Belgian Cement Worker Albert Verbrugghe
was driving his wife and another woman down a quiet street in the
copper town of Jadotville one day last week, when he suddenly heard the
clatter of gunfire. Pulling the triggers for no apparent reason were
nervous Indian troops of the advancing United Nations force.
Verbrugghe slammed his little Volkswagen to a halt. His wife was
already dead, the other woman dying. With an anguished scream.
Verbrugghe stumbled out, blood streaming from a wound under his eye.
“My wife is killed,” he cried. “Why, why, why?” The same question, in a larger context, was being asked in many capitals
last week. For the third time in 15 months, the world was horrified
witness to the spectacle of foreign soldiers, aided by the U.S..
seizing the towns and firing on native soldiers of the Congo. To many,
the U.N.'s very presence in the African land was of doubtful wisdom.
But in any case, the blazing guns and swooping planes of the U.N.
hardly fitted the pacifying intent of its original Congo mandate. “It is an unspeakable tragedy,'' said Connecticut's Democratic Senator
Thomas Dodd. “that the world organization which was set up to prevent
war and preserve the peace should be starting wars.'' In London, 90
Tory M.P.s accused the U.N. of acting “contrary to its own charter.''
Even President Kennedy, who last week ordered the U.S. to begin
shipping 2-ton trucks, armored cars and transport planes to the U.N.
Congo force, was reported to be alarmed at the disorder that arose from
the U.N. shooting. On to Jadotville. But there was no turning back on the basic decision
that had been made. Katanga's Secessionist President Moise Tshombe had
used every sly trick in the book to frustrate efforts to reunite his
rebellious, copper-rich province with the rest of the Congo. Now, U.N.
Secretary-General U Thant, with U.S. encouragement, was determined to
end the Katanga problem once and for all. The occasion happened to be
the collapse of discipline among Tshombe's boozy, ragtag 20,000-man
gendarmerie. When they began shooting at U.N. soldiers in Katanga a
fortnight ago, the U.N. replied with all the power at its command. Last week Irish infantrymen marched into Kipushi, site of copper mines
at the Rhodesian border. Ethiopian U.N. troops already occupied
Elisabethville itself. But the big prize was Jadotville, a town of
90,000, where the giant Union Mini&3233;re mineral outfit produces one-third
of its copper and three-fourths of its cobalt each year. Toward Jadotville, 70 miles from Elisabethville, moved
a two-mile-long column of Indians commanded by Brigadier Reginald
Noronha. a gutty soldier who munched hardboiled eggs while mortar
shells burst around him.
