• “What is your age?!?!” a harsh voice scrams at me after an hour of other questions
    “19” I respond in a shaky voice
    “Where are you from?!?!”Once more the harsh voice
    “I lived in the harbor of Cork” I respond still shaking
    “Do you have any training with weapons?!?!”The harsh voice yells once more
    “I have a Dreyse M1907 that I have had for a few years and have trained with it” I state with a bit more confidence
    “Do you have it now?!?!”Still harsh but with a hint of curiosity
    “Yes” I say with a balanced mix of fear and curiosity
    “Let me see it now, click to the side!!”Now a very harsh voice
    My hand trembles as I reach into my coat pocket, pushing the click release to hand my only protection to a recruitment officer of the I.R.A. Yet even though I know my gun top and bottom from the broken safety hatch the way it curves slightly to the left every third shot, I know I can’t fire a rifle, or even wield a knife. Then as I place the empty sidearm onto the table, the click to its left I feel an entire overcoming amount of pride and fear that I may be able to fight for my homeland.
    “It’s broken it will never do” as the man opposite of me puts a VIS-35 on the table and hints for me to pick it up
    As I do I notice it is loaded and grip it as if all my hopes and dreams lay upon my very grip of a new gun
    “Fire it at that light” his finger extends towards a lamp, one of two.
    *BANG* my finger flexes and next to the lamp a hole starts to smoke in the wall and an empty shell casting bounces off of the floor
    “Again!” this man shouts at me, and I feel as if I can’t make the shot the next time I will die, or worse, be sent home.
    *BANG* the lamp goes dark as the shell hits the floor followed by glass of the shattered light bulb, the whole time my heart is racing and my blood races through every vain. As I place the hand gun onto the table.
    “Good; now come with me” the man says as he gets to his feet and I follow his lead. I watch as his hand reaches not for the door knob but instead for what I had thought was a knocker and he turns it and the door opens.
    The room behind the door was bright and filled with people; one man scared me as he stared me down with a rifle in his hands, as we go down a hallway. We stop in front of a door and the man who had been questing me opens it and motions for me to go inside. As I do I see three figures staring me down.
    “Why are you here?” the one on the far left ask in a much nicer voice then any I had heard that day.
    “I wish to fight the British from keeping we Irish from being Irish, and I will stop at nothing tell every Irishman may know that he isn’t paying taxes to the crown.” I say confidently
    “Yes, we know that, but why are you here? Why not just go kill a British soldier, you already have a sidearm.” From a female voice in the middle of the three.
    “If I do that I will die that day. I don’t want to go aimlessly into death; I want to free my motherland, not make more of them come.” Now in a much less confident voice.
    “Are you prepared to die?” in a harsh voice from the one on the right
    “For a cause yes, for nothing no.” I say now shaking in my boots.
    “Welcome to the Irish Republic Army” the most amazing words I have ever heard coming from the three on them at once
    “You shall be receiving all you will need in the morning, for now just go rest the main hall” the female says.
    I then go into the room I had just walked through and lean against the wall and close my eyes, and slip into a night of sleep. Filled why my hopes and dreams of the I.R.A. and all it stands for.