The Tricolour is flying at the Clonbanin monument to commemorate the Centenary Anniversary of the Drishanebeg Train Ambush on the 11th February 1921.The Volunteers of the Millstreet Battalion IRA achieved a major success over British forces by stopping and boarding the train, travelling from Mallow to Killarney, and seizing rifles and ammunition from the troops on the train. The Volunteers had taken up positions at the Ambush site, on eight consecutive nights not knowing when they would be called into action.
The Drishanebeg Ambush Centenary Commemoration Address
byJack Lane
Aubane Historical Society
CENTENARY OF THE DRISHANEBEG AMBUSH
11th February 2021
I want to thank the Committee for organising this event and inviting me to speak. A good indication of their efficient and professional approach was to ask me to speak here some months ago. That is much appreciated. I also want to thank the Committee for doing this and making such an event as we have today.
I think many of you will agree that this type of event was unimaginable a few years ago. Irish history writing by our academics and commentators went through a very bad period for a number of years.
There was an attempt to give us a bad conscience about the war of independent and these types of commemorations were seen as in bad taste. The only disagreement I have with the commemorations is that they should be called celebrations but never mind.
There was an attempt to create a narrative of the War of the Independence that was designed to give us bad conscience about the whole thing because it was alleged to be a sectarian episode; that it was war against Protestants. This was incredible to anyone who had any knowledge at all of the people who fought that war or the events of the war. It was an attempt to try to prove that our state was deformed at birth, so to speak.
The location of the Ambush at this cutting, just over 90 years later, Tuesday 8 March 2011, near MP17½, looking towards Millstreet where, on Friday 11 February 1921, the 5:15pm train from Cork to Tralee was ambushed. (Photo: Oliver Doyle)The train afterwards, 3rd class 6-wheel carriage No. 663 at Tralee Bay platform, blood-stained and with bullet holes, Saturday 12 February 1921. The platform side of the coach with substantial window damage. (Photo: Museum of the Royal Fusiliers, HM Tower of London)
Pictured at the Drishanebeg Ambush Commemoration Site marking the Centenary on this 11th Feb. 2021 – the Crowley Family – from left: Kevin, David, Margaret and Emmet. We thank Michael Thornton for the photograph. (S.R.)
We thank Michael Thornton for the following wonderfully comprehensive feature regarding the upcoming historic Centenary Event. And thanks to Michael also for the recent photo of Tom Meaney at the Ambush Commemoration Site by the main Millstreet – Mallow Road near Keale Bridge. Tap on the pictures to enlarge. (S.R)
THE DRISHANEBEG TRAIN AMBUSH COMMEMORATION
On 11th February 100 years ago, men from Millstreet and the surrounding areas successfully carried out an audacious and meticulously planned operation against British soldiers travelling by train between Mallow and Killarney. Two volunteers boarded the train at Rathcoole and by holding the train driver and fireman at gunpoint, forced them to stop the train at Drishanebeg, where an ambush had been prepared. After a period of intense gunfire, the British troops who had suffered casualties, surrendered. Fourteen rifles, 600 rounds of ammunition plus sundry equipment was taken, before the train, with the wounded onboard, continued to Killarney.
The arms captured at Drishanebeg proved to be of immense help to in later engagements at Clonbanin and Rathcoole.
This event was deemed one of the more successful engagements against the Crown Forces for the Millstreet Battalion Volunteers during the War of Independence.
