Just as it was getting dark the Auxiliaries in Crossleys would suddenly burst out of M’Andrew’s yard, travel perhaps five or ten miles at racing speed, and then surround and round up a village or district, so that the numerous gunmen who had come from the south for a rest cure found it impossible to get any sleep at all.
The local Volunteers at once sent an S.O.S. to Dublin, and received the comforting answer that a flying column would arrive shortly in the district and deal effectively with the Auxiliaries. In the meanwhile they were to harass the enemy by every means in their power and carry on a warfare of attrition—in other words, if they found one or two Cadets alone—if unarmed so much the better—they were to murder them.
At first the local Volunteers were very much afraid of the Auxiliaries, Sinn Fein propaganda having taught them to expect nothing but murder, rape, and looting from the “scum of English prisons and asylums”; but after a few days had passed and nothing dreadful happened to man or woman, they took heart once more and started their usual warfare.
The Auxiliaries were commanded by a Major Jones, and on the Sunday following their arrival in Annagh Jones left alone in a Ford at an early hour to see Blake in Ballybor. The road crosses the mountains through a narrow pass, and near the top of the pass there is a small chapel, a school, a pub, and a few scattered cottages.
On his return Jones passed this chapel as the people were coming out from Mass, blew his horn, and slowed up. After passing through the crowd he noticed a group of youths standing on the right side of the road, and opened his throttle wide, thereby probably saving his life.
When the car was within ten yards of the group every man drew a pistol, and it seemed to Jones as though he was flying through a shower of bullets. However, though the car was riddled, and had any one been sitting in the other three seats they would all have been killed, Jones found himself uninjured, and the old “tin Lizzie,” responding well to the throttle, flew down the hill at twice the pace Henry Ford ever meant her to travel at.
That evening Father John called on Jones and apologised for the outrage, and Jones at once fell under the charm of the priest. Probably his astonishment at Father John’s visit had something to do with it, but in the days to come, when Father John supported his words by deeds, Jones learnt that his first impression had been a correct one.