WHYTE'S THE HISTORY SALE TIMED ON-LINE AUCTION 1-11 NOVEMBER 2023

71 1916-1971 Medals to Vinnie Byrne, member of Michael Collins’‘Twelve Apostles’ Assassination Squad. Includes 1916 Rising Service Medal and 1917-21 War of Independence Medal, with miniatures, 1966 Rising Anniversary Medal, 1971 Truce Anniversary Medal, Irish Volunteer buttons (5), officer’s bar, 1922 National Army Medical History document for his father, an original photograph of Vinnie Byrne and a copy photograph of the Dublin Guard, 1922 in which Byrne is seen, and a wooden box (in which his medals were stored) handmade by Byrne and with his initials. A very rare group to a well known leading member of a small unit of revolutionaries which contributed much to the War of Independence. Provenance: Commandant Vincent Byrne; Thence by descent to the present owner. Condition: Very fine. Vincent (‘Vinnie’) Byrne, (1900-92), born 23 November 1900 in Dublin, son of Vincent Byrne, carpenter, and his wife Margaret (née White). Educated at St Andrew’s national school, Westland Row, he was apprenticed as a cabinet maker under Thomas Weafer, a captain in the Irish Volunteers, who was subsequently killed in the Easter rising. Aged 14, Byrne joined the Irish Volunteers in January 1915, and was posted to Weafer’s E Company, 2nd Battalion, Dublin Brigade. Initially sent home as too young, he returned to serve in Jabob’s biscuit factory under Thomas MacDonagh . Having escaped at the surrender he was arrested a week later, he was held in Richmond barracks with other youngsters, all of whom were released after a week or so. He was active in the Dublin Brigade in the years after the Rising and was recruited to an elite unit, whose primary mission was the assassination of plainclothes detectives of the Dublin Metropolitan Police’s political (‘G’) division. He participated in the attempted ambush of the lord lieutenant, John French, at Ashtown, Co. Dublin on 19 December 1919. In March 1920 he left his civilian employment with the Irish Woodworkers, Crow St., when the squad was constituted as a full-time, paid, GHQ guard, under direct orders from Michael Collins. The squad was Dubbed ‘The Twelve Apostles’, For the duration of the Anglo-Irish war, Byrne took part in killings of police detectives and military intelligence agents; his witness statement to the Bureau of Military History recounts his participation in some fifteen such operations. On ‘Bloody Sunday’ (21 November 1920) he commanded an IRA detail that killed two of the ‘Cairo Gang’ agents - Lieutenant Ames and Lieutenant Bennett - in their boarding house at 38 Upper Mount Street (21 November 1920). He later took part in the Custom House raid (25 May 1921). He supported the Anglo-Irish treaty of December 1921 enlisting in the National Army and served in the Dublin Guard; he rose rapidly in rank from company sergeant to commandant. The Army Medical History document with this lot shows his father, a carpenter, also joined the National Army at Beggars Bush Barracks in February 1922. During ensuing months he commanded guard details at government buildings and the Bank of Ireland, College Green, where he foiled an attack by the anti Treaty IRA. He was disillusioned with the Free State Army and was among the group of officers involved in the failed army mutiny of 1924, after which he was forced to resign his commission. He then worked as a carpenter on the until his retirement. Byrne was a founding member of both the Association of Dublin Brigades and the 1916-21 Club. Long lived, and a willing raconteur with a colourful turn of phrase, he became probably the best known of Collins’s squad (of which he was the last surviving member), granting many interviews to journalists and historians. He expressed no misgivings about his role as a revolutionary assassin, arguing the necessity of the ruthless methods employed, which deterred potential informers, which eventually won the struggle by crippling British intelligence. He died 13 December 1992. Based on Dictionary Of Irish Biography, www.dib. ie, contributed by Lawrence White and Pauric J. Dempsey. Estimate €10,000-€15,000 (approx £8,620-£12,930) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot 71 History 50