Madam, - Recently the 75th anniversary of the first east-west flight across the Atlantic was commemorated by a re-enactment of that event. James Fitzmaurice, the central figure in the historic flight on April 12th 1928, also used his expertise as a former officer in the British Royal Flying Corps to assist the National Army during the Irish Civil War in its efforts to locate columns of Republican forces.
Moreover, John A. Pinkman, in a posthumous memoir entitled In the Legion of the Vanguard, published by Mercier Press in 1998,recalled that a particular action of Fitzmaurice's had almost been responsible for a mass resignation of "Dublin Guards" stationed in Mallow during the conflict.
The Dublin Guards Brigade was an élite unit of the National Army which Pinkman had joined in March 1922. On an August evening in 1922 he and a few others had heard screams coming from a room in the local hotel which served as HQ for the National Army. On opening the door, they saw three Republican prisoners being systematically beaten by an unknown officer with the butt of his revolver. They had almost decided to leave the army on witnessing this brutal act because, as Pinkman wrote, they "knew how unspeakably cruel it was to beat and torture helpless prisoners" and furthermore they "believed that if it was necessary to do so, a man should be shot, but in no circumstances should he be tortured". Then it was reported that the OC, Tom Flood, had returned to the hotel.
Pinkman confronted Flood and told him that the person responsible "wasn't an officer from our own crowd" but was "a fellow who arrived here only recently" whose name was "Fitzmaurice . . .James Fitzmaurice". Pinkman told Flood that Fitzmaurice "deserved to be shot", whereupon Flood tactfully asked that he be given 24 hours to remove Fitzmaurice from the area.
Pinkman agreed to this but said that "if he's still here after that I'll shoot the bastard myself." Flood's response was equally blunt: "If he's not out of here in 24 hours, he's yours."
By the following morning Fitzmaurice had left Mallow and Pinkman heard nothing more of him until he made international headlines for his involvement in the landmark flight which also earned him the rank of Colonel.- Yours, etc.
FRANK BOUCHIER-HAYES,
Newcastle West,
Co Limerick.