The troops on whom the insurgents fired were in the first instance Irish troops.

Later in that year I was attached to one of these battalions (the 10th Dublins), and asked them how they did their scouting work during the conflict.

"We needed no scouts," was the answer; "the old women told us everything." The first volley which met a company of this battalion killed an officer; he was so strongly Nationalist in his sympathy as to be almost a Sinn Feiner.

Others had been active leaders in the Howth gun-running.
It was not merely a case of Irishmen firing on their fellow-countrymen: it was one section of the original Volunteers firing on another.
Yet from the moment when English troops came on the scene, another strain of feeling began to make itself felt.

A lady ordered tea to be made for one of the incoming regiments, halted outside her house on the line of march.