As conditions in the Curragh improved, the situation outside deteriorated. By July 1958, there were 160 Republicans in the Curragh and the leadership needed help. The internees’ leaders were upset to discover Chief of Staff Sein Cronin and Charlie Murphy, his adjutant general, were working with people who had drifted away from the IRA. Magan, Mac Curtiin, and McLogan, with reason, viewed them as ill-disciplined and unreliable. Cronin and Murphy, who were busy fighting a war, saw them as resources at their disposal. They were also upset that internees, who were removed from the situation, were trying to tell them what to do. They sent in a note to this effect which, predictably, made things worse. Because the two groups could not meet, the situation festered. Still, in the summer of 1958, an opportunity arose for the camp leadership and the Army Council to work together. The sports field’s grass was cut regularly and turned into hay, which was tossed into piles that eventually covered the first lane of several safety fences. The internees noted this and a couple of them, including Diithi O’Connell, suggested to Mac Curtiin that one or two internees could hide under the grass during the day and then, under cover of darkness, cut through the wire and escape. Mac Curtiin sent this information out to Sein Cronin and suggested that one of the interned IRA leaders be included in the escape. Word came back from the Army Council that they wanted younger volunteers with operational experience. At the top of their list was J. B. O’Hagan, an important IRA commander in the North who was interned in January 1958. The camp’s escape committee made the final decision and chose Ó Brádaigh and Diithi O’Connell. Ó Brádaigh was probably chosen because of the combination of the propaganda value of having an escaped T D and his experience in the field. O’Connell, everyone agreed, was one of the IRA’S top soldiers. Sein Cronin describes the choice of O’Connell as putting the “hammer" in. All Ó Brádaigh remembers is Mac Curtiin telling him “You are escaping.” A loyal soldier, he never bothered to ask why he was selected.
On September 24, 1958, a spirited football match, with lots of cheering and standing, diverted the eyes of the warders. Ó Brádaigh and O’Connell slipped behind cheering internees, and Noel Kavanagh, former commanding officer of the Teeling Column, used wire cutters on the bottom strand of wire at a pole. While the sentries watched the football match, Ó Brádaigh and O’Connell took the wire cutters and crawled under an overcoat that was disguised to look like a blanket and made their way under the wire; the overcoat had belonged to Ó Brádaigh’s father. Kavanagh used spare wire to reattach the bottom strand. The match ended about 730 in the evening. As Ó Brádaigh and O’Connell kept quiet, the other internees returned to barracks and placed dummies in their beds. They waited until it was dark, cut through more wire, and climbed into a fifteen-foot deep dry moat and followed it, moving away from the search lights. After about 45 minutes they had covered about 500 yards and were on the Kildare-Brownstown Road. Awaiting them was a car and driver. Ó Brádaigh told him to head northwest, to LongfordWestmeath. He knew the area and the people and they knew him; after all, more than 5,500 of them had voted for him in the election.
The escape was not discovered until roll call the next morning. A general alert was declared, roadblocks were set up, and cars passing the camp were stopped and searched, but it was too late and Ó Brádaigh and O’Connell were safely hidden. Ó Brádaigh was the first Sinn Féin T D to be “on the run" since the 1920s. The two found themselves in a strange situation. They had escaped from an internment camp, not from a jail. There had been no charges against them, but now they could be arrested for escaping. For the next couple of weeks they hid in safe houses in the Longford-Westmeath area and went out only at night. During the day, they read, discussed the state of things with each other, and kept a low profile.
The escape was a morale booster for a cause that continued to suffer. Ó Brádaigh had escaped hoping to rejoin the campaign as a volunteer. But while he and O’Connell were lying low, Sein Cronin, Mick McCarthy (a member of the Army Council), and three members of IRA general headquarters staff were arrested and interned. The arrests hurt the IRA, which was very much centered on Cronin. A temporary three-man Army Council remained in charge-Chief of Staff John Joe McGirl was joined by Myles Shevlin, a solicitor from Carlow who was Cronin’s adjutant general, and Paddy Murphy, from Kilkenny. After waiting a couple of weeks, Ó Brádaigh made contact with the local IRA, who sent word to general headquarters, and a meeting was arranged. To his surprise, he was elected chief of staff. His initial reaction was that he should have stayed in the Curragh. In fact, he was a likely choice. At age 26, he was young, fit, and had operational experience. He was also the only member of the December 1956 Army Council who was at large. And because he was on the run, he could devote all of his time to the IRA. John Joe McGirl, Paddy Murphy, and Myles Shevlin remained on the council. Later, Paddy Mulcahy of Limerick was co-opted, as was another person, from County Down. The seventh member was DGthi O’Connell.
There are three key jobs in the IRA, chief of staff, adjutant general, and quartermaster general. The Army Council is in charge of the IRA except when the army meets in convention. The chief of staff directs the IRA on behalf of the Army Council. Essentially, the chief of staff is the chief executive officer of a voluntary, not-for-profit, clandestine organization. In the mid- to late 1950s, there were probably 600–700 active members of the organization, of whom perhaps 400–500 were in prison or were interned. When Tony Magan was chief of staff, he had gone on operations in the early 1950s. But by 1958, the IRA had expanded and Cronin and then Ó Brádaigh functioned more as directors than operators, although both stayed as close as possible to what was happening The adjutant general is an administrative officer in charge of communications and discipline; the position is like that of a general secretary or administrative assistant. The adjutant general might be involved in military operations, but the job is primarily that of a coordinator who is also in charge of IRA courts of inquiry and courts-martial. The quartermaster general is in charge of procuring, transporting, storing, and allocating material.
These three positions are complemented by general headquarters staff positions, including the director of finance, the director of intelligence, the director of publicity, and the director of operations. The duties of the positions are for the most part evident in their titles. At the October 24th meeting, Diithi O’Connell became director of operations. Like Ó Brádaigh as chief of staff, he was a likely choice for the position. He was in good shape, had operational experience, and he was available full-time. As director of operations, he worked closely with Ó Brádaigh and the adjutant general in planning operations. Up through the mid-1960s the director of publicity oversaw publication of An tÓglách (The Volunteer), the IRA’S small mimeographed internal newspaper that dated from 1914 and the Irish Volunteers. The IRA expands and contracts. When the army is small, one person will fill more than one position; the adjutant general, in charge of communications, will probably also serve as director of publicity. In an expanded period, as in the mid- to late 1950s, positions will be held separately. When things were especially active in the late 1950s, there was an assistant adjutant general.
Although the IRA’S administrative structure is constant, with a chief of staff, an adjutant general, the Army Council, and so forth, the IRA had changed its operations a great deal since December 1956. The high level of operations of the first several months had declined, especially after internment was introduced in the Twenty-Six Counties. From January, 1957, the Army Council had been in a constant state of flux; people were arrested, their replacements were arrested, the original people were released and rejoined the council only to be rearrested, and so on. By October 1958, Tomis Mac Curtiin, Tony Magan, and Larry Grogan had been interned for more than a year. J. B. O’Hagan was arrested in January 1958 and Charlie Murphy was arrested in May 1958. Pat McManus, a member of the Army Council, was killed in a premature explosion in July 1958. Sein Cronin, Mick McCarthy, and other general headquarters people were arrested in October 1958. A substantial number of IRA leaders were unavailable.
After nearly two years out of action, Ó Brádaigh began by familiarizing himself with the situation on the ground and reestablishing contact with IRA units along the border and in the North. He also worked at getting used to operating on the run. Cronin had kept things