 to win just once. On TV tonight there's a new two-part documentary series starting on RT1 just after the nine o'clock news and it's called The Silent Civil War and it features never-before-haired testimonies of civil war revolutionaries and there's been so much written about and talked about the War of Independence and the Civil War and given that centenaries have been and are of and this series will will feature testimonies of family members as well of a number of those who were involved in the Civil War and there's a Donny Glomant on it tonight. Brian Cannon from Letcher McAward he's going to feature in episode one and he's speaking about his uncle Barney Cannon and Brian joins us now in the studio. Thanks for coming in Brian. Thank you very much John. Right um let's let's go go back a bit to before the the Civil War and and chat a bit about your uncle was he was he born into a republican family? No no um I'll go back a little bit further maybe we would helpful uh my grandfather was one of uh 10 children and they all emigrated to America and three of them came back and my grandfather was one he came back he took over the homeless he was a qualified shoemaker he made ladies and men's shoes totally and um he also prepared shoes and usual thing but as the years went on the big feature was working boots and that's the way men worked and when he went to America himself and his brother first they made quite a lump of shoes and boots and they got one of those characters who was going to Derry to take stuff back and the load of the cart and they went to Derry and they sold the boots and shoes on the streets of Derry to get their fare to go to America right so an unusual way to get there that was where was money there was no money so they got their money and he was in America for maybe 10 years maybe more I don't know how long he was in America but he came back after the parents died and back to the home place and resumed his trade and one day this man came in to him said to him would you make me a pair of boots because he said I'm going to ask this girl over the road to marry me and on those days have you had a good pair of boots on you it helped it helped a long way so my grandfather never made the man the boots but went over himself and asked the girl to marry him so if that was political I don't know I know it doesn't sound very political no no and and that's that was the start of it and he married my grandmother who's known as locally it's Mary war Mary war she was Campbell from a town land called by Urter she was a school assistant in those days it was called jam or whatever's got a different name on them assistant teacher and she taught in the school and then she married my grandfather and they went on to have 11 children right and she had four boys and seven girls and Barney and column were twins so they were about the fourth born and they were born in in 98 right 1898 1898 we're born and they went to school and they were identical and there were two devils and did all sorts of things and then and and my father was very anti-british now at that stage and they I think everybody was really as opposed to that time but anyway along came the letter McAward post office became vacant and they applied for it and they got it under and that was under British rule at the time so his appointment came from the secretary general of the post office in Britain the letter still in the house and time then came and column and Barney was 13 or 14 and they decided to send column to ten units college letter Kenny and keep Barney at home and that's the way things were done in those days and column on his first year having done the first year came home at two in the summer holidays and himself and Barney were into football and after a match they went for a swim in the Guevara river column was a good swimmer and he died off a rock into this pool and he swam a bit and then he stood in the water and he was caught in quicksand badly caught and couldn't be released and he lost his life Barney was with him did having tried to pull him in and those days the football boots were made that laces were made of leather and he tied them together and he he wasn't able to broke he wasn't able to pull them in he did everything so he stayed with him he was gone and then he built a cairn of stones to mark the spot where Barney went down and it's a side story when that happened my grandmother was with her daughters at the lake down from the house and these were the other lovely Sunday evening sit and this was in August and when they're sitting there the sky got very dark and they came in opening in the sky like a beautiful light opening and this beautiful light went up through the sky right up into the opening and then it brightened up again and somebody said to them mama what's that oh shoot that is a stroll going to heaven and then sometime later they heard the the thing and Barney column was drowned then further on um column then was sent to letter Kenny college in place and or sorry Barney was in college and uh people know almost place of column and place of column then people refer to miss bernard as well but he's locally was known as Barney and he was there and i think maybe after a year or two he was expelled for smoking sadly and he went off to to uh scottland then to try and and he worked on tug boats for a while and then conscription happened in england and he came back and he joined the the um the local brigades that were being formed at the time and they were just sweeping around and then when the official army was for the war of independence he joined up that and he was uh he came up the ranks he was appointed and eventually uh after the war after the sign of the treaty the war of the war the civil war broke out and Barney took the side of the national army and and um a lot of his friends went the opposite way so it was difficult and he was posted around and eventually he was sent to creceler and while in creceler he was promoted to captain and he so he was the captain in the free state army yeah captain free state army and he was 20 was almost 24 and he had applied to join the newly formed guard the shiokana and he was uh being accepted into the guard the shiokana at the rank of inspector and he was due to be relieved of his command on the monday morning and on the previous saturday night he was shot dead by anti-treaty forces by anti-treaty but i don't think there were i don't think they were they were kind of i put together band themselves that thought they were i think to me i personally think they had something against barney or something they must have known he was going away and they wanted to give maybe give him a good fright or something but what what they did they attacked the barracks at 11 o'clock and you know in in those days you'd nearly know if you're in a town what room everybody slept in with the lights on and off and little things like that and i think they started taking the bags and opposite of the barracks was a forge and a pub but at the forge was a wall and i think the shooter stood on the wall and when barney was coming down the stairs maybe going late the glass above the door barney was shot through the glass now people said he was shot he opened the door barney was a very experienced soldier he wasn't foolish he had been through a lot of things with the black and tans no one better than he did he had a the black and tans give give my barney's family an awful lot of hassle and grief and he they're looking for barney and even arrested my grandfather and threw him into jail and there he had 70 years of age and he's nightclothes to try and get barney so that myth that he was shot through the door the open the door the was foolish and he heard that is not true and i went to the trouble of going down to creasel and i talked to several people in creasel at the time and they always referred to him as the young man that was shot coming down the stairs but so did Joseph Sweeney who was also he for doing all of the time when he came back to look at the shooting and what happened he discovered the bullets behind the wall and thing and he came to the conclusion that he was shot come down the stairs because the wind of shot through the door in case they'd shoot some of the most of the people in the in the barracks were local people from creasel so my personal opinion is that so you think it wasn't a tag on the barracks but they didn't deliberately target barney but they were just shooting i think i think i think the must have known where it was coming down the stairs of the light that is my opinion my grandfather and grandmother came down the saddest part of that is the other thing a little thing a little information was that we had to post office my grandmother was in the post office at the time and on the sunday morning she got the telegram and it was dot dash and code and she was writing it out and there it was Captain Bernard Cannon shot in creasel and barracks on saturday night her own son because she was in the post office she was in the post office and all the family were at mass so she had to get a protestant neighbor to go over to the chapel to deliver the information and it was terrible my grandfather and his daughters were at mass and my father a young fellow so it was a terrible time the shooting the shooting also brought on the shooting of the four men in in drumbow three from three three from Kerry and one from Derry and these men had nothing at all to do with Barney's shooting but they were shot and reprised for his shooting they were already captured and and and they were already court marshaled for carrying arms and there were a lot of people wrote including one of the men whose uncle was a bishop in Kerry today one of the people from a lady from creasel I think it was or Valkyrie wrote asking the bishop could do something to try and get these men off this this charge in case but anyway but the shooting of Barney the hastened it and the word came down from Dublin that these four men supposed to be shot and in as far as I understand in those type of shooting those reprisals there was supposed to be one person from every from every province well that's the way they were supposed to be taken but there was three taken from from Kerry because there was a lot of tragedies in Kerry that were a lot of terrible happenings in Kerry at the time the Bali CD and all these these four fellows are blown up and whatnot by the National Army so I think they took the the judgment was poor and what they did it was conventional my grandmother and my grandfather they did everything in their power to have their shooting stopped they knew what was to lose one not one son but two sons and there was not nothing in it for anybody but the shooting went ahead and they lost their lives those men they're very brave men actually they seem to believe in what they were doing even though it was the end of the line for them I am always amazed at their courage but they had a they had an option they all they had to do is lay down their arms and they could go free my uncle had no option he was shot dead he was murdered really and I was I'm very grateful and one of the people that was very helpful to me in doing research was the late father John Silk from Chrysler he he did an awful lot of research and work and he was able to tell me the names of the people that are in the in the some of them some of them are in a relation of his own yeah so I mean my grandmother prayed for all them every night so I do it really wasn't a material to me but that was the time and who were who they were at the time people were very volatile and and they got very worked up and maybe they had a few drinks in them I don't know what happened but it was we couldn't ever talk about them when we were going up with kids we asked our father dad was very he was the youngest in the family and he was very close to Barney and we didn't want to hear about it we weren't allowed to talk about it and one time in dad's late years he'd been in hospital and I had gone down to take him out or taken him home and we passed in the gates of the chapel and he said stop and he said that those gates are no longer in the chapel near McWards Hall car park now but the old gates in the chapel stopped he said and he said the Sunday after Barney was buried there was a notice from that gate that I was the next to be shot and he had to go from house to house for the next nine months even after even after the ceasefire because our people still threatened them a young fella 15 and on for 16 years of age so my grandmother had great difficulty in mourning her son and knowing her younger son could be shot and my grandfather as well so it was I can understand maybe now why they couldn't talk about stuff and they certainly didn't want us to know about things that happen so I had great difficulty and when I went to do research on my uncle Bernard his whole army file was destroyed there's no longer in existence and even his army number I could never get it and he he certainly was if you think about how the British army wanted to get him how they were they took over Lante it was Lanteo Hanlon's was called in those days the name Lanteo Hanlon was made famous by Patrick McGill the author he wrote a book and one of his main characters was this man called Lanteo Hanlon but Lanteo Hanlon had he had the post office and he had at that before that he was most often he had a shop and he had a bar and he was the biggest farmer around and all that and they took over his premises and they sat there trying to capture my my uncle Barney didn't get him but they they almost got him a few times when he got away but that that gives you how how important he was to them to get him yeah yeah sorry John it was no it's fascinating strange times it was a brutal times absolutely yeah yeah and then the civil war added a whole new dimension to to events but thanks to documentaries like these you know they're not forgotten and stories like yours and there's a there's another Donegal connection tonight as well like hearing Glennon who's actually from Dublin but he's chatting about his grandfather Tom Glennon I read his book yeah he was a member of the Free State Army he was actually assigned Donegal and he's chatting about an incident I think he was there to calm Joe to Joe Sweeney I think for most of his time in Donegal yeah okay he was from Belfast I believe well that story features as well tonight you you obviously you know I care a lot about this period in history as as you rightly care about your your uncle and your uncle's memory so you've done a lot of work yeah I think the fact that none of us knew anything about and that our our children where they were very curious they didn't know what happened either and I think but 10 early years ago I had an opportunity with T. T. Cahart to do a to do a documentary called Brie Huggesbass and that was based on my uncle Bernard and it was about from birth to death and that was the first time that was going to talk about and a lot of people all over Ireland that time were able to relate to this silence and that it was great to hear this type of story for the first time and well that's the history you're talking about yeah yeah it's too bad that 100 years on if we couldn't you know I talk about these events now in an open way but the series starts tonight it's called the silent civil war and Brian you feature your story about Barney features tonight it's after the nine o'clock news on rte one Brian thank you very much you're very welcome thanks for having me in reference to Jim Lamont presents an evening of music and song