The land below the aircraft became greener as we flew north and eventually the Dakota was droning over a dense, dark green sea of jungle through which only silver strings marking rivers showed. The land of Katanga had been open savannah with rolling hills and open woodlands, similar to the Zambian Copper Belt. Now there were no roads or built-up areas to be seen, just dark green jungle from horizon to horizon. The Commando was heading toward the equator so inside the aircraft’s metal shell the heat of the overhead sun could be felt. A rich, damp, rotting vegetation smell came up from the jungle and filled the plane. It flew low above the jungle and at intervals parrots and other birds could be seen to fly above the green canopy in a brief flash of colour before diving back out of sight.
I intermittently looked down at the forest while cleaning my rifle, and oiling and cleaning the ammunition in the spare magazines. That activity helped distract from the wallowing up and down of the aircraft in the hot turbulent air. Each time an air pocket dropped the aircraft my backside lifted off the seat and I had to swallow hard. In the next few months I grew to detest that clumsy-looking, noisy Dakota and the pseudo-Cuban pilots who flew them so carelessly. There was no way of avoiding travel by air as the road network, never extensive, was now reverting to jungle. Maintenance had not been done for years and the majority of dirt roads were rain-soaked, soft, muddy ditches. Air transport and the riverboatss were all that was feasible
That particular Dakota had been converted to a civilian passenger plane with two rows of seats each side of a central aisle and sitting in the seat alongside me was Boeta. Boeta became a staunch friend and companion. It was difficult to say why; he was a violent and dangerous man but better to have as a close friend than as an enemy. One morning in the barracks at Kamina the sound of gunfire came from behind a building and on investigation I discovered Boeta. Firing a pistol at a steel helmet on the ground was a burly, round-shouldered man in green army clothing. When he saw me he stopped shooting and gave a thin smile and looked me over thoughtfully. His eyes were wolf grey and the beret on his head was turned inside-out and looked like a brown mushroom. The shooting was a test, he explained, to see how bullet-proof the steel helmet was. Bloody useless was his opinion. Around him was a tangible aura of supreme confidence. When the other recruits were angry and annoyed at the circumstances, he was cheerful and eager.
“Where you from,” he asked, as his grey eyes measured me.
“Farmboy, been all over really. You know, Europe, Copper Belt, hunting.”
“Where did you hunt?” The eyes left me and went back to the steel helmet and he shot at it a few more times as he listened to me.
“Been there done that. I’m Boeta,” he stuck out his hand. “Ever shot a kaffir? No? Only game, hey?” His thin smile flashed briefly. “Those are one fucked-up pair of shoes. Come, let’s find you a pair of boots. Come with me.”
In his room he rummaged in a broken cupboard and took out a pair of black military boots. They were a bit too small but I made do until the Marine had sold me another pair soon thereafter.
Boeta was a nerveless and totally ruthless man, who was in his element with a gun in hand. Many years later, while in the Rhodesian police, his criminal record was of interest to me. It was a long one and mostly for crimes of violence. By then he had been a companion for some years and the criminal record fitted with my knowledge of him. He was a man out of his time; he should have lived in the days of freebooter pirates or Western gunslingers. His ideal time would have been when men settled arguments outside in the street with violence, the old way. In an argument he was the one who kicked over the table and produced a gun to shoot down any opposition. Killing another man was, to him, merely a way of solving a disagreement. Anyone who thwarted him was in danger of being the target of his instant rage.
He was quick to anger, and once he was aroused did not tolerate any opposition whatsoever. When angry his face screwed up like a baby about to cry. The wolf eyes narrowed and he frowned hard. The full soft lips pouted and his shoulders hunched even more. When in such an aroused state he killed in the blink of an eye. His criminal record showed that the law had failed to restrain his passions. Now in the Congo there was no law. The law was that of man versus man, winner takes all. Many times in the next few months there was reason to be glad he counted me a friend. In the days ahead we insured each other against fellow drunken, doped men who also murdered on a whim.
Boeta eventually signed up for four contracts in a row and on the second one, some months after I had returned to a normal life, he visited a nightclub in Leopoldville. The jazz band refused to play the music he requested. It was in the early hours of the morning so he would have been very drunk. He opened fire on the offending band with an FN on automatic fire and killed them all, as well as a couple of other patrons. The one band member turned out to be a relative of a high-ranking government official so Boeta was arrested, tried and sentenced to death. A week later he was back with his Commando; the funds he had accumulated from looting had allowed him buy his way out of it all.
On that Dakota on the way to war most of that was still in the future but instinct said to remain his friend. He hunched his shoulders, pressed his face to the window and looked down at the jungle. He turned to me in the next seat and grinned, noticing my anxiety as the plane dipped and banged in the air pockets.
“Don’t like flying, Smiler?” He whistled tunelessly through his teeth, and then went on. “A fucker on the ground with a FN could shoot this thing out the sky. Standing down there in the trees he could take the whole fucking thing out of the sky, bang, bang. Any hunter could. Pilot and co-pilot and boom the thing crashes in the tees. Too fucking low for sure. What’s the matter Smiler?”He grinned and whistled some more. “Tell you what, both those arsehole pilots are pissed, that’s for sure. If they were sober they would not be flying so low. Wonder if the rebels have heavy machine guns. Boom, boom, boom. Don’t worry Smiler, don’t worry.” He laughed shortly. My nickname Smiler came from my sometimes fixed smile when frightened, and once he used the nickname it stuck.
After an unknown time that seemed days the Dakota landed on a short, bumpy wet and muddy airstrip in the rainforests somewhere in central Congo. At that stage the Commando still had no idea of where exactly this airstrip was. Wilson and the sergeants said nothing on landing. The men climbed out of the plane and as soon as all were on the ground it took off and vanished south in the humid air. A battered green army troop carrier with a pair of buck horns mounted on the front of the radiator came out of the jungle onto the airstrip and stopped where the Commando were gathered. Some ragged Congolese Army soldiers shambled over and talked to Wilson. They spoke French, as did all the local government officials. Wilson and one or two others in the Commando spoke a little French. Then the Commando crowded on board the truck which drove only a short distance before a small village appeared in a clearing in the jungle. The village was made up of pretty, pastel-painted brick houses with neat fencing and gardens. There were no people to be seen. The truck went down one of three streets and came to a small hotel, with the name of the hotel on a board above the main door, a French name.
The hotel was not big and the thirty-odd men of the Commando filled it. A worried looking middle-aged Belgian couple came fearfully to the truck to greet the disembarking men. There was some discussion; the couple wanted to know how payment was to be made. Surely they were not expected to supply free board? Wilson talked with the Congolese and an official-looking document was produced and filled in with a pencil stub and signed by a Congolese with gold braid on his shoulders. It was an official requisition. No-one present believed it would ever be honoured and the owners looked resigned and waved the Commando in. The allocated room had air conditioning and a bathroom. Looking back later it came to me what a miracle this small inn was. Its isolation saved it from the mayhem that had swept the rest of the Congo. For some reason the Congolese Army had not looted it. As a requisition had been given, and accepted, perhaps the local commander still believed in some sort of law and order. The electricity plant still worked and the owners, eternal optimists, went on as normal, expecting guests to return one day. Big wooden signs in the gardens marked where the equator ran through the grounds. Lush, tall jungle crowded to the edges of the clearing of the small village. I felt the jungle was waiting for the humans to leave and then it would soon erase their puny efforts.
In the late afternoon the Commando went into the jungle, following a path to a small river where black water ran swiftly between overgrown banks. Homemade targets were stuck up on trees and for the first time weapons were fired in practice. Relief flooded through me when my rifle was found to be in good condition. The stock and butt showed signs of hard use which had been a reason to worry. It shot straight to point of aim and gave no hint of jamming. Automatic rifles were still foreign and new to me and at that time I felt a bolt action would have been a better choice. That was my feeling then but it soon changed. It was not long until the automatic became so familiar that any other sort of rifle was alien.
As other soldiers found, it did not take long to adapt and grow to like the 7.62 FN. It was a rifle which had been purpose-built from scratch as a military weapon and designed to take abuse and still function. Carefully cleaning the rifle again, I watched the Commando practise. It became obvious that the insistence of military training by the recruiters had been fiction. Some were clearly new to firing a rifle, any sort of rifle. Some were, as usual, drunk or high on dagga. Untrained men tended to flinch and jerk while firing, causing shots to scatter far and wide. Some men spent the entire six months drunk or drugged. Some of them lasted only days and were then sent out of the country, while others lasted the entire contract.
That day the men of 51 Commando were mostly strangers to me and only a few names matched faces. It took weeks before the men became recognizable and had names. Knowing someone by name sets an onus. Those who went home early never had names I knew, only those who lasted some time. All the men soon formed into small, mutually protective groups and those outside your group were merely men in the same boat, almost strangers. All were there for the money and at the outset they took steps to stay alive to enjoy a payday. The group was a Commando in name only, and it turned out that it was each cell for themselves, at all times. Boeta and I had already, at Kamina, formed a small cell which endured, slightly expanded, to the end of the contract. The cell grew and shrank but never more than two other men joined us.
The rest of that day was spent loafing at the small hotel. It was very hot and humid, almost beyond endurance, and sweat kept bedraggled, makeshift uniforms wet through and dark. The new boots were a very big change from the battered winkle pickers; I felt sorry for some of the Commando who still wore civilian shoes. My boots were waterproof and comfortably worn in, especially welcome now when it rained a lot of the time. All day there was traffic between the hotel and the army barracks nearby in the steaming jungle. Wilson and the sergeants came and went several times. From odd bits of conversation I overheard it was possible to glean that our commander was trying to obtain uniforms, transport and ammunition. It seemed the Congolese Army were reluctant to part with anything. How they expected the Commando to go into action without the necessary stores was a mystery. When things on the ground became clearer after some weeks, the situation was easy to understand. We had to adapt to the African way.
Until that day the Mulele rebels, the Simbas, had swept away all before them. The ragged, ill-disciplined Congolese Army had offered no opposition to them anywhere. For some miraculous reason the telephone system still worked intermittently in most parts of the country. The Simba rebels took advantage of this to call up a garrison by way of an advanced warning to tell the commander an attack was to be launched. That phone call was enough to ensure the Congolese Army melted away in the night, heading south in a panicked rush, leaving the barracks empty and the local population unprotected. When the rebels arrived in the abandoned town an orgy of rape and looting took place and any straggling soldier falling into their hands was put to death. The lucky captives were shot but most were tortured to death. That was the reason why local garrisons refused to supply stores. There was plenty of spare transport and weapons at the barracks but the Congolese Army were deathly afraid to give stores away and find shortages when the expected and imminent rebel assault did come. The rebels were driving south rapidly, so rapidly that their exact location was not known. No phone call had yet been made but the local commanding officer obviously expected one soon.
At midday the next morning orders were given to us by Wilson, speaking quietly and clearly, to march on the army garrison. Wilson ordered the Commando to take over some of the Second World War American Willys Jeeps and two big trucks. The trucks were apparently already loaded with stores including boxes of ammunition and rifles, intended for the retreat. The weapons were FN assault rifles and French MAT 49 9mm sub-machine guns. There were also cardboard boxes of spare uniforms and ammunition. Once the transport had been commandeered, Wilson ordered that it was to be quickly driven back to the hotel where the Commando’s odds and ends were to be loaded for immediate departure north. That quiet modulated voice sent shivers of fear and excitement through me. Any Congolese Army member who objected was to be dealt with by using what force was necessary. There was no other choice, Wilson carefully explained, as the Army was obstinate and repeatedly refused to equip us even when his orders had been confirmed. Any questions? There were hundreds in each man’s mind, but none was raised.
The few black privates put up a token objection as the Commando took over the vehicles standing at the barracks. None of their officers were to be seen. The transport was lined up in rows, fuelled and pointing towards the road leading south. The black soldiers were easily waved away with a rifle used to indicate ‘stand aside’. There was a lack of any resistance. Our newly acquired convoy then drove to a filling station in the village where there was still some fuel in the pumps. The fuel tanks of four Jeeps and two three-ton trucks, Swedish-made Scania, were filled to the brim. Empty petrol drums, all that could be found, were also filled and put on the trucks. Wooden ramps were used to roll the heavy drums on to the trucks. No-one came out to claim payment for the fuel and no arrangement for payment was attempted. Our first looting job had been easy and quick.
Leaving the pretty little village on the equator the new convoy took the road north, the road which eventually led to war. On the road to that war my inventory was a 7.62mm FN assault rifle and four spare twenty-round magazines, a pair of boots and worn-out socks, green army trousers and a green paratrooper jacket. Personal kit, my only other possession, was a small plastic toilet bag. The order of march was Wilson and the two sergeants in the lead Jeep, and the rest of the Commando distributed at random on the following vehicles. Of the thirty-odd men maybe ten were very drunk or drugged with dagga.
A supply of dagga had been located at the outskirts of the village, so a big black iron trunk full of the narcotic weed was on one of the trucks. A wisp of fragrant white smoke trailed the convoy as it drove through the tunnel the road made through the tropical jungle on the constantly wet road. On the way to war the enemy were still a totally unknown entity, what they looked like, what arms they had or exactly where they were. My position in the Jeep was behind Boeta, who was driving, hunched eagerly forward over the steering wheel. Boeta’s web belt was crammed with ammunition pouches and an automatic pistol in a holster. The inside-out beret, his signature, was jammed tight on his head. A tuneless whistle came through his teeth. The terror that gripped the rest of the men only caused him excitement. His fearless enthusiasm gave me some confidence and put a different slant on what I thought and expected.
The arms and ammunition question plagued every mercenary throughout the contract. They often had to make do with what was collected from the dead, from searching army barracks deserted by the Congolese Army or from the occasional clandestine donation by the Americans. The Americans, represented by the CIA, flew in to all the landing strips retaken from the rebels as soon as they were secure. When it could be done without making it obvious, supplies were given to the mercenaries, but normally these supplies were ammunition. The Americans backed the Congolese Government of Tshombe but did not want to be seen to supply arms, so they did it in a manner they thought clandestine. The Americans were afraid to provoke the Russians and get them involved on the side of the Simba rebels.
This was strange as the rebels were openly and obviously supplied and backed by Russia. Today a Lumumba University stands in Moscow. How did the Americans think that backing a war in Africa could be kept secret from Russia? When a town previously held by rebels was retaken the first aircraft to land on any nearby airstrip was American. Those inevitable near-to-town dirt strips were used by American planes which landed CIA agents to gather first-hand information. That information could have been fed to them on two-way radio by the mercenary forces far more easily. Off-loaded arms and ammunition from those flights always came with instruction to us to keep quiet about what was being done. When a plane landed and dropped its cargo there was always a curious crowd of locals watching from the edge of the nearby jungle. What sort of mentality did the CIA have to think the crowd watching the planes land and take off saw nothing and said nothing?
At some of the towns retaken from the Simba, stocks of weapons were left behind in erstwhile barracks by the fleeing Congolese Army. The abandoned weapons ranged from pre-First World War vintage to modern Belgium and French-manufactured arms. For the most part the Commando carried the 7.62mm Belgian-manufactured FN rifle or a 9mm MAT 49 French-made sub-machine gun, with older weapons ignored. There were plenty of the Russian AK-47 assault rifles to be had but they fired a smaller cartridge than the NATO 7.62mm and using the heavier ammunition gave a man more confidence in a firefight. This is one time size did matter and the larger round could shoot right through the pole and mud huts of the villages that lined the jungle tracks. An assortment of sidearms of all calibres from across the world were carried; each man selected a personal favourite as his handgun. A Colt revolver, .357 Magnum, was my handgun of choice as it was powerful and jam-free, which automatics are not. The Congolese Army issued no side-arms to its soldiers. Making do with what could be found is the way all African armies work. Being members of a dysfunctional African army was hard at first but 51 Commando soon adapted as there was no other way, and arms and ammunition were life.