Missing in Action (20 page)

The task facing the Irish engineering detachment was not an easy one. Unlike in Irish or European cemeteries, there were no headstones here – the grave markers usually took the form of personal mementos or items of household goods left as offerings. That lent a shabby aura to the whole place. It was as depressing a place as the Irish soldiers could have imagined. The only guidance the Irish team had was that the burial was recent and so they focused on an area just off the centre track where recent burials had taken place.

‘The engineers started digging straight away and it was very difficult work because the clay was already totally saturated. It was heavy and sticky, and every shovel seemed to be sucked into the red clay. Just when they would get the grave open, it would begin to fill with rainwater. Then came the sound the team had been hoping for and dreading in equal measure – the scrape of metal against wood,’ Captain Magennis explained.

Without speaking, Irish soldiers and officers alike gazed at each other. No training manual dealt with the nightmare scenario they were now forced to deal with. This was the body of a comrade – a friend – and none of the soldiers knew precisely what they were likely to find in the grave. Finally, with a silent nod, they began the awful task at hand. The earth was carefully cleared away from the lid of the rough-hewn coffin. Seconds after the lid was prized off, the team staggered back under the smell of putrefaction.

‘I had to withdraw from the scene and escape back to the cars. I am glad I did because it was about as terrible a job as you could ask any soldier to do. I felt violently ill and sick at heart for the two soldiers. These young lads deserved far better than this. When the team eventually came up to the trucks, I was told the body in the coffin was identified by the identity discs around the neck as being that of Cpl Nolan. The grave was searched deeper but there was nothing else there. There was no trace of Tpr Mullins and the team seemed satisfied that there hadn’t been another burial nearby. Back in camp, the legal officer made the necessary reports. I went to my billet and stretched out on the bed and listened to the rain that was now cascading down. I just couldn’t sleep and even the mere thought of food repulsed me.’

With Cpl Nolan’s body now recovered, Captain Magennis was determined that everything possible be done to locate the remains of Tpr Mullins. He met up with Frank Lawless and Dan Carroll and talked over the best course of action now open to them. But what the three officers did not realise was that the battalion had already made a catastrophic omission, which would have far-reaching implications for the search.

The 35th Battalion – in line with standard UN procedure – had notified the Congo command of what had happened on Avenue Wangermee and Avenue Drogmans/Boulevard Elisabeth and that two Irish soldiers were missing, presumed dead. The UN command was then informed that the body of Cpl Nolan had been successfully located and recovered. They were also informed that the search for Tpr Mullins remained ongoing. However, no formal request for specialist assistance was ever issued – a critical omission given that the Swedish UN battalion already had a special dog-search team in place in Elisabethville.

The failure to make such a formal request for search assistance remains baffling to this day. The Swedish dog handling team were trained in tracking techniques. But the Swedes remained ignorant of the missing Irish soldier. The Irish only realised weeks later that the Swedes had such a vital resource available. Any of Tpr Mullins’ personal belongings left at Battalion HQ would have provided the dogs with a vital scent from which to work. And Tpr Mullins’ last known location by the drainage ditch on Avenue Drogmans/Boulevard Elisabeth was the perfect place to commence a dog search operation.

Meanwhile, the Irish officers staged informal briefings amongst themselves in a bid to pool information or ideas about how to search for Tpr Mullins. But, having located the armoured car so fast, the trail suddenly began to go cold. The officers only got scraps of information from local sources and none of it related to where Tpr Mullins’ remains might be located.

One Katangan businessman, who befriended a few of the Irish UN officers, confidentially briefed them on what he had heard about the firefight on Avenue Drogmans/Boulevard Elisabeth. Captain Magennis and Company Sgt Carroll were correct in their painstaking reconstruction of what might have happened. The one crucial additional piece of information he supplied was that the Katangans were so impressed by the soldier’s courage and loyalty to his comrade that his body was separated from that of the other trooper and taken away by the gendarmes. The businessman reckoned the body was most likely taken for use in some kind of tribal ritual. Congolese tribes had for generations believed that specific body parts carried human attributes such as courage, loyalty and intelligence. Some of the body parts of a brave enemy were believed to convey courage to those who took them and, as such, were prized. The shocked Irish officers realised that, more than likely, Tpr Mullins
’
body had been dismembered and used for tribal purposes.

The information galvanised the Irish officers to redouble their efforts to find Tpr Mullins’ resting place, if such a grave existed. Battalion intelligence was charged with the task while, given the deteriorating security situation in Katanga, the rest of the officers were relieved of the responsibility and assigned to other pressing UN duties. ‘There was very little we could do except keep our eyes and ears open when meeting native people, particularly children. Children everywhere love to gather around soldiers and chat with them even through sign language. But ultimately the hard gathering of information on Tpr Mullins’ burial place would rest on the battalion intelligence section,’ said Art Magennis.

The search was badly hampered by circumstances. Despite the ceasefire, tensions were running high between Katangans and the UN. Tshombe’s gendarmes did everything in their power to make the work of the UN difficult – setting up roadblocks along UN supply routes and shadowing any UN patrols sent out around the city. It was also routine for Katangan forces to cut electricity and water supplies to areas where the UN troops were based. Some local food stores, including bakers, were warned that supplying the UN carried dire consequences. A trade boycott inevitably erupted.

A further problem was that any Katangans – and some Europeans for that matter – who conversed or even socialised with UN personnel immediately came under suspicion of spying or providing intelligence. The Katangan Ministry of the Interior was by now genuinely feared in Elisabethville and locals were terrified that contacts with the UN, however innocent, would have serious consequences for them.

By early October, it began to look like another serious outbreak of fighting was likely. An Irish intelligence section officer was fired on as he drove near the battalion base. On another occasion, an Irish sergeant on a dispatch mission suddenly found his Landrover surrounded by a hostile crowd, which began to stone the vehicle. Katangan forces also increased their patrol tempo and Irish troops noticed that the number of mercenaries around Elisabethville seemed to be increasing by the day. Security concerns were so great that Irish troops were only allowed to move around in armed groups of four and social expeditions to the city centre were forbidden.

These circumstances meant that battalion intelligence’s priorities had inevitably shifted away from the search for Tpr Mullins. Captain Magennis – acutely aware of the importance of a timely search – decided to take matters into his own hands and contacted a South African national he had befriended in Elisabethville. Bill Williams was a unique character. He had been born and raised in South Africa yet spoke with the soft lilt of the Welsh valleys. Few people knew Africa as well as Bill, and Art Magennis was now desperate for help in uncovering information about the missing eighteen-year-old soldier.

‘I first met Bill and his wife shortly after the main body of the 35th Battalion arrived in Elisabethville. A bonfire had been lit in the area between the HQ building and the road. The troops gathered around the fire and an impromptu singsong started. Then the battalion pipe band arrived complete with dress uniforms and started into their concert repertoire. It was a masterstroke of public relations because, within an hour, a crowd had gathered – both whites and blacks – and joined in the event enthusiastically,’ Art recalled.

‘I happened to be near the entrance gate when I heard a pronounced Welsh voice say: “Captain, welcome to Katanga.” That is how I first met Bill Williams. His father had emigrated to South Africa after surviving the First World War. Bill was born in South Africa but picked up his father’s Welsh accent and kept it throughout his life. He was in Katanga for about ten years and had established a very successful quarrying business supplying road-making stone to the government and to Union Minière. We soon became good friends.’

With telecommunications now non-existent in Katanga, ar-ranging a meeting with the quarry owner was easier said than done. Irish troops were under orders only to move around in groups of four and inviting Bill Williams into a group like that in public could pose personal security risks for him. Finally Captain Magennis hit on the idea of trying to contact Bill through an intermediary, a Polish neighbour, Stan Zurakovsky, who was easy for the Irish troops to contact as he lived near the base and troopers passed his home on a near daily basis and who could carry a message to the quarry owner.

‘I made contact with Bill through Stan and we arranged a meeting for 24 October. He agreed to try to ferret out any information there might be amongst his Katangan employees about what had happened between Avenue Wangermee and Boulevard Elisabeth. The South African said he would make discreet inquiries but that it would take at least two or three weeks to discover anything. The date of that meeting with Bill always sticks out in my mind because, the very next day, the Katangan authorities released all the prisoners who had been captured by the gendarmes. They were released on the old airstrip by the main airport road. We were glad to see them all back safe and well.’

Pat Cahalane – who had been a prisoner with his patrol for a month – went back into command of the Armoured Car Group though his hearing was still badly affected by the recoilless rifle round explosion. The 35th Battalion’s Armoured Car Group was now nearly back to full strength with the exception of Cpl Nolan, Tpr Mullins and Sgt Carey, who was receiving medical attention in Leopoldville.

However, the prisoner release failed to ease the tensions around Elisabethville and November proved to be a miserable month both in terms of the weather and the tightening economic blockade now being mounted against UN forces. The rains poured down and made patrols, guard duty and vehicle maintenance an exhausting ordeal for the Irish troops. Then, in mid November, Captain Magennis finally got a message that Bill Williams wanted to meet him. It was proposed that they meet up at Stan Zurakovsky’s home.

‘It was obvious from Bill’s face the minute I walked into the room that the news he had was anything but good. He had learned that, early on the morning of the incident, shortly before daybreak, an armoured car had driven down Avenue Drogmans and turned left [onto Boulevard Elisabeth]. The car was travelling relatively slowly. A short while later, the car stopped and attempted to do a U-turn, but ended up sliding its front wheels into a roadside drainage trench. A soldier got out by the rear door and was helping another soldier. They both got into the trench.

‘But some Katangan soldiers arrived on the scene and the shooting started. One of the UN soldiers was hit and fell into the trench. The other soldier continued to shoot until he apparently ran out of ammunition and he, too, was killed. The Katangan soldiers took all the kit out of the car and then they put the body of the second UN soldier to be killed into a truck and drove off towards the ethnic [African] city. They left the body of the other soldier in the trench. That body lay there for two days until it was taken away and buried in an ethnic cemetery.’

The Irish captain’s face was ashen as he listened to his worst fears become a reality. He had hoped against hope that Tpr Mullins’ body might be located in some part of the African cemetery. But he had clearly been taken elsewhere.

‘Bill added that there was a long-standing practice to use the bodies of brave enemies for tribal purposes. It was most likely that this was what had happened. There was a rumour to this effect already within the African city. Further than that, Bill had no more information from his sources.’

Art Magennis and several other Irish officers had taken note of the fact that the River Lubumbashi ran directly behind the Parc Zoologique, which was where the bullet-chipped armoured car had been found nose-down in the drainage ditch. The river was also readily accessible from the native city, which is where Bill Williams clearly believed Pat Mullins’ body had been taken after the final firefight. Was it possible that, after the tribal ritual, the remains might have been disposed of in the river rather than accorded a proper burial?

Given the deteriorating security situation between the UN and the Katangans/Belgians, it was obvious that further enquiries were currently impossible. Captain Magennis and Bill Williams thanked their Polish host for helping arrange the meeting, shook hands and parted company. It was the last time that the Irish captain and the South African businessman would meet. In 1962, fearful of the mounting chaos within the Congo, Bill Williams moved his family back to South Africa. Incredibly, Stan Zurakovsky was later arrested by the UN on suspicion of facilitating gun attacks on a UN base. It was a bizarre accusation to level against a man who had given such assistance to the Irish battalion. Crucially, it meant that, from 1962, the Irish had few, if any, local assets to investigate the location of Tpr Mullins’ grave. 

Operation Morthor – which had been hailed as the end to the Katangan insurrection – was effectively abandoned, leaving eleven UN personnel and, according to reports of the time, fifty Katangese dead (though the latter figure is now estimated to be vastly higher). It left a legacy of hatred and mistrust between the various parties in Katanga and the province was now more militarised than at any time in its history.