LITMIR.BIZ

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hours the following day, 7 December, the 36th Battalion began to arrive.

      Greeted by a hail of incoming fire, nearly knocking their lead aircraft from the skies on final approach to landing at Élisabethville airport, Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Hogan, Officer Commanding 36th Battalion, elements of his battalion staff and two platoons of A Company entered Leopold Farm (the Irish camp) and were greeted with a very noisy fire fight immediately outside the post. Fire had been directed at the Irish camp since early morning, when at 0730 hours five mortar bombs dropped into the camp, and fire continued throughout the morning. An Irish UN patrol, tasked with the objective of locating the source of the firing, was unsuccessful and the Katangese pushed forward and were engaged by camp defence. They were beaten off just as the 36th Battalion arrived in camp. While having a meal in the mess, the roof of Leopold Farmhouse was hit by a 37mm shell and Lieutenant-Colonel Hogan’s plate was covered in ceiling plaster and debris. Firing by Katangese snipers, machine guns and mortars continued sporadically throughout the afternoon and also through the night. Indian 4.2 inch mortars, located at the Swedish camp, fired throughout the night; some 300 rounds onto the Tunnel and the Katangese Gendarmerie Camp Massart. The Irish were in the direct line of this fire and sleep was out of the question, especially for the newly arrived, uninitiated members of the 36th Battalion, whose first night in Katanga was spent in rain-filled trenches around the camp’s perimeter. The Gendarmerie harassment of the Irish continued the next morning, with sniping, mortar and machine gun fire. A fighting patrol was again dispatched and this time a number of snipers were cleared from nearby villas and a group of Gendarmerie, estimated at company strength, was routed. However, a mortar bomb scored a direct hit on an outhouse building in Leopold Farm killing Corporal Michael Fallon and wounding five other members of the 36th Battalion. An uneasy peace shattered, the second Battle of Katanga had begun and unknown to the men of the newly arrived A Company they were all too soon to take centre stage.

      Point ‘E’ – The Liege Crossroads

      Their patient determination to kill paid off and the Katangan Gendarmerie ambush set on Stanley Avenue was sprung to good effect. The impact of the anti-tank rounds’ direct hit rocked the Swedish UN armoured personnel carrier (APC) on its chassis, the seriously wounded gunner later dying of his injuries. Having been called to a conference of Unit Commanders and Staff Officers at UN Command HQ, Dogra Castle, the APC was transporting officers commanding the Swedish, Indian and two newly arrived Ethiopian battalions and their respective battalion commanders, both Irish battalion commanders (the handover still in progress), and selected staff officers of the various UN battalions. Its occupants were badly shaken, but as the APC was not disabled it limped on to UN Command HQ, only for them to come under heavy mortar fire mid-afternoon. In all approximately 106 rounds fell on the area, though the conference continued in the cellar. For the return journey, four APCs were provided to avoid this rich target presenting itself again in one vehicle and in the event this convoy was also ambushed by a company of Gendarmerie. This time, however, there were no casualties and the four APCs drove smartly through.

      With ongoing sniper and mortar fire into the Irish and Swedish camps, the briefing had laid out that the requirement of the UN forces, but particularly the Irish and Swedish, was to push out and enlarge their respective battalion perimeters and so their camp defences. A combined operation was planned to expand UN control of the Élisabethville area in a direction towards the city centre but short of the Tunnel proper. From intercepts it was learned that a major attack on both the Irish and Swedish camps was imminent, but Swedish and Irish mortars went into action on targets at the Tunnel, as later intercepts revealed that the Gendarmerie were ‘weakened and becoming discouraged’. The attack never developed.

      The night of 9 December was a nerve-racking nightmare for the Irish as all night long Gendarmerie and mercenary mortars and machine guns kept up a continuous concentration of fire on the Irish camp, including harrowing fire from a Greyhound APC. Most mortar rounds fell short but there were some twenty that didn’t. The troops again spent the night in their trenches and at this stage most trenches had anything upwards of a foot of water in them. Contrary to expectations no one was injured, but from further intercepts it was learned that the Gendarmerie were reforming once again for an attack on the Irish camp. Irish mortars went into action, successfully, and again the attack did not happen. There was a serious shortage of mortar and anti-tank weapons by this time, as 36th Battalion supplies had been flown to Albertville, their original destination. Over the coming days these armaments and ammunition began to arrive in Élisabethville, but for now the Irish reply to an attack was by measured means, content in the knowledge that the next day would see a more offensive response.

      The planned UN expansion operation towards the Liege crossroads, Point ‘E’, on which the Unit commanders and their staff had been briefed, went into effect the following morning, 10 December, and was preceded by an air strike on the Gendarmerie base, Camp Massart. Silver Swedish Saab fighter jets, nicknamed ‘flying barrels’ because of their thick fuselage, screamed overhead, expertly piloted, while Indian Canberra bombers strafed other Katangan strongpoints. The capture intact of fourteen Katangese aircraft during operation Rampunch, the majority of their air assets, and the destruction of almost all the remaining aircraft during a crushing air raid on Kolwezi airstrip on 5 December substantially neutralised the Katangese threat from the air and the UN now pressed its advantage to good effect. As in almost all conflicts it is the ground forces, the ‘boots on the ground’ that have to actually secure the victory. It is this hard, tough, grinding out of on-the-ground fighting by the infantryman that ultimately secures the objective and the day. It is both deadly and dangerous and the issue at hand in Élisabethville was still far from being decided. Since Operation Morthor’s unsuccessful conclusion, the UN had been busy ferrying in materials and munitions, manpower and firepower; the build-up was nearing completion.

      It takes a form of fatalism to put yourself in direct line of sight. Nonetheless, encouraged by the air strike someone had to step out and be the first susceptible to a hailstorm of possibly pinpoint accurate fire. Those advancing have the difficulty of doing so while at the same time responding to and/or avoiding defensive fire. The men of A Company were without the advantage of surprise, shielded by darkness, nor screened by smoke. They knew all too well that any prepared defences they encountered must be suppressed before they were riddled by bullets and ripped open from top to bottom by the immediate threat ahead of them; unseen, remaining hidden with no visible sign of presence. There is no mood music or a dramatic musical score – nor an enemy that either convivially pops up or conveniently dies – and there is only a split second between being victor or victim. There is only one thing worse than wondering if someone out there is going to try to kill you, and that is knowing it. You can’t avoid being afraid; the survival instinct is too strong.

      This extreme exposure to fear makes one very aware of the basic elements of self; the tension between having to be in the situation and not wanting to be; the strain of moving forward towards danger wishing instead to turn back and stay in safety; the struggle for courage, lost and found in one moment. Every man feels it, not many show it, but all share it. But how to deal with it? The drill is of cover and movement and in the event of coming under attack is ‘fire and movement’.

      ‘X’ marks The Tunnel. An aerial view of Élisabethville and A Company’s 36th Irish Battalion’s avenue of advance.

      Courtesy of the Military Archives, Dublin

      An infantry company has three platoons; each in turn comprises three sections. The ten-man section is the basic manoeuvre unit and this can be broken into two, one covering the movement of the other, leapfrogging forward ready to give mutual close-range supporting fire to the other, providing an ordered continuity of interlocking fire and movement. Good in theory, practiced in training, rehearsed in exercises. Add the distinct element of fear to cope with and does it work for real? A Company was about to find out.

      Corporal Gerald Francis, the lead section commander of the lead platoon, No. 1 Platoon, recalled this unenvied task as a daunting undertaking:

      I knew this was going to be difficult because the avenue along which we had to advance was an open road and we were highly exposed to being fired on. In the open we were going to be very vulnerable

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