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<strong>The</strong> fighting 49<br />
one-armed District Commissioner Smyth<br />
who was killed a month later, on 17 July, by<br />
six IRA men in the smoking room of the<br />
Cork Country Club. <strong>The</strong> mutiny may have<br />
been as high-minded and nationalistic as<br />
Mee implied, but it is also possible that<br />
neither he nor his compatriots fancied the<br />
risky business of rural policing and preferred<br />
dismissal. It is a little suspicious that the<br />
only version of events appeared in a<br />
Republican paper; however, Mee may have<br />
needed to establish his Republican<br />
credentials in order to avoid the all too<br />
common fate of ex-policemen - the<br />
assassin's bullet.<br />
Direct assaults on police barracks were a<br />
new phenomenon and despite the belief that<br />
the RIC was some kind of paramilitary<br />
gendarmerie it had little to no experience of<br />
defending a building. In an attempt to 'buy<br />
in' this experience, on 8 May 1920 the RIC<br />
began recruiting ex-army officers known as
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