Lance Corporal Arthur Wilfred Lavington Hill

Lance Corporal Arthur Wilfred Lavington Hill (aged 21) of the 7th Company, 2nd Battalion, Hampshire Regiment (Lower Glanmire Road, Cork city) 

Date of incident: 18 May 1921 (executed as suspected intelligence operative by IRA)

Sources: CC, 20 May 1921; IT, 19 May 1921; II, 20 May 1921; FJ, 20 May 1921; CE, 4 June 1921; RIC County Inspector’s Monthly Report, Cork City and East Riding, May 1921 (CO 904/115, TNA); Commonwealth War Graves Commission; Sheehan (2011), 75; irishmedals.org (accessed 28 July 2014); http://www.cairogang.com/soldiers-killed/list-1921.html; http://www.cairogang.com/soldiers-killed/hill/hill.html (accessed 16 July 2015).

Note: Hill was assigned to the railway-transport staff at Glanmire station. After visiting a girlfriend in civilian clothes, he left there to return to the barracks at about 9:30 p.m. He was killed at about that time at or near the level crossing on Lower Glanmire Road. He was shot in the head with a .45 revolver by one of the IRA men who had been crouching in wait behind a nearby wall. A second bullet penetrated his skull from back to front. A military court adjudged the killing a murder by persons unknown. Sheehan has identified Hill as an ‘intelligence operative’. But as a Dublin Castle report was right to point out, ‘The corporal had just said “Good-night” to a young girlfriend and was proceeding to barracks when he was murdered.’ See FJ, 20 May 1921. Hill was interred in Fareham Cemetery near Portsmouth Harbour in south-east Hampshire.