Early in the morning of Saturday, August 13th, the IRA team, including Frank Skuse, traveled from London in two large vans and a car, arriving on the outskirts of Arborfield. The raid was scheduled to begin at 2: 10 AM, just after the sentries were changed. The driver in each van had instructions to enter the barracks at a prearranged time. The car was parked nearby. Six members of the team walked to the barracks entrance. 6 BrQdaigh and two others, one in uniform, led the way. The sentry, assuming they were soldiers returning from a night out, said “Right" as he left his box and lifted a barrier for them. “Right,” they replied as they passed under. Inside the camp, the guardroom was on the left, the armory on the right. They went straight to the guardroom. As they entered, guns drawn, a second group of IRA men reached the barrier, grabbed the sentry, and dragged him into the guardroom. A Dublin volunteer in British uniform took the sentry’s place. They had less than two hours to complete their work-a patrol check and a new sentry were due to arrive at the guardroom at 4 AM.
In the guardroom, the sergeant jumped up from his table to the words, “Get up your hands.” He and the sentry were spread-eagled against a wall. IRA men moved into the sleeping quarters of the guardroom, awakened the soldiers, and hustled them into the largest room in the complex. Just to be sure, they searched toilets and the area behind the building. The sergeant, who was responsible for camp security, was bound and gagged and held in a separate room. Two volunteers sought out the duty clerk in charge of the telephone exchange. He awoke with the question, “Who sent you?” They put him in handcuffs. In all, the IRA captured nineteen soldiers. Each was bound at the hands and the ankles and then they were all bound together and gagged. As this was happening, the vans were driven past the IRA sentry and backed up to the armory.
As feared, the keys to the magazine and armory could not be found. They forced the doors with the case opener. At 2:50 AM, they began loading the first van with literally tons of guns and ammunition; its springs sagged from the weight. Ó Brádaigh was concerned, but about 3: 15 AM he sent it off to London. A half an hour later, the second van was on its way. In the two vans were 55 Sten guns, 10 Bren guns, more than 75,000 rounds of ammunition, selected weapons and magazines, and one pistol. To provide more time for the vans, two IRA men in British Army uniform were left behind. When the patrol and new sentry arrived at 4 AM they were captured at gunpoint, bound, and gagged. This done, the two volunteers sped off for London in the rented car. Six hundred soldiers slept through the raid. The alarm was finally raised by the sergeant, who wiggled himself loose, hopped across the road, and banged his head on the door of the regimental sergeant-major.
Probably at about the time the sergeant-major sounded the alarm, the first van was being pulled over. They were traveling too fast, and they caught the attention of police officers who took up pursuit. When the police caught up with the van, they found its cargo and arrested two IRA men. This van was pulled off to the side of the road as Ó Brádaigh and the others drove by in the second van. They stopped, considered going back, but decided against it. Magan had told them to get home safely, even if it meant leaving their goods behind. Also, their own haul was significant and there was not a lot they could do to help the others. Ó Brádaigh drove on to London, dropping Skuse off on the way so he could return to Blandford. In London, they unloaded the van at the rented shop. The plan was to wait out what was likely to be a storm of publicity and high security and then quietly ship the guns and ammunition to Ireland.
According to newspaper accounts, Scotland Yard and MI5 organized a manhunt involving 50,000 people. Sea and air routes were watched and Irish neighborhoods in larger cities were combed. Building sites, where many Irish immigrants were employed, were watched. Two days later, soldiers at a base in Wales claimed they had foiled a raid there. It was a hoax, but it added to the tension as Ó Brádaigh and his colleagues made their way back to Ireland. The team split up to make themselves less conspicuous. Ó Brádaigh took with him another volunteer, who seemed more nervous than the others. On Sunday, while riding on a train, an elderly lady across from them was reading a paper, The News of the World, with the headline, “All Britain Man Hunt; Armed and Dangerous.” She set it down and began checking out the two young Irishmen. As she became more and more curious, his compatriot became more and more nervous. Ó Brádaigh, a polite and well-spoken young man, struck up a conversation with her about the weather, thunder, lighting, and anything else available. He presented himself as a “nice boy,” and it worked. They were in Dublin by the following Saturday. Ó Brádaigh tracked down the newspapers for Monday through Sunday and read the accounts. His own account of the event appeared in the November 1955 United Irishman as “The Arborfield Raid by One of the Volunteers Who Took Part in It.”
Bad luck led to the capture of the first van and the arrest of Dánal Murphy (Charlie’s brother) and Joe Doyle. Police searching the van found maps and receipts which led to the discovery of the arms in the rented shop and the arrest of James Murphy (no relation). Although the raid was not a success, it was not a complete failure either. The IRA had demonstrated daring and courage and had embarrassed the British Army in England. And Ruairí Ó Brádaigh had demonstrated his ability to organize the raid, carry it off, and return safely to base. He also became very aware of the risks he was taking. When the arrested volunteers went on trial in September, a soldier testified that “one man sounded very well spoken, like a university student.” The IRA then, as it is now, was primarily comprised of people with working-class and small-farmer backgrounds. Relatively few of them are university educated. This reference to Ó Brádaigh caught his attention. Fortunately for him, there were no repercussions.
That fall, Sein Cronin arrived back in Ireland. Originally from the Gaeltacht in County Kerry, Cronin was a veteran of the 1940s Irish Free State Army, not the IRA. He was married, in his early 30s, and he had been working in the United States as a journalist. He settled in Dublin, took a job with the Evening Press, and sought out the IRA. Cronin was special, a guerrilla leader in waiting. His recruiting officers found that he knew more about military affairs than they did. He was quickly moved on to the IRKS general headquarters staff and charged with developing a new training program. He also began working on what became Operation Harvest, a plan of attack on the Six Counties. Cronin was not interested in more arms raids; he wanted a campaign. Before long, he was IRA director of operations.
The IRA was becoming more professional and the Irish government was getting more nervous. John A. Costello, the Fine Gael Taoiseach, was caught in a dilemma. Like most people living in the south, he wanted a united Ireland. Yet as Taoiseach, he could not stand by and watch his authority be undermined by a guerrilla army that was launching arms raids on the territory of another government, even if the Irish Constitution claimed that territory. In November 1955, he addressed the Dhil, trying to forestall what seemed inevitable. He threatened the IRA: “We are bound to ensure that unlawful activities of a military character shall cease, and we are resolved to use, if necessary, all the powers and forces at our disposal to bring such activities effectively to an end.” Yet he was not willing to cooperate with the northern authorities or the British and stated there would be “no question of our handing over, either to the British or Six-County authorities, persons whom they may accuse of armed political activities in Britain or the Six Counties.” Costello, like most people in the south, believed that the only reason there was a Northern Ireland was because Britain was more powerful than Ireland, “This ancient nation, whose geographical extent is defined by nature as clearly and as unquestionably as that of any nation in the world, has, for many years, been divided in two by the act of a more powerful State, against the will, repeatedly expressed, of the overwhelming majority of the Irish people.” He also argued that times had changed, that “now we have an Irish Government and Parliament, free and democratic, to speak and to act in the name of Ireland.”
The Catholic Church supported Costello. In January, 1956, the Irish hierarchy issued a statement condemning the use of force that was read at all Masses in