Katanga 1960-63 by Christopher Othen

Author:Christopher Othen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780750965804
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2015-07-28T16:00:00+00:00

At 4 that morning, Indian troops had occupied the Radio Katanga studios. Gurkhas took the post office. Roadblocks went up around the city. Swedish soldiers surrounded Munongo’s home. Irish troops arrested mercenaries and Belgian advisors as they stumbled sleepy-eyed out of bed. No one fought back.

‘We have these soldiers scared witless,’ said an Indian UN officer.7

At 5 a.m., O’Brien sent Tshombe a letter explaining Operation Rumpunch’s aims. After six hours of negotiations, Tshombe agreed to co-operate. He broadcast a radio announcement officially dismissing all foreigners from Katangese service, then went to bed with what his doctor claimed was a mild heart attack. Confident, O’Brien ordered Munongo released. The Minister of the Interior seemed amused by the UN’s bold move.

‘You fooled me,’ he said and shook O’Brien’s hand.8

At lunchtime, the Belgian consul contacted O’Brien in a panic, talking about national humiliation and the dangers of firefights in Elisabethville’s boulevards. He offered to take responsibility for the repatriation of all foreign soldiers if the UN stopped arresting them. UN troops were already stretched thin by Rumpunch; O’Brien accepted. When the arrests ceased at 3 that afternoon, 338 foreigners had already been taken into custody.9 Others remained on the loose. Some mercenaries had made a run for their national embassies; others were hiding with locals. A few, like John Trevelyn and his crew, patrolled inaccessible parts of the province.

Trevelyn was unaware of Operation Rumpunch until long after it had ended. In the news-less bush, his unit would surface like a U-boat to pick up supplies and gossip before resubmerging into silence.

‘Time came and went without thought,’ he said. ‘You were a sort of prisoner in your own time warp.’10

A few village chiefs had radios but most communicated by drum. One night, en route to a remote mission station, Trevelyn lay awake listening to the drums pounding over the bush, not knowing if they telegraphed tribal news or orders for an attack. The next day, he saw smoke rising above the trees in the distance. The Baluba had reached the mission station first.

Casualties for his group were light: a white mercenary killed within days of joining the group, several Katangese soldiers hit by poisoned arrows and one by a panga thrown at close range. On route to the mission station Trevelyn nearly joined the casualty list.

He found a box of what appeared to be long candles wrapped in greased paper abandoned in a hut. He held one up to show his team.

‘What’s this?’ he asked.11

His team vanished like cockroaches when a light flicks on. Trevelyn was holding a stick of unstable, weeping gelignite. After a long minute, Trevelyn softly returned the stick to its box and crawled away.

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