As we came to the College of Surgeons and were going in by a side door, the men were just retiring from the Green. Since every moment counted, I had ridden ahead to report to Commandant Mallin, and while he stood listening to me, a bullet whizzed through his hat. He took it off, looked at it without comment, and put it on again. Evidently the machine-gun was still at work.
One of our boys was killed before we got inside the College of Surgeons. Had the British gunners been better trained for their task, we might have lost more, for we were completely at their mercy from the moment they began to fire at dawn until the big door of the college closed, and we took up the defense of our new position in the great stone fortress.
Every time I left the college, I was forced to run the gauntlet of this machine-gun. I blessed the enemy's bad marksmanship several times a day. To be sure, they tried hard enough to hit something. Once that day I saw them shooting at our first-aid girls, who made excellent targets in their white dresses, with large red crosses on them. It was a miracle that none of them was wounded. Bullets passed through one girl's skirt, and another girl had the heel of her shoe shot off. If I myself had not seen this happen, I could not have believed that British soldiers would disobey the rules of war concerning the Red Cross.
Mr. Connolly had issued orders that no soldier was to be shot who did not have arms, and he did not consider the side-arms they always carried as "arms." My revolver had been given me for self-defense in case I fell into the hands of any soldiers. I confess that, though I never used it, I often felt tempted when I saw British soldiers going along in twos and threes, bent on shooting any of our men. I was not in uniform, however, and had had orders not to shoot except thus clothed and so a member of the Republican Army.
Some of the streets I had to ride through were as quiet and peaceful as if there was no thought of revolution in Dublin, but in others I could hear now and then scattered shots from around some corner. It was more than likely that snipers were trying to hold up a force of British on their way to attack one of our main positions. Sometimes I would hear the rattle of a machine-gun, and this warned me that I was approaching a house where the enemy was raking a position held by our men. Generally, however, it was the complete and death-like emptiness of a street that warned me I was close to a scene of hot fighting. This was not always so, for there were times when the curiosity of the crowd got the better of its caution, and it would push dangerously near the shooting.