The day the fascist leader came to Galway

The day O'Duffy came to Galway...... God, will I ever forget it. There were about 2,000 cops in the square there in Galway. I remember one of the Walsh's designating myself and two other fellas to do a job. And the job they gave us was; "Duffy was in this hotel and they said when he is coming through the door there will be a fellow in front of him with a flag. It is your job to take the flag. Get the bloody flag. To me that meant nothing, no problem at atll. I reckoned, being handy with my fists, I could take a flag from anyone. All O'Duffy's supporters were around the hotel door and we moved in amongst them. then this party came through the door with the Blueshirt flag, and my mates were there too, and we jumped forward and swiped it. But they must have expected us, for when I came to after being knocked out, I was about 25 feet from the hotel door. I did not know what had happened but I was split and pumping blood all over. The platform for O'Duffy was futher over in Eyre Square; I don't know who did it but one of our crowd ran in through the hotel door, up the stairs and out through a window and straight through the roof of a car, O'Duffy's car. The cops then baton charged us to the bottom of the hill, to where the cinema used to be, it was burnt down before that and a lot of people were burnt at the time. There was a garage, Higgins', but around the corner there were lines of broken stones for road repairs. We lured them around the corner and we pelted them with stones; it was like bullets with the rocks flying as we belted them up the street, it was crazy. There was an old docker there, Michael John Burke and another fellow; they were not in the IRA but were anti-establishment. I remember one of them getting up on an old weighbridge there in Galway and I got up with him, and the cops came up on ladders to the top of the weighbridge and knocked both of us off. It was about fourteen foot to the ground. No Quarter. Testimony of Pierce Fennell, from The IRA in the Twilight Years, Uinseann MacEoin pg 550-551