Patrick "Paddy" Mahon was a Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) sergeant during the Irish War of Independence.
Biography[]
Patrick Mahon was born in Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland, the brother of Arthur Mahon and Jimmy Mahon. The three boys came from a working-class family of Irish Catholics, and, in order to escape poverty, Arthur joined the British Army during World War I, while Paddy joined the Royal Irish Constabulary in 1900. Mahon was first posted to Slane, County Meath, and he had risen to the rank of sergeant by the time that the Irish War of Independence broke out in 1919. He fought on the opposite side of the war as his brother, as his brother was a socialist IRA rebel; Paddy often found himself attempting to arrest his brother and his allies. He later found himself sidelined by Captain David McLeod due to his relation to Jimmy, and he was later transferred to County Cork to deal with the IRA threat there; he and the rest of the squad were transferred to avoid culpability in Diarmuid McWilliams' murder. He and his squad (including his rival Albert Finlay) were ambushed by the North Cork IRA under Kevin Maloney as they began to leave the Gurrane Woods in a covered lorry, and Mahon and Finlay were captured and held hostage as potential prisoner swap participants. Finlay died of his wounds, but Jimmy rescued Paddy after killing Maloney and the other guard, who were ordered by their boss Frank Brogan to ambush and kill Jimmy on his arrival, believing that he was a rat (Brogan was actually the informer). Jimmy then had Paddy leave his coat at the site of Maloney's body and frame Maloney as the man who shot the two IRA members; this saved both of the Mahons from the culpability for the shooting, and Paddy - who would be believed dead - was told by Jimmy to leave Ireland with his family to save their lives.