RIC Constable Nicholas Somers

RIC Constable Nicholas Somers (aged 22) from County Wexford (Shronebeha near Banteer)

Date of incident: 8 March 1921

Sources: CE, 9, 10 March 1921; Military Inquests, WO 35/159A/32 (TNA); Weekly Summary of Outrages against the Police (CO 904/148-50, TNA); WS 744 of Jeremiah Murphy, Michael Courtney, and Denis Mulchinock, 13-14 (BMH); John Winters’s WS 948, 5 (BMH); James O’Connell’s WS 949, 8 (BMH); Jeremiah Daly’s WS 1015, 9 (BMH); John Moloney’s WS 1036, 12 (BMH); Joseph P. Morgan’s WS 1097, 14 (BMH); Abbott (2000), 206.

Note: Members of the Kanturk and Mallow battalions of the Cork No. 2 Brigade under the command of Jack Cunningham and Denis Murphy attacked a patrol of four RIC men at Fr Murphy’s Bridge in the townland of Shronebeha on 8 March 1921. The ambush site was about one mile from Banteer on the Banteer-Nadd road. Constable Somers was killed and Constable McCarthy was wounded; all four of them were disarmed. Sergeant George and Constable Moran, ‘who were unwounded, were allowed to go free on giving a promise to resign. It is not known if they kept this promise.’ See WS 744 of Jeremiah Murphy, Michael Courtney, and Denis Mulchinock, 13-14 (BMH). Among the Volunteers who participated in this ambush were Leo Callaghan, Mick Courtney, Jack Cunningham, Ned Donoghue, Jim Hayes, Jack Hummerston, Denis Murphy, Thomas Riordan, Jack McCarthy, Tadhg McCarthy, Thomas Riordan, and Jack Winters. See John Winters’s WS 948, 5 (BMH). Constable Somers had less than twelve months of service with the RIC; he had previously been a farmer.