Landmine in Youghal

Introduction from Chronology

A bomb is hidden in culvert near Youghal by the IRA. Early in the morning, when the regimental band and X company of the BA’s Hampshire Regiment is passing where the bomb is hidden, it is detonated electrically from over 60 yards away. This results in seven deaths and a large number injured.

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This bombing results in 29 casualties (according to Hart). Hopkinson says seven are killed and 21 wounded. Kautt says seven fatalities and 19 wounded. O’Halpin and Ó Corráin give the following seven Hampshire Regiment fatalities: Lance-Corporal Reginald McCall: Boy Frederick Evans (17); Private Frederick Washington; Corporal Charles Whichelow; Bandsman Francis Burke; Boy George Simmons (15) and Boy Frederick Hesterman (14). Quoting a BA source, O’Halpin and Ó Corráin also say that “twenty-one other ranks were wounded”.

In the aftermath of the explosion, soldiers from the Hampshire shoot dead the driver of a jaunting car, John Kenure, for failing to stop. They also wound his passenger, Father Roche. Col-Commandant H. W. Higginson of the 17th Infantry Brigade of the 6th Division of the BA in Ireland later wrote “neither the deceased nor Father Roche heard any order to halt … [however] No blame can be attached to the [British] Forces”.

The bomb was planted by men from the 4^th Battalion, Cork No. 1 Brigade. McCarthy says Michael Fitzgerald was the triggerman but O’Halpin and Ó Corráin say it was Paddy O’Reilly of the Youghal Company.

A lot is made in British propaganda about the age of the Boys killed. Sheehan says that “The killing of the band-boys was something that disgusted many in the British forces and led to a hardening in their attitude to the IRA”. Dublin Castle issue a statement saying that “Such a cold-blooded atrocity is almost unbelievable in the present century.” It would seem that someone in Dublin Castle had forgotten the “cold-blooded atrocity” which Crown Forces had committed in Croke Park on Bloody Sunday (see Nov-21-20/8) or the even more “cold-blooded atrocity” carried out by Crown Forces in Amritsar (see Apr-13-19/1). In both Croke Park and Amritsar, Crown Forces killed civilians, many of whom were children.

Sheehan notes the increased use of land mines by the IRA and comments that “because of the low numbers of personnel required and IRA stockpiles of explosives, by July 1921 the roadside bomb had replaced the flying column as the principal military threat faced by the [British] army”. He does not speculate on what the likely effect that the increased use of landmines by the IRA would have had if the war had lasted beyond mid-July.

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