I, having had no orders or information about what was going to happen, since Professor MacNeill's cancellation of the Parade of Volunteers on Easter Sunday, went for a walk in the Dublin mountains with our friends Jim and Ken O'Dea. We walked to Glencree and returned in the afternoon. I was then 17 years of age and my brother 19.

Around 5pm and some distance outside Rathfarnham, we met Professor MacNeill and two of his sons riding on bicycles outwards from the city. It was from them that we first learned of the Rising.

Professor MacNeill seemed agitated and depressed. He informed us that the Volunteers had occupied various positions in the city, but that he had no information as to further events. He was very clearly unhappy about the whole situation. There were no trams running from Rathfarnham so we had to walk. We went into Jacobs factory, which was the first position occupied by the Volunteers which we came to, but the windows were barricaded and we could make no contact with the defenders.

Noel and I got up early the next morning and, with no word to our parents, left home determined to take part in the Rising. We went first to the Four Courts which was the position nearest to our home in Capel Street, where we were informed that our own unit, the Third Battalion, was in the Ringsend direction. We decided to make our way there, but when passing the GPO we met a friend, Volunteer Hugh Holohan, on sentry duty and he brought us inside where we were absorbed into the garrison and given arms. Noel was despatched across the street to the Imperial Hotel where he was wounded in the subsequent fighting. I was sent to a position on the roof of the GPO, at the corner nearest the Pillar, where there was a group of eight or ten Volunteers, including a couple of Citizen Army men, under the command of a Volunteer officer named Cremin who had come from London to take part in the Rising. At this position on the roof there were a number of rather crude bombs made out of billy-cans and equipped with slow-burning fuses. The idea was that, in the case of a mass assault on the GPO, we were to light the fuses and throw them on the attackers in the street below.

We remained in position on the roof until Thursday, when we were ordered down into the building. The stage of serious fighting was beginning at the GPO and there was tremendous activity inside preparing for the attack which was assumed to be pending. Later on that day, the shelling started, and activity was directed to fire-fighting, although the initial damage done by the exploding shells was slight.

The shelling continued on Friday, and later on that day, as the building became well alight, the word went around that its evacuation was to begin. O'Rahilly and his men had made their gallant but ill-fated charge up Moore Street, and it had been decided to work up this street by tunnelling though the houses so that another charge on the British barricade at the Parnell Street end of it could be attempted. We were given to understand that the general objective was to occupy a new position in Williams and Woods factory in Parnell Street. Many people have claimed to have helped in carrying the wounded Connolly from the GPO. In fact, the process was so slow and so frequently interrupted, that almost everyone in the GPO helped in it at some stage. I assisted to carry Connolly's stretcher for a short distance to a small door opening on Henry Street. Here, I was ordered, with all those around, to proceed at the run up the small back street, Moore Lane, opposite to the GPO.

Another back-street running parallel to Moore Street intersected this lane and down this a continuous flow of machine-gun and rifle-fire poured. Those who were first across the intersection, of whom I was one, escaped unharmed, but some of the main body following us were killed or wounded here. A house at the corner of Moore Street was entered and all that night relays of men tunnelled through the walls up the street. Moore Street was littered with dead people, including some of the Volunteers who died in the O'Rahilly charge and, much more numerous, men, women and children who had tried to leave their homes.

The next day the tunnelling process ended in a warehouse yard not very far from the British barricade. Those Volunteers who possessed bayonets for their rifles, of whom I was one, were directed to this yard... various obstacles which had been blocking the doorway were being quietly removed, so that the way would be cleared for us to pour out in the intended charge... While seated on the stairway into the yard, watching the obstacles being removed, I fell asleep for a few moments. When I awoke, Seán McDermott had come into the yard and had begun to address us, to tell us of the decision to surrender. He spoke briefly but very movingly and many of those present were weeping. Some time after he had departed, we were paraded in single column and marched out of the yard into Moore Street, headed by Captain M W O'Reilly and a Volunteer bearing a white flag. We marched back up Moore Street into Henry Street and into O'Connell Street.

In O'Connell Street, under the guns of the British military lining the street, we laid down our arms. We spent that night in the open, crowded into the gardens outside the Rotunda, and were marched the next morning in long columns under guard to Richmond Barracks in Inchicore.

This article by Seán Lemass appeared in Studies journal in spring 1966