Gortfree

Ibberson reckoned the cottage was almost half a mile due west of Drumcoggy Lodge. After journeying 500 yards further north along the lane, Ibberson  asked the driver to stop at a cottage on the west side of the lane. They eventually made their way to the lorry, which indeed proved to be Lt. Craig's party.

Ibberson was taken to Ballinrobe, where an officer friend, from the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders, helped him from the lorry. This regiment had arrived from Claremorris for the drive against Sinn Feiners the next morning. He spent the night in barracks with a shot near the heart causing concern to Doctor Daly who visited him often. His batman spent the night with him and Archdeacon Traynor also spent some time with him. The following morning, escorted by his batman, Ibberson made the train journey to King George V Hospital in Dublin. Here he was operated on and subsequently made a full recovery.

Ibberson wrote an account of the ambush which is filed as a manuscript with the Royal Irish Academy. A handwritten note explains that the account is given to the RIA to relieve the executors of his will sending, the manuscript to the RIA after his death. It was written in 1956 at the instigation of Mr J.R.W. Goulden, who was a son of one of the members of the RIC stationed in Ballinrobe in 1921. As a result of two accounts of the ambush published in the early fifties Ibberson, at Golden-s prompting decided to give his own account. Ibberson makes the point that a copy of a document from O.C. Mayo South on the ambush had come into the possession of 5th Division. It was found when the Galway Mail train was stopped and searched in Athlone. The Leicestershire Regiment found the document on the Driver of the train, according to Ibberson. This report to I.R.A. Headquarters, dated 4/6/1921, which may be Maguire's written report, and the basis of O'Malley's account, comes in for particular rebuttal in Ibberson's manuscript. It is interesting to note that Ibberson declares that 'this report tied with my own in the matter of actual contact, but the extravagant claims made were a source of amusement to us at the time knowing as we did, that apart from the RIC, I was the only casualty inflicted that day by the Column commanded by O.C. Mayo South.'

Ibberson says  that he was later asked to help Maguire by Maguire's father. 'When my future father-in-law, Mr F.J.S. Tunly of Lisloughry, Cong (he was Lord Iveagh's agent for Ashford Estate) wrote to me saying that Tom Maguire's old father had been to see him about his son and could I (Ibberson) help, I had little hesitation in doing so.' He also speaks of a 'strange sympathetic understanding between men who fight one another.    In his account of the ambush, Ibberson makes reference to the fact that Chatfield had been wounded and that consequently he was commanding. The Brigade was to carry out a drive which was an attempt to round up Sinn Feiners. As a result  A Company Borders, then commanded by Major Munby. had arrived from Castlebar to Ballinrobe Barracks to take part in the drive in North Galway planned for the early hours of 4 May. According to Ibberson 'As Tourmakeady was in my area of responsibility, Munby agreed that I should take action with C company personnel'

Two experienced IRA men were now out of the fight, namely Maguire and O’Brien. Maguire was an additional burden as he was bleeding profusely, and even if his men could hold out until dusk, he would have to be carried off the mountain. Ammunition was becoming scarce. Fire had to be directed only at movement and against Lewis gun positions. Shotgun men waited for the inevitable charge but the riflemen were learning to squeeze their triggers, as they had been ordered, only when they felt sure that they could hit a target. Previously the British had advanced under concentrated fire but they had run back again when a few good shots in the Column returned fire. Although his men bandaged him as best they knew, Maguire had lost a good deal of blood.  

Gradually the British came as close as they could after finding cover: at intervals heavy fire was directed at the Column position, both from near at hand and from far away. The British could afford to wait. They had ample ammunition and could rely on fresh men to reinforce them. The Column men had intended to get food and water at Srah that morning, but while they were on their way to that village the British lorries had first been sighted and the men of the Column had withdrawn up the hill again, without provisions. They had neither food nor water and the wounded Maguire suffered badly from thirst. Reports had gone regularly into Ballinrobe about the day's work on the mountainside. IRA prisoners in the military barracks had heard the soldiers there discuss the situation. The last report was that the rebels on the mountain were completely surrounded and it was now just a question of time before they surrendered.

The men waited on the hills anxiously until darkness settled. In the darkness the men could see Very lights (flares) from scattered British positions shoot up into the night sky to outline the countryside. They heard whistles shrilling, then lorries started up on the roads and it would seem, from the noise that their engines made in the quiet evening, and their spaced headlights as they moved along, that the enveloping forces on this side of the mountain were returning to the shelter of their barracks. It was Lt. Craig who fired the Very lights, but as the evening closed in he lost contact with the Column and withdrew. Captain Pococke who was involved in sending the dead and wounded to Ballinrobe, then made his way to Derrypark. Capt. Wood, who came from Castlebar Barracks in answer to Ibberson’s initial plea for aid, had to be back in Castlebar by 7 pm so he and the three or four lorry loads of men he brought also withdrew. The British left picquets behind them on the lower slopes to guard the ground until daylight, but the fear of hill darkness and a night swoop by the hill men kept the skeleton force so strictly on the defensive that there was no difficulty for the Column men moving through them in the dark. The Column men came down by Derassa. From there they made their way to the Goat Hotel and then back to base.