Billykinler camp is a well known army camp based in Couny Down, during the events of the Irish war of independence when the rebels were captured and either executed or imprisoned, Ballykinler seemed to be an ideal place to send the captured rebels considering it already had a supply of huts. The camp was also used to hold Sinn Fein Political activists mostly key figures in the area.

One of the men who was placed in the internment camp was a man called Louis Walsh who was a solicitor from Ballycastle County Antrim. He was once a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party but later joined Sinn Fein after the Rising in Dublin and stood successfully as an election candidate in elections for Antrim County Council he was then arrested when the government was rounding up suspected IRA gunmen. From Antrim Louis was transported to a gaol in Derry and on 5th of January himself and some of his fellow prisoners were transported on a train to the new Internment camp based in Ballykinler. Normally when the train was passing through stations based in a loyalist neighbourhood they would have to face abuse from the loyalist community. In a unionist village the prisoners came across a friendly response from a catholic priest, he walked past the prisoners and greeted them with a Gaelic blessing

“Dia is Muire duit”

The prisoners eventually got to Downpatrick, Louis and his fellow prisoners arrived at the Tullymurry halt, they were then marched to Ballykinler. Once he arrived in Ballykinler Louis was handcuffed and his money was taking away. The thought of confinement depressed him in his memoirs he mentions that it was only his deep Christian faith and the sincere, supportive patriotism of his colleagues that saved him from despair.

There were four lines of huts, a cookhouse and another building that seemed to function as a hospital. He discovered that the huts could accommodate 25 men at a time and that they were very sparsely furnished. It was becoming clear to him that the camp was in two sections. In his section, approximately 1,000 men were incarcerated, including internees from all over Ireland. Some men had been in British gaols for several months and some even been on hunger strike.

In 1921, Republican prisoners noted graffiti on the walls of their huts that had been there since the days of the 36th Division. According to Louis, the internees found the sentiments expressed on the walls to be disgusting. Just a few days after Louis arrival, two internees called Patrick Sloan and Joseph Tormey, were shot by a camp guard, allegedly for breaking the rules about staying well away from the wire. Louis became aware of the fatal nature of the shootings when news spread like wildfire across the camp and men dropped to their knees to pray. Soon, small groups of internees gathered in solemn huddles to say the rosary. Meanwhile the bodies of their two colleagues were brought to a building that acted as the camp mortuary. One prisoner had already dipped his handkerchief in the blood of the dead men and would keep that piece blood stained cloth as a sacred memento of Ballykinler and a visible proof for future generations of the price some men were ready to pay for an independent Ireland.

In the camp, there was a strong reaction by the prisoners to the fact that a key witness called Dr Higgins, who had been summoned at once to the site of shootings, was removed from No. 1 camp, while another from the No. 2 camp was ushered in to replace him.

There was also deep hostility at this time regarding one other issue. A man in NO. 12 was about to be transported to a court in Dublin on a capital charges. The IRA commandant simply refused to hand over the man in question. The response of the authorities to this refusal was to arrest the commandant and to indicate that all the men in NO.12 would have to be sent to Dublin. As a response, the prisoners in No.12 scattered and went on the run by hiding in the other huts, thereby creating deep frustration for the camp authorities.

With the entire camp now refusing to answer names at roll-call or identify themselves, the situation was deteriorating . A proclamation by the prison authorities was read out, establishing that all privileges were to be withdrawn unless the prisoners accepted that their commandant must be stood down as a punishment . This was something that the men refused to accept.

Night raids on the huts soon began. In later life, Louis would recall the threatening presence of the soldiers, who stood there brandishing bayonets. He would remember how some soldiers started to do damage to the interior of the huts.

A conference was swiftly held with the camp authorities. A compromise was reached in which the commandant in camp NO.1 was removed to camp No.2 but allowed to retain a leadership role in the new environment. In due course, the prisoner who face capital charges was identified and sent to Dublin.

British officers who were tasked with guarding the internees at Ballykinler were often regarded with satirical amusement by the their captives, rather than bitter ange. Louis actually admired one of the senior British officers, Colonel Ennis, who he would later describe as a fine old type of soldier. Then there was Colonel Hely Hutchinson, who was known to the prisoners as “Play the Game” because of his constant proclamations – in a posh voice – that if the inmates of Ballykinler would just “play the game”, then he would comply with a fair implementation of the camp rules. He would often say –

“I understand that you are soldiers and I intend to deal with you as such…..”

For Louis the junior British officers at Ballykinler were the ones who possessed a bad attitude . He regarded these young men as “cads”. Possibly one of them had been ultimately responsible for the recent killings. However, Louis felt that relations between the internees and many of the older enemy officers were remarkably good, given the circumstances.