Missing in Action (19 page)

The Irish officer now had to link up with Gomani to find out how to contact Dr Munongo and the Katangans. Captain Magennis raced back to the Leopold Hotel to discover what to do next. ‘He [Gomani] said “you have to be blindfolded from when you leave the hotel. You must be unarmed and I have been tasked with disarming you and seeing that you have no weapons of any nature.” He also said that he had to drive me there. He knew the route to the location but he couldn’t tell me where we were going. What the hell other option had I? I had to go along with what he was saying,’ Art explained.

‘I handed over my pistol and sub-machine gun, which were locked into a hotel safe in front of me. We set off in his car. It was a fabric-roofed Citroen 2CV which had just two seats. Off we went, but we were only gone about a kilometre out of the city when a smell of burning started coming from the bloody car. I said that the clutch was burning and Gomani turned to me and asked, how did I know? I looked at him and said, “What the hell do you think the smell is?” The next thing the clutch burned through and the car stopped,’ Art explained.

The 2CV car – Citroen’s famous ‘Deux Chevaux Vapeur’ or ‘two steam horses’ – was renowned for its reliability, but the Congo’s heat, humidity, appalling roads and chronic lack of proper servicing took its toll. The problem the duo now faced was that, with conflict raging across the city, pedestrians ran a high risk of being shot.

‘Gomani looked at me and said, “What are we going to do now?” I shrugged and said, “You’re the man in charge – don’t ask me. I don’t even know where we’re supposed to be going.” I had to laugh when the German looked at me and asked where we were. I was sitting in the car wearing a blindfold so we could have been on the Moon for all I knew.’

The Irish officer took off the blindfold and realised that they had broken down directly outside Parc Albert. The local hospital was less than 200 metres away. ‘I said to him, “Look, if you can go over there and explain what is going on, maybe they can give you a car.” He agreed and I said there was no way I was staying waiting for him in the car. There was a big drainage ditch by the side of the road so I said I would wait for him there.’

After a thirty-minute explanation and negotiation, the German reporter finally arrived back with a car, which the hospital authorities had agreed to loan him. The duo jumped in and motored off – leaving the 2CV stranded by the roadside. They had gone less than ten kilometres when they came upon a roadblock mounted by the Katangan gendarmes. Gomani produced the documentation he had been given on Dr Munongo’s behalf and received clearance to proceed. Sitting in the passenger seat with his blindfold in place, Captain Magennis wondered what was going to happen next. Without warning, he felt himself being roughly pulled from the car and searched by the sentries before, satisfied the UN officer was unarmed, both the captain and the reporter were ordered into a second vehicle driven by the Katangan officer controlling the roadblock.

‘We drove off to some kind of house a short distance away. I had the blindfold firmly in place so I’m not even sure what sort of house it was. I was led out of the car and, when I was inside, the blindfold was taken off. I discovered the building was the home of an Italian family who were farming in Katanga. I immediately realised that there were two white officers present as well as a number of black junior officers. I explained that I had a letter from Conor Cruise O’Brien of the UN to be delivered personally to Dr Munongo. They said they would not be able to get me to him at that time.

‘I thought they were only pulling my leg. So I said, “I’m sorry but my instructions are to deliver the letter personally – I can only deliver it to Dr Munongo, no one else is to get it.” There was a bit of an argument but, fortunately, Gomani had very good English and French and he was able to talk with the officers. Gomani was a very intelligent guy and he obviously understood my position. Finally, one of the French officers – a mercenary – said, “Look, if you cannot see your way to give this letter to Munongo’s aide-de-camp,” who I had now been introduced to, “we will just have to go ahead with [Cmdt Cahalane’s] court martial.” I was in a quandary because that was the last thing I wanted to see happen.’

Captain Magennis agreed to hand the letter to the ADC on the strict understanding he would personally deliver it to Dr Munongo. As an added precaution, he wrote directly across the letter’s seal – so that the Katangan minister would know if the document had been tampered with. Seconds later the ADC left the farmhouse and sped off on a motorcycle waiting outside.

‘They then sat me down and a short while later I was served a most outstanding meal. The Italian family were incredible cooks and the smell coming out of the kitchen reminded me of the home cooking we were all missing back in Ireland. We chatted very sociably because the French officers were all able to speak English. About an hour later, the French officer said I must be tired after the adventures of the day and he brought me to an upstairs bedroom. I had to promise not to look out the window to try and identify landmarks so the farmhouse could be located at a future date. But that was it.

‘Shortly after dawn the next day, there was a knock on the bedroom door and I was informed that I was being taken back to Elisabethville because my mission was complete. But I said: “What about Cahalane? What about all the Irish prisoners? What are you going to do with them now?” The French officer turned to me and assured me that they would treat them as prisoners of war in accordance with the Geneva Convention. I asked whether I had his word as an officer on that and he looked me full in the face and said that I did indeed have his word. I thought that was about all I could do, so we got back into the car again and drove back to Elisabethville. He [the French officer] pulled in at the White Father’s mission near the site of the ambush at the Radio College. He got out of the car and there were three or four priests on the roadside. This French guy went up and the first thing I saw was them all smiling and shaking hands and kissing each other on the cheek.’

The sight appalled and enraged the Irish captain. What were these clerics doing embracing mercenaries when UN soldiers were fighting and dying to keep the peace, he thought? Did they not understand what they were doing? The realisation that his commander, Cmdt Cahalane, had very probably been threatened with an execution and that dozens of his comrades were now under armed guard by the Katangans made him seethe all the more.

‘It was the first time in my life I ever felt such a rage. I was absolutely furious with these priests, one of whom I actually knew. His father had a garage that we [the UN] did business with. Here they all were kissing this mercenary on the cheek, laughing and joking with each other. Eventually, the French officer came back and said “I will drop you back at the hotel now”. But I asked him to wait and give me just a minute. God forgive me but I was so bloody mad I walked up to the priests and said if anything happens to my commander or any of my soldiers I will come back and burn down this church of yours. I was so furious I could hardly believe these priests, the way they were behaving. And of course at this stage I knew that I had already lost two soldiers from my unit.’

The French mercenary – in a matter-of-fact manner – had earlier confirmed to Captain Magennis that two Irish soldiers had been killed in the course of the ambush. He did not know their names or their ranks, but he said that they had been in one of the armoured cars. The Irish officer realised that this French mercenary had actually commanded the Katangan unit that had mounted the ambush on the Radio College.

‘After I had spoken to the priests I turned on my heels and the French officer dropped me back to the hotel. I collected my gear, including my weapons and walked back towards the Dogra Battalion. I realised that they would know me from my time with them so I should be fairly safe. From there I waited for the negotiations to produce a ceasefire so I could hopefully rejoin the 35th Battalion.’

Unknown to Captain Magennis, his courageous mission had already proved to be a success. The Katangans had now emphatically ruled out any form of action against the UN prisoners and, in particular, against Cmdt Cahalane, as they were mindful of the treatment of Katangan politicians and officers arrested by the UN. Cmdt Cahalane and his men had been taken to a remote farmhouse some sixty kilometres to the south-east of Elisabethville, not far off the main road to northern Rhodesia.

Cmdt Cahalane was initially kept with his captured men – all twenty-five of them – and they were instructed by the Katangan guards to remove their shoes, socks and personal items. The Katangan guards immediately pocketed all the watches taken off by the Irish troops. About an hour later, a French officer – one of the Katangans’ senior mercenaries – arrived to question the prisoners and reacted with fury when told that they had been stripped of their personal possessions. Under the mercenary’s baleful gaze, the abashed Katangan guards immediately handed back the watches.

The Frenchman, who was a veteran of the bitter Algerian conflict, ordered Cmdt Cahalane into a room on his own for questioning. But, before he could commence the interrogation, the Frenchman realised that Cahalane was not only partially deaf from the anti-tank rocket explosion but also showing signs of concussion. The mercenary ordered that Cahalane be given a jug of water and provided with a hot meal. He later insisted that Cahalane lie down on a bed in the farmhouse to recover his strength and promised that a doctor would be called to offer medical attention as soon as was possible.

But the mood in the plantation house began to change. An Italian prisoner was brought in to join the Irish detainees but was brutally beaten by the Katangan gendarmes in the mistaken belief that he was Indian and one of those soldiers responsible for the Radio Katanga killings. But for the intervention of a handful of Irish soldiers, who explained in broken French that the man was Italian and not Indian, he would most likely have been beaten to death or shot.

The next day, Cmdt Cahalane discovered to his horror that he was expected to write and sign a letter to the UN special representative, Conor Cruise O’Brien, which detailed a stream of alleged abuses against UN forces, in particular the Indian contingent. Cahalane was shocked to realise that he was now expected to endorse Katangan allegations that Indian troops had murdered unarmed prisoners and that UN forces were guilty of atrocities including firing on civilian ambulances, and to insist that a ceasefire was to be ordered within twenty-four hours with the phased withdrawal of all UN forces from Elisabethville.

Cahalane was bluntly warned that if he did not sign the letter within the allotted two-hour deadline, he would face potentially dire consequences. He was also warned that the safety of his men could no longer be guaranteed. When the two hours elapsed, the French mercenary returned and, when he realised that the letter had not been signed as requested, he responded with a typical Gallic shrug. ‘You are making things very difficult for yourself,’ he said. ‘You are making things very difficult for yourself with the Katangan authorities. You are making things difficult for me to ensure your safety.’

Unperturbed, the Irish officer responded with remarkable sang-froid and steadfastly refused to sign the letter. Later that night, Cmdt Cahalane was ordered into a room where a group of Katangans sat around a table, at the head of which sat a white European. The stunned officer was informed that this was his ‘interrogation trial’ and that a guilty verdict could well earn a sentence of death by firing squad. Throughout the bizarre proceedings, the Irish officer was questioned in French, with a French mercenary translating. The unnamed white European was identified merely as a Katangan judge. The focus of the ‘trial’ proved to be the actions of the Indian UN detachment and what position the Irish officer adopted towards them. Throughout, Cmdt Cahalane repeated his request to be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention. In one memorable exchange, as set out in Raymond Smith’s book
The Fighting Irish
, the Dublin officer bluntly rejected any suggestion of tainting his honour with an inappropriate action. ‘I will tell you nothing. I will not betray my honour as an officer and an Irishman. Not even if you torture me.’

The charade finally concluded about two hours later and the Irish officer, somewhat to his surprise, was later privately congratulated by one of the French mercenaries for his doggedness and his courage despite the intimidating surroundings. ‘I congratulate you, captain, on your performance,’ the Frenchman smiled as Cahalane was led back to his quarters. Captain Magennis’ intervention had, in the meantime, ensured that no harm would come to the Irish prisoners and, a few days later, the Irish contingent were moved to another farmhouse closer to Elisabethville.

However, the Armoured Car Group commander remained a special prisoner and, unlike the other Irish prisoners, had his own security detail including a mercenary and six gendarmes. Eventually, the entire group were moved north to where Cmdt Quinlan and the soldiers captured at Jadotville were being held pending ceasefire talks to secure a release of prisoners on all sides.

A ceasefire was
finally announced on 21 September, a week after the Radio College ambush and the assault on Jadotville. It suited both sides: the UN desperately needed to defuse the situation and negotiate the return of its captured peacekeepers, while Tshombe needed his regime to appear reasonable and killing more UN peacekeepers was not going to help him gain international recognition for his regime.

Captain Art Magennis breathed a sigh of relief when the ceasefire was announced and he was finally given permission to return to the 35th Battalion from his assignment with the Indian Dogra Battalion. He had already heard about the missing Irish patrol and knew that swift action was now vital if the missing personnel were to be tracked down. He immediately reported to the operations room at the Irish Battalion HQ for a debriefing.

It proved to be a crucial meeting because of Captain Magennis’ experiences over the last couple of days. Most informative had been his meeting with the mercenary – a man he later discovered was Bob Denard. Over the next thirty years, ‘Colonel’ Denard carved out a reputation for himself as one of Africa’s top mercenaries and was involved in military operations from Angola to Zimbabwe and from Gabon to the Comoros Islands. In 1961, Congo was Denard’s third major conflict after his involvement in Algeria and Indo-China.

The Frenchman had been unfailingly polite and courteous to the Irish captain – and indicated he derived no pleasure from fighting UN soldiers, let alone Irish troopers. But Captain Magennis realised that this was not a man to be underestimated – the Frenchman was an experienced soldier and was clearly only in Katanga for the money. Denard had been in charge of the Katangese gendarme units at the Radio College and had apparently mounted the ambush there. The fact that the ambush had been so expertly set and so carefully concealed from the arriving Irish patrol indicated the involvement of an experienced soldier who knew the techniques of mounting an ambush. Details of what Denard had to say would prove crucial in later helping piece together precisely what happened on Avenue Wangermee.

Yet, in a baffling turn of events, a second Irish patrol, sent out to check on the status of the patrol led by Cmdt Cahalane after Captain Whyte and Sgt Dignam had raised the alarm, had reported back to base that there was absolutely nothing to been seen on the original patrol’s route. They had found no trace whatsoever of the two armoured cars, no sign of any major fighting and no trace of Cmdt Cahalane and his men. It was nothing short of astonishing. The only explanation Captain Magennis could offer was that the second patrol had not been able to retrace the correct route and had simply not found Avenue Wangermee. Somehow, they had taken the wrong route. The captain was determined that the 35th needed to act now to try to find out exactly what had happened at the ambush scene and to confirm the fate of the two Irish soldiers Denard had mentioned. He obtained permission to lead a patrol out the next morning.

‘I went back to the tent that was doubling up as an office and I called in Squadron Sgt Dan Carroll. I told Dan I wanted to go down and look at this ambush site immediately. I told him to get a few jeeps and we would take a team down there. I distinctly remember telling him that we would all go well armed. Quick as a flash, Dan was back and everything was ready. He was a great guy, Dan, and the kind of NCO you always wanted on your team. An absolutely magnificent soldier who knew his job and what the circumstances required,’ Art said.

‘After breakfast we set out in two cars. I led with Squadron Sgt Carroll, followed by Technical Officer Frank Lawless and two of his fitters in the second vehicle. We carefully followed the route of the Cahalane patrol, through ‘C’ Company’s position in the Tunnel, we turned right at Saio heading north and on towards the Radio College on Avenue du Wangermee [
sic
].’

‘As we approached the college and were still about 100 yards south of it, we saw the first of the missing patrol’s vehicles. It was the turretless armoured car with its machine gun aligned towards us at maximum elevation. It was by the side of the road and what immediately struck me as very strange was that the Browning gun was aligned to the rear. An attempt had been made to burn it, but it had managed to survive with its wheels and tyres intact. It was driveable and all that had happened was that some of the paint had been scorched off the side of it. We collected the Browning machine gun and moved on. I asked Frank to check the barrel of the gun and he turned to me and said: “This gun wasn’t fired.” It was yet another baffling detail in a confusing situation,’ he added.

As the team took up position outside the Radio College, they quickly realised that Cmdt Cahalane had been ambushed and that the patrol had found itself involved in a firefight. ‘A little further ahead was a burned out Landrover and, still further ahead, was the chassis of a bus. It had been completely burned out and all that was left was the skeleton of the chassis. But there was no sign at all of the lead armoured car, which had apparently been the one hit by the anti-tank shell and immobilised. There were some spent cartridge cases from both 7.62mm and 9mm weapons, which had clearly been fired. But where could the lead car be? And what had
become of the bodies of the two soldiers reported dead?’ Art asked himself.

The Irish team – warily keeping their weapons close to hand – began a minute inspection of the scene in a bid to piece together precisely what had happened on 14/15 September. By the side of one of the buildings, Sgt Carroll spotted what he believed to be blood. All around the building was broken glass, fragments of masonry and obvious evidence of gunfire. ‘There were ammunition shells all around us but not as many as you might have thought. Not so many to indicate a prolonged firefight.’

Captain Magennis – in his previous conversation with Denard – knew that an anti-tank round had been used and that two Irish soldiers had allegedly been killed, though at what point in time in the ambush was unclear. The scene spread in front of the Irish team made no sense.

‘Why would the Frenchman go to all the trouble of taking away a disabled armoured car and two dead bodies and yet leave a perfectly intact armoured car behind? Frank and I were chewing this over when Dan Carroll said, almost to himself: “Maybe the two boys weren’t dead – maybe one or both of them was just knocked unconscious?” It was the first time anyone had considered that possibility but, the more I thought about it, the more sense it made,’ Art said.

Studying the scene, Captain Magennis could only surmise that maybe his sergeant was right. ‘But if so, where are they? And where is the armoured car? I knew we had best get back to camp and report everything that we had seen. So having taken photographs of the scene and checking to ensure we had all the recoverable weapons, we returned to base leaving the recovery of the vehicles to the afternoon. The operations section was as puzzled as we were about the failure of the second patrol to see the destroyed vehicles and we left it with them to make further inquiries … I remember thinking, after having come back from the ambush scene, how in the name of God could a patrol have followed the route of Cmdt Cahalane’s patrol and come back to report that nothing had been seen? I still cannot understand that to this day. The only explanation I can offer is that they took the wrong route and mistook their directions,’ he said.

Later in the afternoon, the damaged armoured car and incine-rated jeep and bus were brought back to the base. But there was still no trace of the missing second armoured car. The Irish battalion now had to rely on local intelligence-gathering sources because, if the armoured car had been taken out into the bush, they simply didn’t have the manpower or resources to mount such a search operation. With no air cover, they also could not fly reconnaissance missions in the hope of tracking the missing Ford AFV.

As luck would have it the 35th Battalion’s intelligence section received an anonymous tip-off – believed to be from an Elisabeth-ville-based European worker – that a UN armoured car had been spotted abandoned along Avenue Drogmans/Boulevard Elisabeth, a route which led directly into the African section of Elisabethville. The road ran alongside the Parc Zoologique and effectively parallel to the Lubumbashi River. A patrol was immediately ordered and Captain Magennis, with Technical Officer Lawless, again set off to take personal charge.

‘In the end, we had no difficulty in locating the car. It was at an angle across the road and its entire front end was lodged in a roadside trench. These drainage trenches were about three feet deep and were on both sides of Boulevard Elisabeth to carry off surface water during the rainy season. An examination of the scene indicated that an attempt had been made to do a U-turn with the armoured car and the driver had apparently misjudged the distance to the trench.

‘The trench on one side of the front wheels was absolutely littered with spent 9mm cases which suggested to me that there had been a prolonged period of combat. The angle of the car ruled out any possibility of using the turret machine gun. When we checked the inside of the car, all the equipment had been taken. It was totally stripped down to its bare component parts. It was the same on the outside – everything that could be taken had been taken. There was nothing that could be associated with either of the missing soldiers except possibly a set of keys found close to the car.’

The discovery of so many 9mm shell casings in the drainage ditch was a crucial clue to what might have happened. The Carl Gustav sub-machine gun, which armed the cavalry troopers – including Tpr Mullins the night he went on the fateful patrol – used a 9mm Parabellum shell. The Swedish weapon was capable of emptying its entire thirty-six round magazine in a matter of seconds. But while lethal at close range, it had limited use for aimed fire over distances. The Carl Gustav was not a weapon to challenge an FN, Kalashnikov or even the French MAS-49 assault rifle in a shooting fight over distance. 

Captain Magennis did not realise it at the time, but the recovered keys belonged to Tpr Mullins. John O’Mahony felt his heart sink when he was shown the keys later that evening and was asked to identify them. Pat Mullins always carried his keys in the pocket of his uniform tunic. John was certain his friend had the keys on him when he went on patrol to the Radio College that fateful night.

‘We photographed the car in situ; we finally managed to get it out onto the road and then combed the area thoroughly. But nothing else was found. On the level ground we found that the turret had jammed and the [Vickers] gun looked as if it had not been fired. The gun’s water jacket had been perforated with small arms fire. It was clear that, even if the gun had been fired, it would have over-heated and seized up within minutes. But the big question remained – how did the car get there? The more we discussed it the more likely it seemed to me that Dan Carroll’s solution seemed the likely one. One or both of the missing men may not have died when the car was hit.

‘I think the evidence clearly suggests that while one of those boys may have been injured or even dead [at the Radio College], the other one was alive and had driven the armoured car. He had then protected his comrade [at the drainage ditch] and he kept firing until he was killed. Everything we discovered pointed to a second battle away from the Radio College,’ Art explained.

But that still didn’t answer the question as to where the bodies of the two missing Irish troopers were. ‘If they had survived the ambush and had driven the car to this location and had subsequently been killed in a firefight – as evidenced by all the spent 9mm cases – where were the bodies now?’ Reluctantly, Captain Magennis and his team realised there was nothing more they could do at the scene. They carefully hitched a tow onto the recovered armoured car and slowly escorted it back to the Irish base for more detailed analysis and repairs.

The captain and Lawless were immediately ushered into the operations section for a briefing on their findings. Such was the concern over the incident that the Battalion Commander, Lt Col McNamee, joined the briefing. Having sifted through all the evidence, the group reached a single unavoidable conclusion – one of the troopers must have survived the missile hit on the armoured car and desperately tried to save his injured comrade.

‘There was general agreement that the Katangan gendarmerie were most unlikely to have been responsible for moving the Ford AFV away from the Radio College. It just made no sense. Why would a gendarme – or even a mercenary for that matter – drive away in an Irish armoured car only to have a change of heart near their base and attempt to do a U-turn at speed? And if a gendarme or mercenary was driving the car, then what is the explanation for all the 9mm casings found beside the armoured car and the multiple small arms fire hits on the car and its Vickers machine gun? The gendarmes were hardly likely to be shooting at each other.’

The battalion’s intelligence section promised to make immediate inquiries amongst local sources about the fate of the bodies. The officers now hoped that the individual who had passed on the information about the armoured car’s location would know something about the whereabouts of the two bodies. Inquiries were discreetly made and members of the 35th Battalion hoped and prayed for a response. Within a week, those prayers had been answered.

‘A few days later I was summoned to Battalion Headquarters and was told that information had been received from a city convent that a burial had taken place in a local cemetery of one or possibly two white UN soldiers. It was immediately agreed that our engineering section would carry out an exhumation. Captain Seán Donlon and the legal commandant, Tadhg O’Shea, would attend and, if I wished, I could also be present. I opted to go because I had been so involved in investigating the matter up to this point.

‘We were told nothing about the source of the information, simply that if the bodies were buried in wooden coffins they were definitely Caucasians. We drove to an ethnic cemetery in the African section of the city. I had seen a few African funerals at close hand over the previous months and realised that the dead were always buried in a type of shroud, never a wooden coffin. We reached the cemetery, which was a desolate, lonely kind of place. There was one fairly wide unpaved track running down the centre of the cemetery and there were footpaths running left and right of it. The rainy season had begun and the red clay underfoot was sticky and greasy.’