“You were at the Post Office, in charge of the prisoners?”
“Just so. I didn’t recognise you out of your uniform. You are the man. I fixed you just now when you laughed by your gold teeth.”
When he had gone we gathered round L—— to ask him who the man was; and we learned that he had been a prisoner in the Post Office. When the Post Office had been set on fire, and became untenable, the building had been evacuated in haste. Not until they were filing out into the street were the prisoners remembered, and then O’Rahilly had sent L—— back to bring them out to safety. As the prisoners were housed in a room next to that in which the ammunition and high explosives were stored, beside the lift-shaft, down through which the sparks were falling, this was a task of some considerable danger.
Men so selected went off to a criminal’s fate. Yet the authorities in effect recognised that the selection turned on a hazard by treating us all as criminals. Forms were delivered on some men with charges that astonished none so much as the recipients; and as there was no evidence other than police reports offered in support of such allegations, the only thing in doubt was the length of the sentence. On the other hand, men were passed over who were not less astonished at the passing. But all our finger-prints were taken. We were afterwards considerably amused at the assurance given in the English House of Commons that finger-prints were only taken “at first” “owing to the difficulty of identification,” and that they were taken “under military supervision.” Finger-prints were taken all the time I was at Richmond Barracks by a peeler whose descent on newcomers was greeted with ironic mirth, for he was a familiar figure as he hung about the barracks like a hawk, carrying his implements with him. What mirth we had we made as we went, for all that it had a grim background; but we were certainly assisted by comparing the declarations in Parliament as to our estate with the conditions we actually endured. And the idea of any “difficulty of identification” was a joke more than ordinarily grim. It conveyed a wonderful conception of Ireland as a land untracked and uncharted; whereas, in the most elaborately policed country in the world the only thing lacking to make our _leabhrain_ artistically complete was the presence of a finger-print. And the artists in dark green were swift to complete their pictures.