Missing in Action (9 page)

But for the majority of Irish soldiers, R & R simply involved getting leave to go into town – whether it was Leopoldville or Elisabethville – for nothing more than a few beers, a good meal and maybe a chance to go to the cinema. The Belgians boast one of the proudest brewing traditions in the world and they had brought their expertise to the Congo with the establishment of several quality local breweries that produced beers called ‘Simba’, ‘Primus’ and ‘Timbo’. They were excellent brews and quickly won a popular following amongst the Irish troops, although given the local climatic conditions, certain precautions had to be taken. One Irish soldier – while off duty – took an ice-cold bottle of beer from a fridge and placed it on the floor beside him. A short time later, he leaned over to pick up the bottle and it exploded in his face, almost costing him an eye. The temperature variation between the ice-cold bottle and the heat from the sun-baked floor tiles had caused the beer to explode.

The local tensions in Elisabethville also had to be taken into consideration when deciding where to go for a beer. ‘In Elisabeth-ville, you did have to watch yourself. We were allowed into town on evening passes and we would have a few drinks or look for a little fun. But there were almost always a lot of mercenaries and Katangan gendarmes around the town as well. Usually there were no problems but, if you were on your own or even if there were only two of you, you did run the risk of getting involved in a row with them,’ John said. To avoid such problems, UN military policemen regularly circled the city centre to either bring single soldiers back to barracks or else reunite them with larger groups of their comrades. Irish soldiers were repeatedly urged to socialise in groups of at least four.

Perhaps an indication of the innocence of the era was that one of the favourite activities of the Irish soldiers was visiting the modern swimming pool complex at the Lido Hotel in Elisabethville, which had been built for the use of the European settlers and Belgian military personnel. Most of the soldiers had never seen anything like such a facility back in Ireland, where swimming was usually done either in the sea or in local rivers. The cool water was a blessed, if temporary, relief from the steamy heat of Katanga.

One of the things that most shocked the soldiers was the level of development in Katanga as compared to Ireland. ‘Of course it shocked us – there was a dual carriageway with a fine tarmac surface between Elisabethville and Jadotville. You had no road like that back in Ireland in 1961 and this was supposed to be poor, deepest, darkest Africa,’ Des Keegan explained. ‘We arrived in Elisabethville and there was no smoking in the cinemas – remember this was fifty years ago – and there was air conditioning in restaurants, refrigerators in most buildings and urinals in toilets. It was hilarious to hear a few of the more innocent younger Irish lads chatting amongst themselves about what they thought the urinals were really for.’

Those Irish troops nearing the end of their tours were fixated on finding a freshly arrived UN soldier to swap their Katangese francs for a convertible currency. ‘We were paid in the local currency which wasn’t recognised outside Katanga, so you might as well have tissue paper in your wallet. The trick was to keep all the francs you hadn’t spent and swap them with a newly arrived UN trooper for
either Irish pounds, Swedish Kroner, Belgian Francs or, best of all, US dollars. At least you had something to spend when you went home,’ John O’Mahony added.

The other obsession was ‘mingi’ or souvenirs to be brought home. ‘Mingi’ was the Swahili word for ‘plenty’ – and rapidly became one of the most important words in the entire vocabulary for every Irish soldier. Goods ranged from African shields, knives, masks and arrows, to Katangan flags, jungle helmets and ivory carvings. The Irish troops carefully guarded their ‘mingi’ hoard and woe betide anyone caught interfering with another man’s ‘mingi’. In one case, when a tent accidentally caught fire from a stove, the troops raced to save their ‘mingi’ from the flames – only focusing on their uniforms and weapons once their souvenirs were safe.

Since the deployment
of Irish troops the previous summer, the ambush at Niemba had been the only major conflict. Throughout Katanga an uneasy peace prevailed. UN troops, mercenaries and Katangese gendarmes eyed each other with respect but also with extreme caution. The irony was that while the rest of the Congo threatened to descend into chaos amid army revolts, tribal loyalties and political machinations, Katanga was relatively stable and it was business as usual for the mining operations.

In Katanga, there was no challenge to Tshombe’s regime beyond the claims of the Leopoldville-based Congolese government. But the Leopoldville regime was facing challenges from various army insurrections, and Lumumba loyalists established their own rival administration in Stanleyville. Repeated revolts within the Force Publique led to Katangans viewing their poor northern neighbours with increasing alarm. Stories of army mutinies and the rape and murder of western plantation owners seemed, in Katangan eyes, to justify their going it alone. Outside Katanga, the Congo teetered on the brink of anarchy, with Mobutu playing the staunch US support as his trump card.

Politically, the UN’s mission in Katanga was in Irish hands. Up-and-coming young Dublin diplomat, Conor Cruise O’Brien, was stationed in Elisabethville and was entrusted by UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld with trying to persuade Tshombe and his mercenary-led army to peacefully reintegrate with the Congo. Cruise O’Brien was an intelligent, determined and opinionated man who, as the UN’s special representative, now found himself in a hugely influential role in Katanga.

Cruise O’Brien hailed from a family deeply immersed in Irish literature and politics. His father worked as a journalist with
The Freeman’s Journal
(Irish Independent),
while his grandfather had been a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party. Cruise O’Brien’s aunt was married to Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, the pacifist who was murdered in Dublin in 1916. Cruise O’Brien attended Sandford Park School and Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and his impressive academic record earned him a position within the civil service. When he was posted to the Department of External Affairs his abilities were recognised by Seán MacBride, who assigned the young man to several prominent diplomatic duties. This, in turn, brought him to the attention of the United Nations’ Secretary-General, Hammarskjöld, who requested his secondment. The Fianna Fáil government – leery of allowing Irish personnel to become directly involved in as contentious an issue as Katanga-Congo – allowed Cruise O’Brien to be assigned to the UN but requested he only go to Africa via a short spell of duty at the UN’s New York headquarters.

Once in Katanga, Cruise O’Brien quickly lost respect for
Tsho-mbe, who repeatedly promised to comply with all UN requests, but then fudged, determined to try to maintain an independent Katanga. Tshombe knew he had Belgian support and, unless the US was going to directly intervene in Congolese affairs, clearly felt he could out-last the UN commitment provided he could keep his army intact and well armed. Tshombe worked to frustrate the UN while, at the same time, trying not to give them an excuse to take armed action against him. Relations between the two men deteriorated, with Cruise O’Brien determined to bring the secession to an end and Tshombe equally determined to keep Katanga independent.

Between January and July 1961, the UN desperately sought a negotiated solution for the crisis triggered by Katanga’s secession, Lumumba’s killing and Mobutu’s seizure of power in Leopoldville. But the exhaustive peace talks – staged in both Leopoldville and a special conference in Madagascar – ultimately failed to break the deadlock. Mobutu felt he had tacit US support for the way in which he had handled Lumumba in late 1960, so was not willing to compromise, while Tshombe, with backing from Belgium and the mining companies, saw no reason to abandon plans for a breakaway state. One year into the UN mission – now referred to as ONUC (Organisation des Nations Unies au Congo) – there was no sign of Katanga indicating its willingness to reintegrate within the Congo. Equally, the chaos within the Congo itself was worse than the previous year as the factional fighting continued.

By late July, elements within the UN began to question what would happen should the talks drag on and fail to deliver a political settlement to the Katangan crisis. Some UN officers felt that as long as Tshombe and the Katangan regime had a mercenary-led military force, there was little motivation for them to make concessions at the talks table. Several UN military officials began to discuss the possibility of moving against Katanga’s gendarme leadership and their foreign mercenaries.

On 28 August, the UN finally decided to try and defuse the secession by reducing Katanga’s military power. The UN gambled that without their mercenary advisors and senior officers, the Katangan gendarmes would not be as threatening a force. It was also hoped that the move would persuade Katangan politicians that the UN was serious about ending the secession, which, in turn, would cause the Katangans to negotiate with greater earnestness.

The Swedes called it Operation Rampunch – but it subsequently became corrupted to ‘Rumpunch
’
in English-language reports of the Katangan operation. The operation was also called Rampunch in both the 35th Battalion’s record and the ONUC orders for 1961. Operation Rampunch allowed mercenaries to be detained in Elisabethville and its surrounding area and then deported. Key Katangan positions were also disarmed by Irish, Swedish and Indian UN troops.

Cmdt Pat Quinlan and his ‘A’ Company troops successfully took the Katangan gendarmerie headquarters in an operation that lasted just fifteen minutes – Cmdt Quinlan distinguishing himself by being the first to march into the building.
Irish Independent
journalist, Raymond Smith, who soon earned the affectionate nickname ‘Congo’ Smith for his reports, quoted the modest Quinlan: ‘I would not ask any of my men to do what I would not do myself’. ‘B’ Company under Cmdt Alo McMahon successfully seized control of the Air Katanga facility at Elisabethville Airport, while the remaining Irish troops under Lt Col Hugh McNamee took the hospital, which had been serving as a temporary base for Katangan mercenaries. Hopes began to rise that Operation Rampunch would bring an end to the secession and the threat of civil war.

The Armoured Car Group played a distinguished role in supporting the UN operations. Pat Mullins and his Ford AFV crew were part of a unit that on 28 August helped disarm and capture a Katangan detachment which had tried to dig in beside Elisabethville Airport in order to disrupt UN flights. The order came from the 35th Battalion commander, Lt Col Hugh McNamee, who was determined that the Katangans should not threaten the airport as it was one of the UN’s main supply arteries. Two companies – supported by two Ford armoured cars – encircled the Katangans at first light and secured their surrender after a brief standoff. They captured forty-five gendarmes, two European mercenaries and one Congolese officer. In this swift action the Irish also captured a quantity of weapons, including assault rifles, pistols, two mortars and two squad machine guns, which had already been mounted in firing pits. It was an encouraging action for the Irish as their objective had been achieved without bloodshed.

‘I remember Pat was really excited when he was telling me about the operation after it was over and he came back to camp. At one point, they were ordered to close down the airport because there were fears some of the mercenaries might try to flee capture and fly to a rural air base to link up with Katangan forces. So two Irish armoured cars – one with Pat at the Vickers machine gun – dramatically drove out onto the runway to stop planes taking off. But one pilot was determined to make it and he revved his propellers ready for take-off. Pat and the other Irish gunner simply turned their turrets and aimed the machine guns directly at the cockpit. The pilot had no option but to stop the plane. Pat was laughing as he told me how the pilot was furious and kept shaking his fist at the two Irish gunners,’ John O’Mahony recalled.

However, for John, Operation Rampunch was a frustrating experience. Just eight days before the operation was launched, he had been on guard duty when, as the evening got cool, he marched back to his accommodation block to get a tunic for warmth.

‘On the way back I noticed some of the off-duty soldiers were engaged in an impromptu game of football. Passing by, I could not resist an opportunity to join in for five minutes or so. But this was to be my undoing as during a scuffle for the ball I pushed someone too hard and fractured a bone in my right hand. I heard the “crack” of the bone and felt a jolt of pain in my hand. But I continued the night on guard duty and did not report the matter for a couple of days as I hoped it would clear up by itself. However, the hand remained painful and then started to swell up in the heat. Finally, I simply couldn’t use it properly and couldn’t operate the turret handles in the armoured car to rotate the Vickers machine gun. At the UN hospital in the city, an Italian doctor fitted a plaster and ticked me off for not reporting the matter sooner. I remember him saying: “What were you waiting for – the hand to fall off?” So for the next few weeks I would be on light duties with my hand in a cast,’ John explained. The injury kept him off patrol duty for several weeks.

Within forty-eight hours of Operation Rampunch being launched, the UN disastrously undermined its potential success by agreeing to allow local Belgian officials to complete the measures the UN had initiated. It was a fateful miscalculation, because the UN allowed the benefits of their bold intervention to be frittered away by Belgian officials operating to a different agenda – and then found themselves in precisely the same position as they started. Except now the Katangan populace had begun to regard the UN as more of an army of occupation than a peacekeeping force.