British Army Artillery Crews Helped Collins Bomb the Anti-Treaty Troops, Four Courts 1922

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

[quote=Sam Lord;287851]

What does not make sense is your apparent belief that MI5 or MI6, for example, are in the business of assessing the battle readiness of the British armed forces. I can assure you they are not. That is the business of the British Army. Similarly I can assure you that the CIA does not have a section devoted to assessing the state of the American Armed forces and produces no reports in that regard. I can just imagine the reaction of the Pentagon if they tried.

We're miles into silly territory with this.

I'm not entirely convinced that you know very much about that day or the period in general for that matter.

Neither of us were there. But we do have eyewitness accounts. And you maintained that Collins never fired a shot. Many Generals don't ever fire a shot. But Collins didn't hesitate to fight when ambushed and that is a bit of an insight which overturns your implication that he wasn't a fighter.

There is no historical dispute, to my knowledge, about the fact of him attending mass there daily.

So what? Some of the biggest chancers in Ireland made a point and some still do of attending mass daily. And this was near enough a century back.

I know someone else who had a close connection with the Brompton Oratory. Her name started with H.

No idea what you are on about?

If you think the Catholic Church in Ireland was playing both ends in the Civil War then you have an even sketchier understanding of the period than I hitherto suspected.

And if you think that the catholic church doesn't play both ends in any conflict with the sole purpose of being seen to be on the 'right' side at the end of it you don't know anything about that organisation.

If you are trying to imply they were foursquare behind one side or the other you'd be wrong. The Jesuits were the church's intelligence operation at that time and they were masters at it.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

What does not make sense is your apparent belief that MI5 or MI6, for example, are in the business of assessing the battle readiness of the British armed forces.

This is miles away from the point about Michael Collins as 'Director of Intelligence' and I asserted no such 'belief'. You've projected that as if I implied it and are attacking that in a kind of well-worn internet debate chestnut.

If you have one hundred men with pitchforks (plus One Angry Lesbian with a hefty bicycle pump due to equality legislation) and are matched against one thousand troops with semi-automatic weapons you don't need an intelligence report in order to discover what the tactical problem might be.

And you'd be a damn fool to ask for a report to ascertain the state of morale of the thousand with the semi-automatic weapons and proceed to battle on that basis.

[C. Flower]

Interesting debate between Captain Con and Sam Lord on Collins, but we have Beal na mBlath and other Collins threads here in which it could take place. I don't see what difference the points being made have to do with the role of the British (as alleged), which is the topic of this thread.






There are 34 contemporary images and captions here.

The caption to image 6 explicitly states that it had been stated falsely that British troops operated the 18 pounder gun.