WILD GEESE
Operation Dragon Rouge
5 Commando,Katanga
Mercenaries
AKA Wild Geese
Mike Hoare, Commander, then Major
I realize with the Internet
today what I am writing can easily be substantiated with a little
work with today being 9.25.05, about five years after I started my
attempt to go on line and write about events that happened many
years ago. All I have to go on is a foggy memory, a few photos and a
willingness to set forth facts that are on record everywhere else
but here. I will be writing about men who's breed probably do not
exist but the movie and television industry have painted a picture
of Mercenaries in a vary bad light. When I say "Breed of Men" guess
this can be the only way I can tie Isshinryu into why I would have
such a page as the Wild Geese. Without Isshinryu and it's unique
ability to make a man do the undoable, I would not have survived up
to today.
Maybe today they do not amount
to much but during the Stanleyville uprising circa New Years eve
1964 the mercenaries were the only thing standing between innocent
civilians and animals called Simbas.
Actually I didn't start out as
wanting to be part of any operation or event which came down but
circumstances just happened and some things just cannot be turned
down.
There were men in the Federal
Government who trusted no one and they wasted many men and time
wanting even the smallest bit of information.
I started my life as a auto
body mechanic when I was about 15. A friend of mine, Ed Chambers,
worked as a janitor of sorts for St James Church and School in
Steelton, PA
Ed is same age as I. Little
did I know that starting out playing with cars always seem to sentence you to a life time of doing just that.
Anyway, I was sent to work at
Durban Motor Cars LTD on West Street. This was a Rover dealership
owned by Mike Hoare. This is how I was supposed to transfer
information back to the states but there is an old saying,'Water
seeks its own level', and Mike was my kind of man.
I was offered money do do some
work but didn't, at the time, want to get involved. Then Mike stole
a Red 1963 MGB from a guy named K.N. Swayer, Supervising Engineer of
Unit Rig Corporation, a business with a home office in Tulsa,
Oklahoma. Mike gave me the car and I was hooked. We finally ended up
using the car going somewhere bad, I forget now, but we overloaded
it and it broke down, it was left abandoned where it stopped. I had
plans for that car. I finally ended up with a Black three year old
Porsche. All I remember about it was that it was a convertible and
had oversized Michelin tires.
By the time I left South
Africa I could not take the car anyway.
Mike was born in Northern
Ireland and served with the Chindits in Burma during World War 2,
ranked as Major. When Mike ended up in Katange, the wealthiest
province in the Congo, he was commissioned by Tshombe into the
Gendarmerie De Katanga as Major. Mike had one weakness; he liked
Horse racing at Greyville Race Course. He also was a Born again
Christian which forced us to hide our booze in Coconuts.
Won't go into the details
written in Striped Moons, an unpublished biography, because it is
too graphic, embarrassing and humiliating. At the time I wrote it I
was a younger man and the things we did and lived through seemed
manful, now the feeling is gone and a sort of shame dwells in the
soul.
I will write the specifics of
just one of the several operations I worked with him. Later I butted
heads with Neil Gallagher because his interests and Mikes were
completely different regarding the Seychelles.
Operation Dragon Rouge
Stanleyville, estimated
population 150,000 at the time, is 350 miles from Bukavu at the head
of Navigation for the middle portion of the Congo river. It is
surrounded by miles of jungle, apartment houses on wide boulevards,
warehouses, large villas, shops. You could see the white water
rapids of the Stanley Falls, taken from the Stanley-Livingston
episode.
Also set there was the
American Consulate. Looking at the Consulate, it had a large white
and Red roofed villa with a swimming pool. It also was where the
employees of the Embassy, Nuns, Priests, civilians, and a lot of
children were being held hostage by Lieutenant General Nicholas
Olenga, Commander in Chief of the Peoples Army of Liberation. He was
the leader of bastards who called themselves Simbas. Before Olenga
held this post he was a railroad clerk.
The United Nations forces had
abandoned the hostages there at the mercy of the Simbas.
The Simba's had a sort of
Mascot called Madame Orena, who by the way, had a $50,000 price on
her head and I sure wanted that. The Simbas look like something out
of a Johnny Weissmuller movie, if you ever saw old time movies.
Bare-chested, barefoot, marked with mud and had animal skins draped
over their bodies. They were between 14 and 16 years old. They were
treacherous bastards, got their strength from Madame Orena, a witch
doctor, who had them believing they were invincible.
As I stated I am not going
into specifics but we kicked a lot of ass and did the same to them
as they did to others. Among these things were making them drink
gasoline and then sticking them and sitting them on fire, tying them
between jeeps and pooling them apart, castrating and Crucification.
You see they did the same thing to any hostage they caught, Belgian
Nuns, Priests, women and children. We never raped, they were too
ugly, buy they did get a kind of do as to others thing. They also,
and this is gospel, cut out livers and ate them, beheaded many and
mutilated anything that walked. Their favorite targets were the
Nuns.
When we started out we had 120
mercenaries, of whom about 100 who spoke English and only about 35
had previous military backgrounds. We ended freeing the hostages and
losing about half of the group.
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