LEINSTER LEADER<\/i><\/b> 6 December 1958<\/b><\/p>\n
Shortly before four o\u2019clock on Tuesday over 60 internees, at the Curragh Internment Camp attempted to\u00a0 stage a mass break-out; 16\u00a0 of\u00a0 them\u00a0 succeeded\u00a0 in\u00a0 escaping.\u00a0\u00a0 Home-made smoke bombs were used by the escapees to help in the attempt and guards retaliated by using tear-gas.\u00a0\u00a0 Some shots were fired and it is understood that at least two of the internees were wounded.<\/p>\n
A widespread search by military and Gardai\u00a0 followed \u00a0the break-out and\u00a0 within\u00a0 3\u00a0 hours\u00a0 one\u00a0 of\u00a0 the\u00a0 men\u00a0 had\u00a0 been\u00a0 recaptured. In the early hours of\u00a0 Wednesday\u00a0 morning\u00a0 a second man was caught.\u00a0 The search was intensified throughout Wednesday and early on Thursday but as we go to press the remaining fourteen escapees are still missing.<\/p>\n
First indication of the attempt came with the exploding of a smoke bomb under one of the sentry boxes.\u00a0 At the time the internees were in the recreation compound and were ostensibly picking teams to play football.<\/p>\n
When the smoke appeared, however, they began to shout\u00a0 and\u00a0 made a concentrated rush towards the barbed wire\u00a0 surrounding\u00a0 the compound.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Shots fired<\/b><\/p>\n
Shots were fired and the troops use tear gas \u2014 a Government Information Bureau statement, issued latter, stated that two internees received leg injuries as a result of bursting time bombs.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0 breakout and\u00a0 that three other internees had been brought into hospital.<\/p>\n
Immediately after the break-out, a number of local people reported seeing men racing from the Camp across the Curragh\u00a0\u00a0 plain and heading\u00a0\u00a0 into\u00a0\u00a0 the\u00a0\u00a0 stud-farms bordering\u00a0\u00a0 the\u00a0\u00a0 plains\u00a0\u00a0 between Brownstown and Maddenstown.<\/p>\n
Troops were rushed to\u00a0 that area, all\u00a0 road\u00a0 were patrolled and road blocks set up at junctions, etc.\u00a0 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\u00a0 nearby towns and from the city.<\/p>\n
The Curragh plains near the Camp were subjected to an intensive search and as part of the attempt to flush out any escapees who\u00a0 might\u00a0 be hiding there many clumps of gurse were set on fire.<\/p>\n
First of\u00a0 the\u00a0 internees\u00a0 to\u00a0 be\u00a0 re-captured is understood to be Mr. Liam Fagan\u00a0 of\u00a0 Dundalk;\u00a0 he\u00a0 was\u00a0 found\u00a0 hiding\u00a0 on\u00a0 the\u00a0 plains. Later a second escapee reported to be Mr. P. McGirl. Leitrim, was caught and brought back to Camp.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Clothing\u00a0 Badly\u00a0 Torn<\/b><\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Both are\u00a0 understood\u00a0 to\u00a0 have\u00a0 been suffering from\u00a0 cuts\u00a0 and\u00a0 other minor injuries\u00a0 sustained\u00a0 in\u00a0 the\u00a0 break-out and\u00a0 the\u00a0 clothing of\u00a0 one of them was very badly torn.<\/p>\n
The area\u00a0 stretching\u00a0 from\u00a0 the\u00a0 Brownstown Maddenstown\u00a0 area back towards\u00a0 Suncroft \u00a0was\u00a0 subjected\u00a0 to\u00a0 a particularly intense search and for a long\u00a0 time\u00a0 the authorities\u00a0 seemed\u00a0 to believe they had the escapees pinned in that area which was tightly condoned off.<\/p>\n
However, despite detailed search of houses,\u00a0 farm\u00a0 buildings\u00a0 stables\u00a0 and derelict buildings and all fields, hedges, etc,\u00a0 no escapees were found.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, the area around the Japanese gardens near Kildare was also\u00a0 fully searched\u00a0 without\u00a0 result.<\/p>\n
As dusk fell the search was suspended temporarily\u00a0 for\u00a0 regrouping of\u00a0 forces and throughout\u00a0 the night the search was\u00a0 extended\u00a0 to\u00a0 outlying\u00a0 areas particular\u00a0 attention\u00a0 being\u00a0 paid\u00a0 to\u00a0 bridges and main road\u00a0 junctions.<\/p>\n
Two battalions from\u00a0 Dublin\u00a0 were drafted\u00a0 into the area to help with the search but the failure to catch more of the escapees\u00a0 strengthened the belief that\u00a0 they had outside\u00a0 aid and may have been helped to make a clean getaway once they got clear of the Camp.<\/p>\n
This was the third escape of internees this year. In May three men got out through\u00a0 a\u00a0 window\u00a0 at\u00a0 the General Military\u00a0 Hospital where\u00a0 they\u00a0 were\u00a0 patients. Two\u00a0 of\u00a0 them, Vincent Condon\u00a0 of\u00a0 Killylea,\u00a0 Co.\u00a0 Armagh, and Terence\u00a0 S.\u00a0 O\u2019Toole, of Portarlington, were recaptured two days later near Kilkullen, Co. Kildare.\u00a0 The third man, John. A. Kelly of Dublin, was free for ten days before he was recaptured in a house at Gormastown, Co. Meath.<\/p>\n
The next escape occurred in September, when\u00a0 Rory Brady,\u00a0 the Sein Fein\u00a0 T.D.,\u00a0 for\u00a0 Longford Westmeath, and David O\u2019Connell,\u00a0 of Cork, escaped after cutting through a fence.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Re-typed by Hannah Mustapha<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LEINSTER LEADER 6 December 1958 Shortly before four o\u2019clock on Tuesday over 60 internees, at the Curragh Internment Camp attempted to\u00a0 stage a mass break-out; 16\u00a0 of\u00a0 them\u00a0 succeeded\u00a0 in\u00a0 escaping.\u00a0\u00a0 Home-made smoke bombs were used by the escapees to help in the attempt and guards retaliated by using tear-gas.\u00a0\u00a0 Some shots were fired and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-history","category-people"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Kildare Local Studies","author_link":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/author\/localstudies\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1934"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8092,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934\/revisions\/8092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}