GAOL RESCUE SECRET.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 171, 21 July 1928, Page 3 (Supplement)

GAOL RESCUE SECRET.

GUNMEN GAG WARDERS. The full story of an astonishing raid on Sligo Prison and the rescue of an Irish rebel leader was revealed for the first time by a man who was one of Michael Collins' chief intelligence officers in the troublous days of 1920. The organiser of the coup described how he arrived at midnight outside the gaol with 25 armed men. "The wall of the gaol was 25 feet high and it was surmounted by two rows of barbed wire fixed to iron standards. One of these standards provided a starting point, and after four attempts the noose of a rope was thrown over it. In a few moments a rope ladder was rigged and dropped on the inside, of the wall at a point where one of the flower beds would dull the noise made by jumping raiders. Ten men climbed into the prison. The telephone wires connecting the prison with

the military and police posts had been cut an hour previously—but & huge prison bell hung above the gate. "A lithe young man climbed on the shoulders of two companions, reached up to the great bell, grasped the clapper and began to muffle it with a rug. As he worked the bell chain was tugged. A warder in another part of the prison found his telephone out of order and tried to sound the alarm. Back and forth swayed to tongue of the b*ll, and back and forth swayed the raider, holding with grim determination to prevent the bell from being rung. "'While this was going on a group of men entered the gaol and attacked and tagged the warders they met. Each warder was searched for his keys and soon we were in the cell of the man we had gone to rescue. "We raced across the prison to the gate. '1 lie fifteen men outside had improvised a battering ram and had levered their way through the splintered gate. In a few moments we were in a motor car hurrying to safety."'