Congo Crisis Cinema

Some inspiration and background for the Congo Crisis.  First is the famous footage from the 1966 Italian film Africa Addio. 

The clip above is a semi-sanitised montage version with Lauren O'Connell's great rendition of the Warren Zevon classic, Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner over the top.  It starts with Mike Hoare talking, moves onto some footage of the CIA backed Cuban emigre airforce, then ends with the attack on Boende by elements of 5 Commando in late 1964.

The full film, titled Africa: Blood and Guts in English, is available on YouTube but be warned it's pretty brutal stuff.  Probably NSFW and definitely not suitable for kids.  The section on the Congo Crisis starts here.

Next is the historical bio-pic of the Siege of Jadotville.  This film is set in the early stages of the crisis during Moise Tshombe’s attempt to have the province of Katanga secede from the newly independent Congo.

A small garrison of Irish UN troops are surrounded and attacked by the European mercenary led Katangese Gendarmerie.

For a bit less reality there is Jack Cardiff's adaptation of the Wilbur Smith novel The Dark of the Sun, also released under that title and as The Mercenaries. 

 

 

A group of mercenaries and Congolese soldiers race to recover a hoard of diamonds, and rescue some stranded settlers on the way, before the advancing Simbas can overrun them.   

They have a pretty good stab at the mercenary uniforms and even the Simbas, which makes for something different from the usual WW2 subject matter for these type of films.

 

There's a nice game of the film over on Lead Adventure Forum here and some other Congo related games here and here.  

Another movie to put on while you paint, is the Wild Geese, for which Mike Hoare was a consultant.  The film clearly draws several themes from the period of the crisis and its aftermath. 

An interesting bit of trivia is that John Kani's character in the film, Jessie Blake (above right), was the inspiration for the Action Man figure, Tom Stone, after designers saw early work on the film.

 

 

Last is the 1980 film The Dogs of War.  This latter was based on the book of the same name by Frederick Forsyth.  Forsyth was accused at one point of genuinely plotting a coup and the book was later described as "a textbook for mercenaries".  Several copycat coups have been attempted including one to take over Equatorial Guinea in 2004 that involved Mark Thatcher, son of the former British PM.

 

 

As a postscript, I have read online some dispute that Thompson submachine guns were used by the mercenaries in the Congo.  I found these two pictures from the period to show they were.

This first shows Spanish mercenaries from 6 Commando with ANC General Bobozo from this interesting photostream here.

The second shows some mercenaries attached to 7 Commando in 1964 from this website here.  A gold mine of excellent photos on the Jeeps used.

The Congo Crisis

I have made a start on a new project to build some armies based on the extended 1960s Congo Crisis including the 1964 Simba Rebellion and the 1966-7 Stanleyville Mutinies. There are a host of factions and events to model, plus lots of interesting forces and characters.  There are presidential assassinations, post-colonial tyrants, UN peacekeepers, white mercenaries, Marxist rebels, witch doctors, Cuban exiles, Belgian paratroopers, the CIA and even Ernesto "Che" Guevara.  

The events surrounding the independence of the former Belgian Congo are a horrific human tradegy that has led to decades of civil war across the region but are surprisingly little known about today.  Nevertheless, these 'interesting times', while a nightmare for those involved, make a suitable backdrop for wargames. 

Independence saw a very rapid breakdown of order.  An army mutiny and an attempted succession by the province of Katanga resulted in widespread Belgian intervention, the overthrow and execution of the first elected president, Patrice Lumumba, and ultimately the deployment of large numbers of UN peacekeepers.   

Significant fighting occurred, especially between the UN forces and the mercenary backed Katanganese gendarmerie.  The most famous incident from this period was the siege and controversial surrender of the Irish UN garrison at Jodotville.

By 1964 the Katanganese independence movement had been defeated and the UN mission was over.  The focus then moved to the north east of the country where Lumumbist forces had seized control, declaring the "Free Republic of the Congo" (République Libre du Congo).  These rebels, known as the Simbas, combined a mix of marxism and mysticism to motivate their troops and would certainly make for a very interesting and unique wargames army.

The Armée Nationale Congolaise (ANC) under the command of general Joseph-Désiré Mobutu made extensive use of Mercenary forces to spearhead their repression of the Simba rebellion.  Most famously 'Mad Mike' Hoare's 'Wild Geese' of 5 Commando, seen here advancing north to Stanleyville in late 1964.

Belgian Paratroopers simultaneously seized Stanleyville airfield in Operation Dragon Rouge to rescue and evacuate the settlers held by the rebels.

Two brief mutinies by Katanganese and mercenary forces in 1966 and 1967 end the period with their withdrawl into Rawanda,  This left Mobotu firmly in control of the country, which he reanmed Zaire and ruled until deposed in 1997 by forces loyal to the former Simba, Laurent-Désiré Kabila.

I'm going to use 28mm figures and in that scale the only truly suitable figures for this period are the old Mongrel miniatures Wild Geese, now available from Badger Games in the US.  Although, being Paul Hicks' sculpts they have stood the test of time.  There will however, have to be quite a bit of conversion and artistic licence to give an impression of the forces involved.