FOURTEEN INTERNEES ESCAPE FROM CURRAGH CAMP
LEINSTER LEADER 6 December 1958
14 Internees Escape From Curragh Camp
Shortly before four o’clock on Tuesday over 60 internees, at the Curragh Internment Camp attempted to stage a mass break-out; 16 of them succeeded in escaping. Home-made smoke bombs were used by the escapees to help in the attempt and guards retaliated by using tear-gas. Some shots were fired and it is understood that at least two of the internees were wounded.
A widespread search by military and Gardai followed the break-out and within 3 hours one of the men had been recaptured. In the early hours of Wednesday morning a second man was caught. The search was intensified throughout Wednesday and early on Thursday but as we go to press the remaining fourteen escapees are still missing.
First indication of the attempt came with the exploding of a smoke bomb under one of the sentry boxes. At the time the internees were in the recreation compound and were ostensibly picking teams to play football.
When the smoke appeared, however, they began to shout and made a concentrated rush towards the barbed wire surrounding the compound. A group of about six seized and held the officer in charge of the guard; further smoke bombs were set off and soon the camp was enveloped in dense smoke.
Shots fired
Shots were fired and the troops use tear gas — a Government Information Bureau statement, issued latter, stated that two internees received leg injuries as a result of bursting time bombs.
However, other well-established reports say that an emergency operation was carried on an internee in the General Military Hospital a couple of hours after the breakout and that three other internees had been brought into hospital.
Immediately after the break-out, a number of local people reported seeing men racing from the Camp across the Curragh plain and heading into the stud-farms bordering the plains between Brownstown and Maddenstown.
Troops were rushed to that area, all road were patrolled and road blocks set up at junctions, etc. Radio-cars, armoured cars, jeeps, trucks and motor-cycles were used by the troops who were soon joined by Gardai officers and plain clothes men from nearby towns and from the city.
The Curragh plains near the Camp were subjected to an intensive search and as part of the attempt to flush out any escapees who might be hiding there many clumps of gurse were set on fire.
First of the internees to be re-captured is understood to be Mr. Liam Fagan of Dundalk; he was found hiding on the plains. Later a second escapee reported to be Mr. P. McGirl. Leitrim, was caught and brought back to Camp.
Clothing Badly Torn
Both are understood to have been suffering from cuts and other minor injuries sustained in the break-out and the clothing of one of them was very badly torn.
The area stretching from the Brownstown Maddenstown area back towards Suncroft was subjected to a particularly intense search and for a long time the authorities seemed to believe they had the escapees pinned in that area which was tightly condoned off.
However, despite detailed search of houses, farm buildings stables and derelict buildings and all fields, hedges, etc, no escapees were found.
On Wednesday, the area around the Japanese gardens near Kildare was also fully searched without result.
As dusk fell the search was suspended temporarily for regrouping of forces and throughout the night the search was extended to outlying areas particular attention being paid to bridges and main road junctions.
Two battalions from Dublin were drafted into the area to help with the search but the failure to catch more of the escapees strengthened the belief that they had outside aid and may have been helped to make a clean getaway once they got clear of the Camp.
This was the third escape of internees this year. In May three men got out through a window at the General Military Hospital where they were patients. Two of them, Vincent Condon of Killylea, Co. Armagh, and Terence S. O’Toole, of Portarlington, were recaptured two days later near Kilkullen, Co. Kildare. The third man, John. A. Kelly of Dublin, was free for ten days before he was recaptured in a house at Gormastown, Co. Meath.
The next escape occurred in September, when Rory Brady, the Sein Fein T.D., for Longford Westmeath, and David O’Connell, of Cork, escaped after cutting through a fence. Police and soldiers organised a widespread search, set up road-blocks and watched ports and airports, but the two-men have not yet been recaptured.
Re-typed by Hannah Mustapha
