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On the local escorts:
“The Congolese girls of Leopoldville of the “Parisienne” type are exceptional in every respect. They are completely westernised in their dress and manners and altogether charming. They are well turned out, polite and well acquainted with the social graces. In fact, they are the exact equivalent of the courtesan of Marie Antoinette’s day. They fill a much needed want in this respect. Many of the Congolese politicians have advanced so speedily that their wives are still in the mud-hut stage and are totally incapable of behaving in public according to western standards, and the sight of a table laid with an array of knives and forks is known to send them into panic. Not so the courtesan. She has studied this situation. I was not surprised then to learn that these girls are greatly in demand by the recently arrived and that formal invitations to official functions even made provision for this fact, by acknowledging that they will be welcome as guests in default of a wife.”
On comforts in the congo:
“The food,” said one such disappointed warrior, “was terrible.”
“There was,” pointed out a second would-be saviour of the Congo, “no beer.”
“We were,” declared yet another intrepid irregular, “getting hacked to pieces.”
Concerning the spoils of war:
A white soldier (not my unit) tried the handle of an upstairs bedroom. It was locked. He shot out the lock and bashed in the door with his boot. Inside he found a young Congolese girl, hiding in the shower cubicle. He stripped off her clothes till she was naked. He liked what he saw. “Shower,” he ordered her, “then lie on that bed.” Without a word she obeyed. He raped her. Then he ordered her downstairs with the other prisoners and marched her to the river’s edge some sixty yards away. A small pier ran out ten yards into the fast flowing water. “Walk down that,” he commanded. She knew she was going to die. With the impulse of revenge, tinged with a spark of genius, she turned and screamed at the sadist, words which would last him the rest of his life … “You don’t know how to make love … you’re too small!” With a derisory laugh she faced her death. It came a second later. Two shots rang out and with a pitiful “Oh!” in sad contrast to her brave speech, her body disappeared into the Congo for ever.
On the barbarism of the natives:
The Provincial President, a man known to be loyal to Mr. Tshombe’s Government, was executed in front of hundreds of jeering rebels with ritual bestiality, as a warning to all others. The ritual followed the age-old custom. First his tongue was cut out. Then his ears, his hands and his feet were hacked off with razor-sharp pangas. Finally, a bamboo stake was driven into his rectum. He lasted fifteen minutes, watched by the insane mob of hooligans. The savages had not moved one inch towards civilisation in the last eighty years, despite the noble self-sacrifice of hundreds of missionaries.
Trial by “acclamation”:
On a flood-lit platform a tribunal was in session. It was a “trial by acclamation.” As I watched it, I realised the clock had been put back two thousand years. A rebel was paraded on the dais and his name announced over the public address system. If he was cheered, he was released. If he was hissed, he was taken out and shot.
A typical Christmas (1964) celebration amongst mercenaries in the Congo:
During the course of the dinner, however, a shot rang out in the dining-hall. He could contain his curiosity no longer. “It is perhaps a normal occurrence?” he said, without raising his voice a semitone. Alastair investigated. It was nothing, he said, just a little good-natured buffoonery. One man had shot another by mistake. The wounded volunteer was removed and the happy meal went on.
…The African, generally, has not the makings of a good soldier and lacks the necessary self-discipline and courage essential to the task… in the long term I see no probability of vast African armies rampaging up and down the continent, if only for the basic reason that the average African at heart is not a soldier. Economically, one imagines, it will not be possible for many African countries to maintain large standing armies, but in any case the idea of taking arms to redress their wrongs is not one which is likely to prove attractive to many Africans…
…During my campaigning I came to meet a large number of Congolese officers and civilians with whom I was able to discuss intimate matters of this nature quite objectively. One of the favourite subjects for debate was the difference which exists between the European and African character. The Congolese conceded that they did not understand the meaning of chivalry, in fact there is no word for it in Swahili or Lingala, and the concept of sportsmanship, the son of chivalry, was completely unknown to them. These were distinctly European attributes for which they could see little use in the African context. Gratitude was another, but I agreed readily that their sense of loyalty and devotion to their family unit far surpassed anything of which we were capable…
…my Congolese friends came to understand how shocked the European mind can be at cruelty, although this is something which is accepted as quite normal up and down the African Continent. I recall seeing a soldier of the A.N.C. pluck the feathers from a living dove and then throw the naked bird, still alive, on to a bed of red-hot coals to cook it. He was genuinely unable to understand my rancour…On the other hand I was genuinely unable to understand their attitude to ritual torture, something which had been handed down to them through the centuries. A prisoner of war must be killed after ritual torture, it was always thus, and nobody expected anything different…
Politics in the Congo is very similar to that in the U.S. today:
The Army was fortunate in that it had an efficient administration, free from political interference. Its clear-cut methods had been handed down to it by the old Force Publique and a chain of command, good system of communications, and a reasonable standard of discipline obtained throughout. The Army represented, in effect, the only system of administration which had shown itself capable of government, the civilian system having broken down under the strain of events and the junketings of unscrupulous politicians. To make matters worse, the civilian machine had been fraught with office seekers, opportunists, financial mendicants, and politicians whose sole aim in life was not service, but personal aggrandisement….In fairness to the politicians, it could be said that no pattern of behaviour existed for them to copy, they had received literally no training for executive positions or administrative matters at the higher levels, and to them political appointment represented the ultimate in African sophistication, coupled, as it was seen to be, with instant acclaim, great wealth, and fantastic power.
We (U.S.) need Belgian type retribution applied to corrupt politicians:
As part of his general overhaul of the Army during the last fourteen months, the Commander-in-Chief had introduced a Judge Advocate General’s Department and placed it under a distinguished Belgian Officer, Colonel Van Hallowen. It was a brilliant move. In the first few months of its existence the J.A.G.’s Department tightened up control throughout the Army and court martialled several highly placed officers and Military Governors for defalcations of large sums of money, many of whom were sentenced to terms of imprisonment exceeding eight years.
…The salvation of the Congo, as I see it, will be the reintroduction of as many Europeans as are prepared to emigrate to the country to become part of the fabric of the Congo, to help the Congolese on the road to political maturity and to teach them the skills of commerce and administration. These immigrants must come with a new mind—not as “agents sous contrats”, the iniquitous Belgian system1—but as settlers, as white Congolese, who will take a pride in their adopted country and who will come not with any superior colonialistic ideas, but with the genuine desire to help the Congolese help themselves…