Another Segment for You.

The peace love and security of my childhood home was broken and violated! The door burst open! Six huge redcoats burst in the door with a tall arrogant looking aristocratic officer behind them. The were huge powerfully built men. At least two of them were over six foot so they towered over us. I had never felt such fear in my life. The officer actually ordered the soldiers to fix bayonets and they herded the three of us, mother, father and me into the corner of our main room far from the fire. “Stand still, my men will shoot anyone who moves,” the officer said in a tone that was commanding, but not loud and definitely cold. My mother’s piercing blue eyes stared straight up at the officer. She slapped him in the chest for she could not reach his face. A soldier with black hair and eyes, gritted his teeth in front of me as he held the point of the bayonet at my chest. My parents taught me not to show fear, but it was hard to do in this situation.

“How dare you?” Mother spat the words. “How dare you invade the sanctity of my home as you and your charging animals have?”

“Madame, if you do not restrain yourself, my men will tie you up,” the officer said coldly.

Mother slapped him again. “No one speaks to me that way in my house!” She drew the phrase “in my house” out very slowly.

“McGuinness, tie the woman and gag her. You need not treat her as a lady.” One of the soldiers, a great big strong man grabbed a handkerchief and a thin rope. He grabbed my mother around her waist from behind and mistakenly or not he touched her breast.

Mother kicked back, but McGuinness was so large she could not hurt him no matter how many blows she landed. “Oh my boy a son of Ireland your mother must be so ashamed.

McGuinness responded with an evil leer. My mother was a Derry prostitute who died. The army is me mother and father.”

“God help us all,” were the last words mother got out before she was bounded gagged and placed on the floor hands tied across her knees. Father was not acting to defend us only because he was knocked down and hit with the butts of the soldier’s rifles. The soldiers clearly were trained and knew their dirty business. The officer struck him across the face with a riding crop. Then, the officer took out an official looking document, looked down his arrogant, aristocratic nose and began reading James Moriarty, you are hereby charged with violating the Queens Peace through smuggling and treason. The redcoat guarding me moved his rifle, threw me to the floor and helped to grab father and hustle him out the door. Luckily, they did not search the house and find fathers shotgun. I was going to need that in a short time.

The beginning of what would become the rest of my life began that terrible night, October 15, 1848 with the dying embers of the fire and a cold in the house that was just more than a dying fire. I was thirteen years old and was going to become a man just like that.

I want the world to get an idea where I came from. I want the world to understand how I succeeded in spite of the English in not dying in my native and beloved Ireland and becoming an educated and wealthy man in spite of the barriers placed in my way.

I grew up in Southwestern Ireland with my back to the Atlantic, in County Kerry. The English could only drive us into the sea or as with many other Irish, abroad. We spoke a mixture of English and Gaelic but we were careful not to speak the Gaelic near the English. Remember what bloody Cromwell said two centuries earlier, “To Hell or Connaught!”