Nora Brosnan (1905

Nora Brosnan (1905 - 1996)

Irish Republican, Cumann na mBan, Free State Prisoner of War.

On the evening of 22 November 1922, Captain Spillane watched the rowing boats with Free State troops and their captives return to his vessel, the Helga. The gunboat lay at anchor just off the sandy shore on the western tide of Tralee Bay and he had steered her as near as the tide allowed to the beach that lay a few hundred yards to the east of the village of Castlegregory.

That morning he had brought a detachment of Free State troops from Fenit who, landing in their rowing boats, hoped to surprise the local Republicans in one of the few areas that remained under their control. The Helga, originally designed as a scientific research vessel, had been converted in 1914 to her present status as a gunboat by the Royal Navy. Her guns pounded the Republican positions in Dublin in 1916 and, over six years later, she was still pursuing the same enemy, though under a different flag. On that November evening in 1922, the captain must have been surprised that it had all come to this as the troops had their captives climb the ladder from their rowing boats up to the ship. The dangerous captives were not the battle-scarred diehards he had expected, but two seventeen-year-old girls, Nora Brosnan and Liza (Lil) O'Donnell. As the troops were about to bring them below to the ship's damp hold, the English captain's chivalry intervened, and the two captives were placed in a cabin. As the winter sun set that November, the Helga weighed anchor and sailed back across Tralee Bay to Fenit, the first of three sea voyages that would chart the course of young Nora Brosnan's life.

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Nora Brosnan was destined to be a rebel from the day she entered the world on 17 September 1905. She was the youngest of the ten children of John Brosnan and Mary Flynn. The Brosnans were a Republican family who owned a forge in the West Kerry village of Castlegregory. John Brosnan also owned a few fields on the edge of the village where the family's two cows grazed, and another plot of ground where potatoes were grown. Nora later described their home as comfortable, with a large kitchen, a loft bedroom for the girls, a bedroom for her parents and another for her brothers. An older sibling, Jim, tended the farm while her father and his other sons worked as blacksmiths. It was from this forge that the spark that ignited the flame of freedom in West Kerry came, for it was here that her older brother, Tadhg Brosnan, plied the family trade as he formed and led the guerrilla band that drove the crown forces from his native Corea Dhuibhne peninsula.

At Easter 1916, the involvement of the Castlegregory Volunteers in the attempt to land arms from the Aud and their marching in military formation through the village on the day after the surrender in Dublin brought the revolutionary activities of Tadhg Brosnan to the notice of the British authorities. Both Tadhg and his younger brother, Sean, were arrested at their home by British soldiers who had come from Tralee. Sean was released within a short time, but when Tadhg was brought before a military court in Richmond Barracks, Dublin, he was sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude.

As was the case with many of those either executed or sentenced as a result of the Rising, postcards bearing their pictures were printed and widely distributed. In June 1917 Tadhg was released as a part of a general amnesty and Nora received the news while she was at school when such a postcard of her brother was passed to her with the word 'released' written on the back.

While Tadhg returned home to Castlegregory, normality did not follow, as within a short time he had begun preparing for another armed insurrection against the crown forces. He reorganised the Castlegregory Volunteers and was appointed the commander of the 4th Battalion, while Sean was given command of the Castlegregory Company. At this time Cumann na mBan was also organised amongst the women of the0district in order to support what was becoming a guerrilla army. It was within its ranks that Nora Brosnan was to play her part in the fight for Irish freedom.

By the summer of 1920, Tadhg Brosnan and his 4th Battalion had forced the crown forces to abandon all their garrisons in West Kerry with the exception of Dingle town. However, as the IRA was susceptible to surprise attacks from the British arriving in an area suddenly in military vehicles and in large numbers, its Volunteers could not remain at home. They were billeted in dugouts and remote farms in the mountains of the peninsula. Nora later recalled that one of her tasks, being a fit young girl of fifteen years at the time, was to bring fresh clothes and especially socks to the men in the hills.

The month of November 1920 saw .an increased intensity in fighting in Kerry. The police and regular units of the British Army were supplemented by the notorious Black and Tans, and by the Auxiliary cadets, who were better disciplined and more effective having been drawn from army officers who had served in the Great War. On Saturday 4 December 1920, in response to an increase in IRA activities in the Kerry No. 1 Brigade area, the Auxiliaries, accompanied by, RIC men and Black and Tans, arrived in Castlegregory in large numbers. The object of the raiding party was the capture of Tadhg Brosnan and members of his increasingly active IRA unit. One section of the raiding party went directly to the Brosnans' house, hoping to catch their quarry at home on the cold and wet early winter evening. However, neither Tadhg nor Sean were anywhere to be found, and following a search of the house, the raiding party left.

Veterans of many such raids, the Brosnan family were not overly perturbed and went off to bed. However, the raiders returned at dawn, having spent the night in the village drinking what they had looted in Spillane's Hotel. Nora's mother, Mary, was forcibly removed from her home and the Black and Tans then went up to the loft where Nora was still in bed. They looted the family china stored in her room and, finding her porcelain doll, one of them smashed it with his rifle butt. Nora was taken from the house to where her mother was standing in the garden in just her nightgown. Nora, freeing herself from her captors, rushed back into the house where other Tans were dousing it with petrol. She got her mother's clothes and brought them out just as the Tans were setting fire to the building. In the confusion that followed, Nora and her father made their way to a shed that had already been searched and there she covered him in hay, fearing that he would be taken away as a prisoner by the departing Tans. The destruction of their home was total and, with all their possessions gone, they were forced to seek shelter with neighbours and friends.

Nora went to stay with the Duhig family, whose son, Michael, was a comrade of her brothers. The Tans had also tried to burn the Duhig house but with little petrol left after burning the Brosnan home, the fire failed to take hold and was easily quenched once the raiders had departed. Nora shared a room with her friend Katie Duhig for several weeks, until gradually her own house was repaired to the extent that the family could reoccupy it, though with little furniture or comfort.

In July 1921, the war against the British ended and life began to return to normality in Castlegregory. As the politicians talked of articles of agreement in London, the fighting men came down from their mountains and the fires in Brosnan's forge were stoked again. But the hoped-for peace was short-lived. In June 1922, the Civil War commenced and by August the Free State army were in control of Kerry's towns.

Tadhg Brosnan and his guerrilla forces in West Kerry were consequently forced to adopt the same tactics that were successful against the British. The mountains became their fortresses, and the roads were made impassable to military convoys. In the autumn of 1922, the Free State army had still not taken control of most of the villages and countryside, but on 19 November they came not by road or rail to Castlegregory but from the sea. The troops came from Tralee on board the Helga. The Helga was renamed Muirchu the following year, but during the Civil War, its new owners weren't embarrassed by its origins. That November morning the troops came ashore in rowing boats on the strand that lies a half-mile from Castlegregory village. As they did so, a messenger ran to the Brosnan home where Nora and Sean, still the village's IRA commander, were having breakfast. Sean sent Nora to the local railway station, which served as the Republican headquarters in Castlegregory, while he hurried around the village to warn his men about the surprise attack.

As Nora and a Cumann na mBan friend, Liza O'Donnell, returned from the station, they saw soldiers marching along the village's main street. The girls knew that the IRA's cache of mines was located in the railway station and so they decided to try to retrieve these before they were discovered. As they were crossing open ground near the station, they were challenged by the Free State troops. The soldiers fired warning shots and demanded that Nora and Liza halt. Then they were told to advance slowly towards the troops, but Nora defiantly refused, shouting, 'If you want us, we are here.

As a result of this incident, they were detained and taken to the local schoolhouse, where the Free State troops had established a command post. As evening approached, Nora and Liza were marched as prisoners along the village's streets towards the strand. On passing her home, Nora refused to go any further without seeing her parents. After a discussion, the armed escort brought Nora into her home where her parents were sitting by the fireside. Mary Brosnan berated the troops but to no avail. They then left with their two young prisoners and, arriving at the strand, signalled for a boat to be sent from the Helga, lying offshore.

Once aboard, Captain Spillane was uncomfortable that these two girls should be regarded as captives on his ship, which was not equipped to accommodate prisoners. Politely, he made his day room available to them and, in relative comfort, they remained on board until the Helga arrived in Fenit the following day. At Fenit pier they were taken from the ship and placed in an armoured car for the journey to Tralee, such was the fear of attack on the convoy bringing the prisoners from the port to Ballymullen Barracks.

Nora and Liza were held in Ballymullen with twenty-one other Republican women captives, in a part of the old military complex separated from where hundreds of male prisoners were held behind barbed wire. While the prison was not comfortable, for the two weeks they spent in Ballymullen cattle boat. Nora described it as 'a filthy, lice-infested, smelly old wreck. The ship brought them to Dublin, where the women were initially incarcerated in Mountjoy Gaol. There, they were brought to the female part of the grim Victorian building and placed in a dormitory with dozens of other female prisoners. Each had a bed, but following an escape attempt by senior Republicans Maire Comerford and Sighle Humphreys, this bedding was removed from all the women as a collective punishment.

Conditions deteriorated and the women's prison became overcrowded as hundreds of Republican women were detained without trial. A decision was made to transfer the women to Kilmainham Gaol, and it was to there that Nora and Liza were brought on 6 February 1923. They spent the next three months behind its high walls. Nora shared a cell with Grace Gifford Plunkett, the widow of Joseph Plunkett, the executed 1916 leader. Though only seventeen, she was not the youngest prisoner, as Sheila Hartnett of Kenmare was the same age and Maggie O'Toole of Carlow was only fourteen.

The continued arrests of Cumann na mBan members caused overcrowding in Kilmainham. In April 1923, the Free State authorities decided to open a new internment camp specifically for women in the North Dublin Union, a workhouse adjacent to Broadstone railway station. The union had been used by the British Army as a military barracks from 1918 until their departure in 1922. On 3 May 1923 Nora was transferred there from Kilmainham to join 250 other female prisoners. She slept in one of the dormitories, each of which had forty beds. Once again overcrowding quickly became a problem as more prisoners arrived. Within weeks there were confrontations between the inmates and Governor O'Neill over the cleaning of the prison, overcrowding and meals. Food rations were poor and in August they were not mistreated. A fortnight later, all the women prisoners were brought from Ballymullen Barracks to Fenit and put aboard a foul-smelling Dr Eleanor Fleury, who had been a prisoner and the inmates' medical officer until her release in July, complained that 'scabies and lice were a problem and illnesses like scarlet fever, chickenpox and smallpox were a cause for concern. An inspection by senior Free State officers concurred with her medical opinion. Nora Brosnan's recollection of her time in captivity was that it was a year of'torment, insults and harassment.

Without advance warning, on Saturday 27 October 1923 Nora was told that she was to be one of four prisoners to be released that day. As they were leaving the North Dublin Union, another prisoner from Kerry, Pauline Hassett, passed a note to the girls with her brother's name and Dublin address hastily scribbled on it. Walking, penniless, along streets in a city they didn't know, they eventually arrived at the home of Roland 'Roly' Hassett. They stayed there for two nights and on Monday morning Hassett brought them to Kingsbridge station and paid for their tickets home to Kerry. That evening, 30 October 1923, Nora Brosnan and Liza O'Donnell arrived in Tralee's railway station. On the train with them were other released prisoners, including Kate Daly of Castlegregory, who later married Nora's brother Tadhg, and Frances Casey of Tralee.

The Castlegregory they returned to in October 1923 was, according to Nora, a very changed place. The Brosnan family were struggling to make a living, with Sean and Tadhg still in prison and the family forge barely functioning. The new Ireland was far from the one envisaged by many of the young men and women of Castlegregory who had struggled for it throughout the previous decade. The pervading disillusionment and economic hardship resulted in a generation crossing the 'Wild Geese' was his comrade and later brother-in-law Patrick McKenna of Derrymore, seven miles to the east of Castlegregory on the road to Tralee.

McKenna had been a member of the IRA column that had been captured at Curraheen church as they attended midnight Mass at Christmas 1922. McKenna was interned in the Curragh but he and a companion, Jackie Price of Tralee, were among a group who escaped, having tunnelled under the internment camp's wire perimeter. Price and McKenna, both of whom starred for the Kerry senior football team, walked through hostile countryside until they reached Tralee and then rejoined their column in the Sliabh Mish mountains, which overlooked the town. While Price was recaptured on the mountainside a few weeks later, McKenna managed to evade capture for the remainder of the Civil War.

Following the final release of prisoners in the early summer of 1924, men such as Pat McKenna could come out of hiding to the extent that in September 1924, he played at midfield for the Kerry team in the 1923 All-Ireland final which had been delayed due to the Civil War. Both he and Jackie Price were regular visitors to Tadhg Brosnan at his Castlegregory home and this was how Nora first met her future husband. However, within months, Tadhg and McKenna had both emigrated to New York to an uncertain life. Because it occurred as Kerry were preparing for the 1924 All-Ireland football semi-final, McKenna's departure was announced in the sport's pages of the local newspaper.

In the bleak economic climate that prevailed in Ireland, it was decided that it would be best if Nora had a profession, so she went to England to train as a nurse. Unsettled there, and separated from family and friends, the gregarious Nora decided to leave the training post and join her siblings in New York. Significantly, it was there that McKenna was now living, and he offered to send Atlantic to New York and Boston. Such was the fate of Nora's brother, Tadhg, and many of the men who fought by his side. Another of those new her the fare for the journey. After a ten-day voyage, she arrived in New York on St Patrick's Day 1926. She got employment as a nursing assistant at the city's Hospital for Joint Diseases. McKenna had, at this stage, qualified as an accountant and was employed by an oil company. The couple married in April 1928. They lived in The Bronx, Jersey City, Long Island and then for many years in Hartford, Connecticut. Eventually they settled in Queen's Village in New York. They had five children: Patrick, Veronica, Lillian, John, and Noreen. Pat McKenna died in a New York hospital in 1970, aged seventy-one.

After Pat's death, Nora lived in Milford, Connecticut, but returned many times to Castlegregory on holidays. She retained her Republicanism all her life and in 1995, when interviewed by a journalist, she declared, 'We got the British out of lreland in 1922, but we were left with six counties in the north. We must get the British out of that area.

Nora Brosnan died on 12 January 1996.

Reprinted by kind permission of the author, Tim Horgan

Nora Brosnan's biography is one 22 biographies included in Tim Horgan's book "FIGHTING FOR THE CAUSE' Kerry's Republican Fighters.

To purchase a copy of the book click on the link below.

Fighting for the Cause | Kerry's Republican Fighters | Dr Tim Horgan (mercierpress.ie

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