To add to our troubles we suddenly saw another military car arrive on the scene from the Limerick direction also. We had not calculated on that. These reinforcements must have arrived by accident, but with our limited supplies we could not continue to engage the whole party. We decided to retire. As we were retiring, still checking the enemy with an odd volley from the fields we saw a half a dozen R.I.C. men with rifles coming up from the village to give further help to the military. If we had had enough men or enough ammunition in the first instance we could, of course, have detailed a few men to feign an attack on the barracks so as to keep these fellows indoors; but we could not afford that, and so our plans miscarried. [Illustration: THE FLYING COLUMN IN TIPPERARY.] We retired without losing a man or receiving a wound. The enemy had three dead and three wounded. Next morning we learned more than we knew while engaged in the attack. Brigadier-General Lucas was actually with the enemy forces. He had, as I said, escaped the previous night. He wandered all through the night through the fields not knowing exactly where he was and endeavouring in the first place to avoid any of our men who might have been sent in pursuit of him, and in the second place trying to get in touch with some of his own forces, police or military. On the morning of the ambush he arrived at the village of Pallas, three miles on the Limerick side of Oola, and evidently was picked up by the passing car. We, of course, did not recognise him. As a matter of fact we were not even aware of his escape. The whole thing was a mere coincidence, though the English newspapers next day splashed the story as an “attempt to recapture the General.” Perhaps it is as well we did not recognise him. Anyhow, we wish him luck, now that all is past. A few days after this engagement at Oola I returned to Dublin. For some time I was kept busy with minor activities. It was only then, too, that I found an opportunity of having removed from my body some of the bits of hand grenades with which I had been wounded at the attack on Rear Cross police barracks.