Brothers in arms on different sides

Martin Mullen, a 23-year-old Dublin bricklayer was a day late for the Rising. He had read, and obeyed, Eoin MacNeill's countermanding order in the Sunday Independent that had called off the "manoeuvres" scheduled for Easter Monday. Almost exactly a year earlier his younger brother James, a volunteer in a different uniform, had lost his sight at Gallipoli and at this stage was in hospital in Alexandria.

Martin rose early, and went to the back garden of the family's terraced house near the Coombe. His German Mauser rifle, brought ashore two years earlier at Howth, had been wrapped in an overcoat and buried there in anticipation of future action. Having dug up and cleaned the rifle he headed for Jacob's biscuit factory accompanied by his girlfriend, May McMahon. At the entrance to Bishop Street they became involved in an event that affected them deeply.

They were confronted by a group of "Ring-Paper Women". These dependants of British soldiers earned their nickname from their allowance books that contained printed circles to be stamped when payment was made.

The women, screaming abuse at the rebels and spitting at the couple, blocked their way. They called on a passing postman to help them stop Martin from joining the rebels. A shot rang out from inside Jacob's. The postman was hit. The women scattered. Martin Mullen joined his comrades but after the surrender and his internment at Frongoch in north Wales, he opted out of political activity. Unlike other family members, he took no part in the War of Independence or the Civil War.

Inside Jacob's, Martin Mullen was surprised to meet a neighbour. Joe Byrne was a soldier attached to an English county regiment who was home on leave from the Front. He had impulsively decided to join the rebels, shed his khaki uniform and gone to Jacob's in civvies. Loyalties were not all that clearly defined at the time.

When the fighting ended (and there was very little fighting at Jacob's), the insurgents created a diversion to smuggle Byrne to safety. Had he been captured he would undoubtedly have faced the firing squad as a deserter.

Martin and James Mullen had been in the IRB and at the Howth gun-running together in 1914. They had attended meetings at Merchant's Quay in Dublin with Liam Mellows, Garry Houlihan and Colm Ó Lochlainn, later of the Three Candles Press. They parted ways when James had a blazing row with his tyrannical father and took an escape route that led to his encounter with a piece of Turkish shrapnel in the Dardanelles.

The Mullen brothers met different fates. Martin married May McMahon and was the father of eight sons. He died in the 1950s, a senior official in Dublin Corporation. James, a civil servant in London, lived until 1979, his sight just partially restored, though he was almost totally deaf. He never married. The love of his life, Marie Butler from Bordeaux, died before their planned wedding.