Ballyseedy Commemoration

On the night of March 6th 1923, five members of the Dublin Guard were killed in a trap mine explosion in Knocknagoshal. The following night nine Republican prisoners were taken from Tralee and brought five miles out the Castleisland road to the crossroads at Ballyseedy. At 2am there was a shattering explosion. Eight men died...

After the Knocknagoshal incident the Free State authorities in Kerry stated that prisoners would be used to clear barricades in future. In Ballymullen Barracks throughout the evening of March 6th the soldiers concieved the plan. They selected nine prisoners to be blown up, making sure that they had no clergy in the family. At nightfall Captains Eddie Flood andJim Clarke constructed the mined barricade at Ballyseedy. David Neligan selected the prisoners to be blown up.

They took three prisoners from the workhouse, about a kilometre from Ballymullen, where the Kerry County Council head office now stands. Stephen Fuller, George O'Shea and Timothy Tuomey were taken from there to Ballymullen Barracks. There, they took Fuller into a room where there were nine coffins. The Free Staters told him that his comrades were in eight of them and that the other one was for him. They then took him to the interrogation room.

The prisoners were tortured using hammers. John Shanahans spine was so badly injured he couldn't walk. He was originally supposed to be one of the prisoners to be taken to Ballyseedy but he collapsed after the torture and his illness saved him. James Walsh had a shattered wrist.

The Free Staters took the nine prisoners to a lorry and told them that they were going to remove a barricade but they were unsure of the true purpose. How were sick men with broken arms supposed to remove barricades?

Captain Ned Breslin was in charge of the "barricade removal." As the prisoners were taken out the Castleisland road a soldier handed them a cigarette each and said "those are the last cigarettes you'll ever smoke."

At Ballyseedy Cross they left the lorry and were told to remove the barricade which consisted of a log laying across the road underneath a metal gate and some stones. As they stood there, hesitant, they were set upon by the soldiers who held them back while a rope was passed around them. They were tied in a circle around the barricade which contained the mine, with their arms and legs bound tight.

"The language wasn't very good," Stephen Fullerr recalls. "One of them called us Irish bastards, and he was an Irishman himself!" One prisoner began to say his prayers and he was hit on the head with a rope by a soldier who said "No prayers, you didn't give our lads time for prayers. Some of ye might go to heaven and if ye do you can say hello to our lads." Then the soldiers moved back about 100 yards into the darkness dragging electrical cord with them. "Pray as long as ye like now," they were told.

They knew what to expect then and one of the prisoners said "goodbye lads." Stephene Fuller replied "Goodbye...Goodbye lads."

.......Then up it went............

The ropes around Fuller's arms and legs were burnt and he was flung into a ditch. As he crawled away he heard three smaller explosions and machine gun fire. The prisoners who weren't already blown to pieces were finished off with grenades and machine gun fire. Fuller crawled over fields to Curran's house where he saw a doctor the next day. The skin was burnt off his arms and the back of his legs, gravel and small stones were blown under his skin. A day later they brought him to and the n at various locations until the eventual ceasefire.

When the shabby coffins provided by the Free Staters were handed over to the families outside the gates of Ballymullen Barracks, they transferred the remains to proper coffins and then broke the origional coffins and left them outside the barracks at the side of the road. A protest by Cumann na mBan almost ended in a riot. Michael O'Connell's sister found her brother in a coffin marked "Stephen Fuller." Pat Hartnett's mother could only recognise her son from a lock of his curly black hair, the rest of his had stones and shrapnel embedded in his body. The bodies of the Republican prisoners were then taken away for burial.

George O'Shea and Timothy Tuomey are buried in the Republican plot in Kilflynn.

Pat Hartnett is buried in Dysart near Lixnaw.

James Walsh and John O'Connor are buried in the Republican plot in Tralee.

Patrick Buckley, John Daly and Michael O'Connell are buried in the Republican plot in Castleisland.

RIP