Recruitment began in July 1920 and by November 1921 the division was 1,900 strong. The Auxies were nominally part of the RIC, but actually operated more or less independently in rural areas. Divided into Companies (eventually fifteen of them), each about one hundred strong, heavily armed and highly mobile, they operated in ten counties, mostly in the south and west, where IRA activity was greatest. Hurriedly recruited, poorly trained and with an ill-defined role, they soon gained a reputation for drunkenness and brutality worse than that of the Black and Tans. They wore either RIC uniforms or their old army uniforms with appropriate police badges. On 11 December , 1920, Auxiliaries burnt the entire city centre of Cork (preventing the fire service from attending the blaze) and shot seven people, two IRA men in their beds and five civilians on the streets. Some took to wearing pieces of burnt cork in their hats afterwards, to celebrate the occasion. A few days later, near Dunmanway , an Auxiliary later judged insane killed a young mentally disabled man and a seventy-year old priest. In February 1921 their commander, Brigadier-General Frank Crozier , himself a former officer of the Unionist paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force , resigned in despair, utterly unable to discipline his men. They were and are often confused with the Black and Tans, and many atrocities laid at the door of the latter were in reality attributable to the Auxies, such as the murder of young mother Ellen Quinn in Kiltartan , County Galway , shot from a passing truck as she held her child. Disbanded along with the RIC in 1922, many Auxies joined the Palestine Police . As with the Black and Tans, they are still a contentious issue in Ireland.
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