Into Action. Dan Harvey
first.’ Hardly had he spoken when the Balubas, barely twenty metres away, unleashed a hail of arrows. The order to fire was given and those with weapons returned fire immediately. Fifteen Balubas fell dead, nearly as many were wounded, and as many again kept advancing. Suddenly more tribesmen were moving in from the bush, from in front and behind. The Irish troops were in a hopeless situation. ‘High ground’ was the immediate thought in the Irish minds and Lieutenant Gleeson led his patrol in an attempt to make for a rise, retreating across the river, with the Balubas in pursuit, continuing firing arrows all the time. On reaching the rise, the Irish turned and faced their attackers; here they would make a stand.
With minds racing, hearts pounding, gasping for breath and fearful, the Irish were wounded and in a state of shock. What had been the routine repair of a broken bridge had been used as ‘bait’ by the Balubas, and it had worked. Such a possibility could not have registered on the patrol’s index of suspicion, but the reality they faced, to their horror, was a Baluba war party preparing to move in for the kill. The typical reaction is one of fight or flight and the Irish tried both. Too few in number to begin with, only some had weapons to hand and their ammunition was running out, they tried putting ‘stand-off’ distance between them and their attackers. The Balubas lined the bank of the river, some ten or fifteen metres away, shouting and continuing to fire. The Irish regrouped on the rise, and Lieutenant Gleeson attempted to speak with the war party, but he received only arrows in return, many of which found their mark. There was realisation among some of the Irish that they were going to die, especially if they stayed where they were. In any event the Balubas rushed forward and fierce hand-to-hand fighting erupted. The Irish were desperate to survive the onslaught and Dougan, Gaynor, Gleeson, Kelly and McGuinn were killed.
Commanding Officer’s driver examines wreaths at Albertville airport, 18 November 1960.
Courtesy of the Military Archives, Dublin
Amazingly, six of the Irish troops managed to fight through the encircling Balubas and a desperate pursuit began as the running battle continued into the bush. The frenzied Balubas wanted to continue killing, while the Irish desperately wanted to evade certain death. Firing as they ran, the surviving Irish peacekeepers clung to the slender hope that if they could outrun their hunters they might yet escape. The skirmish continued in this vein for a short while but the dense bush and the close-packed vegetation was too thick for the Irish troops to navigate quickly. They became dispersed and the pursuit broke down into individual evasive efforts to stay alive. Killeen, Fennell and Farrell were killed while Kenny, through exhaustion, and Fitzpatrick and Browne, through having no other option, found that although the dense growth hindered motion it also provided cover.
In different places and independent of each other, Kenny and Fitzpatrick crawled into the undergrowth, lay still, and hid. They could hear the Balubas looking for them and the noise made by the individual encounters between the Irish and tribesmen around them. The closely-packed vegetation proved a successful sanctuary for Fitzpatrick, while Kenny, although discovered, feigned death. Despite being badly beaten he did not betray his pretence and survived the ordeal. Browne too escaped the chase. He fought himself clear but was not to cheat death. In the immediate aftermath of the ambush, patrols dispatched to the bridge on the non-return of Lieutenant Gleeson and his party discovered Fitzpatrick first, and later, Kenny.
Fr Crean HCF saying mass for the Irish deceased of the Niemba ambush at Albertville airport, on their journey homeward to Ireland, November 1960.
Courtesy of the Military Archives, Dublin
Trooper Browne’s fate and body were only discovered two years later. He had succeeded in putting two miles distance between him, the war party and the ambush site. Heading north, it is believed he sought help from two native women near the village of Tundulu and giving them money asked for food and directions; however, they alerted young warriors who killed him.
The Niemba Ambush was a seminal moment for Ireland and the Defence Forces. It occurred only three months after the first Irish contingent of two battalions (32nd and 33rd) were deployed amid a mood of national exhilaration. The Irish Defence Forces’ involvement in UN services overseas was a national tonic as it heralded the dawn of a new outward-looking, more modern Ireland. The sudden deaths of nine of its soldiers, the Defence Force’s biggest single loss of life in one tragic overseas incident, then or since, was a stark reality check and a loss of innocence for Ireland. The dead Irish peacekeepers were given a State funeral and over a quarter of a million people turned out in Dublin to witness the funeral cortège as it made its way through the capital to Glasnevin Cemetery.
The Balubas did not know the Irish would not be belligerent, the Irish did not know the Balubas would be, and so there was chaos in the Congo. The Balubas mistakenly considered that because the Irish troops were white they presented the same threat posed to them by the white mercenaries in the pay of Moise Tshombe, a tribal rival. They were soon to learn of the impartiality of the Irish, whose own painful history rendered them free of any colonial baggage and in due course provided much needed protection for the Balubas and other tribes in refugee camps. The naivety of an Irish nation was ended and lessons were learned by the Defence Forces, but the drama and the death in the Congo was set to continue.
Les Affreux – The ‘Frightful Ones’
In Africa, the real danger came from the vast inaccessible terrain, the extreme climate and rampant disease. In overcoming these enemies, the opposing soldiers and peacekeepers first had to fight to stay alive before they could engage any human opponent. For UN peacekeepers belligerence was the enemy, its human form ominously manifest in the many mercenaries in the pay of Tshombe. In south west Congo at the close of 1960, Katanga was at war internally with the Balubas and externally with the ANC (Armée Nationale Congolaise), the army of the newly independent Democratic Republic of the Congo, from which Katanga had been trying to break away. Katanga’s president, Moise Tshombe, had significantly strengthened the spine of his force with the addition of hundreds of well-armed, highly trained and combat-experienced mercenaries. Their presence provided Tshombe with an assertiveness and a disinclination towards a negotiated détente with the UN; instead their existence inevitably catapulted the Katangese towards conflict with the UN forces.
White mercenaries (Belgian, French, British, Rhodesian, South African, some Germans, almost unavoidably one or two Irish), all soldiers of fortune and ex-military adventure-seeking veterans mostly motivated, if not pure and simply, by money, were recruited across Europe and elsewhere as ‘advisors’, ‘technicians’ and ‘police officers’ for the Katangan Gendarmerie. Their paid participation granted the secessionists an on-the-ground tactical and an overall strategic capability, a potency thrusting the Katangese headlong into combat with the United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC).
The mention of mercenaries immediately evokes an almost romantic mystique, but a mercenary is simply an ex-soldier who sells his military skills for money. A soldier is a member of an army and is trained to fight and kill. Tshombe recruited hundreds of these ‘dogs of war’ to bark for him and deliver a decidedly offensive edge to his forces, thereby strengthening the overall resolve of his Katangan Gendarmerie.
An Evening Herald article of the time tells its own tale:
An ex-French Army Officer was being held today on a charge of trying to recruit ‘technicians’ to work in the troubled Congo province of Katanga. He was held under a law that prohibits recruiting foreign armies on French soil. Police said he had interviewed several men in his hotel room after running this advertisement in local papers:
CENTRAL AFRICA: Good pay, former soldiers and young men recently discharged. Those having experience in central Africa preferred. With or without speciality, drivers, radiomen, mechanics. Passport necessary, URGENT.
Authorities alleged he paid recruits 1,000 francs (£70) as a bonus to sign. Bachelors were paid 1,970 francs a month and married men 2,190 francs.
An Irish mercenary, recruited by interview in a London hotel after answering an advertisement for