We reached Knocklong just as the train’s departure from Emly was signalled. We walked up the platform looking as cool and unconcerned as we could, but with our guns gripped tightly in our hands. Little did the people who awaited the train that evening think that they were soon to be witnesses of a drama for which a film-producer would have given a fortune. In the distance we saw the smoke of the engine rise into the sky. Another minute and the train was pulling into the platform. At the same moment another train on the opposite platform came in from Cork direction. It was only the next day we learned that the second train contained a company of armed British troops for Dublin. There they remained within a few feet of the struggle for life or death that ensued. I never learned why they took no part in the struggle. Perhaps it was too late when they realised what was afoot. Our train had not yet come to a standstill when the signal for which we waited was given us by two different parties. In accordance with the arrangements made in Thurles the previous day a member of the I.R.A. Secret Service boarded the train after the prisoner, and was at the window to give us the signal. Our men were at their window, too, not knowing about the other man. There was not a moment to be lost. The train would delay only a minute, and we had not thought it necessary to hold up the driver. A slight motion of the hand from our colleagues indicated the carriage where we would find our man. It was a long corridor carriage divided into about a dozen small compartments, each shut off from the others, and a passage running alongside the whole way. Our Galtee men were in the passage. In one of the compartments we saw Sean Hogan. He sat in the middle of the seat handcuffed, and facing the engine. Beside him sat a sergeant of the police, on the other side a constable. On the opposite seat were two other constables—all four fully armed. Sean Treacy was, by arrangement, to take charge of the attack. He gave the word. Within five seconds of the arrival of the train we were rushing along the corridor and bursting into the prisoner’s compartment with our guns drawn, and with the order, “Hands up!” “Hands up!” Only a moment before, as we heard later, Sergeant Wallace had viciously struck his prisoner with the sarcastic query, “Where are Breen and Treacy now?” His query was answered; Breen and Treacy were at his service. As we burst in the door of the compartment, the police quickly realised our purpose. Constable Enright had his revolver drawn and pointed at the prisoner’s ear. Orders had been given the escort to shoot the prisoner dead if any attempt were made to rescue him. A fraction of a second saved Sean Hogan. It was his life or the Constable’s. The policeman was in the act of pulling his trigger when he was himself shot through the heart—death being instantaneous.