
It was a dark night early in 1975. Cage F had been locked up
for the evening which was usually around 9. A skip had been brought into the
cage to take away debris from work that builders were doing in either the wash
room or the study hut. It was parked outside our middle hut and the half hut.
There was a policy in place at the time where the camp
leadership in order not to have its position challenged were refusing to lift
suspensions on volunteers. Suspended volunteers could not take part in ‘army
life’ nor could they vote in Camp elections. The knock on effect was that
suspended volunteers could not make an escape attempt.
There were people more in need of escaping than Danny
Keenan. Danny probably even thought so himself. He was in Cage F having been
captured after a previous escape from Crumlin Road jail. There was one
volunteer in the cage, Curly Coyle from Derry City, serving a sentence of 20
years or more. He was the one prisoner in the cage that the screws were on high
alert about. They even had a notice pinned up in their guard hut. It would have
been a major publicity coup for the IRA if Coyle had escaped and a red face for
the NIO. But the camps staff’s interests were placed before all else.
It was decided in the half hut that Danny was the man to go.
A man short the following morning at head head count would lead to the alert
going out sooner than was safe. The IRA could never be sure that Keenan would
have reached sanctuary by that time; he might not even have left the camp. So
the ruse had to be played out for as long as possible until word came in from
outside that the man was safe.
As a long haired 17 year old I was one of those picked to
donate hair to make up the dummy. A quick trim followed by my hair being passed
over to the half hut was all that was needed. The following morning the screws
would get their count right but their prisoners wrong. Losing my locks was well
worth somebody else escaping the locks that had contained him.
Danny Keenan slipped out through the bars in his hut and
into the skip. At one point during the night he re-emerged and approached his
hut to ask for chocolate or water. A risk that the organisers were pretty
displeased with.
The following morning the skip had gone, Danny with it. That
evening the word came through – Danny was safely across the border and a member
of the staff approached the screw’s hut to tell them.
Enjoyed the read especially the part about him returning for water or chocolate that part cracked me up.
ReplyDeleteIt cracked the organisers of the escape up too!
ReplyDeleteI was thinking only an Irish escapee would have the guts to dander back and ask for water or chocolate.
ReplyDeleteThough you have to side with him as the boredom of hiding in a skip must have been lethal.