The Sinn Feiners perpetrated another massacre of officers and cadets
on Sunday night at Kilmichael, near Macroom, County Cork. Eighteen auxiliary police, all of whom had held commissions during the war, were patrolling in two motor- lorries when they fell into an ambush. The rebels, dressed in British uniforms, had drawn a lorry across the road. The police approached their supposed comrades and were treacher- ously fired on. The Sinn Feiners, concealed on both sides of the road, then opened fire and overwhelmed the little party. Sixteen of the police were killed ; some of them, according to the Chief Secretary, were first disarmed and then brutally murdered. One was left for dead ; another was taken away. The murderers robbed the bodies of their victims, even stealing some of their clothes. The corpses were mutilated ; apparently the Sinn Feiners finished their victims off with hatchets, as in some of the Dublin murders. Many of the inhabitants knew that the rebels were waiting in ambush from the early morning, but no one warned the police. The bodies are being conveyed to England in a destroyer and will be accorded military funerals.
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