The guns opened at ten to five.
They were behind James, back toward Boyle, and the first he knew of them was the noise. It was a deep stuttering crash that rolled over the Curlews and on north, and then, a few seconds later, the flashes. They lit up the country north of Castlebaldwin all at once, hedges and fields and the dark shapes of buildings, and then a line of soil went up into the air along the British positions.
The British had come south to that ground in the days after Sligo. They had taken the N4 from Collooney down as far as the crossroads at Drumfin, three kilometres short of Castlebaldwin, and dug in. Then Castlebaldwin and Ballinafad had stopped them. They had sat on that ground ever since, with their guns and their infantry and their forward units.
Today the Irish were going to take it off them.
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