Welfare Conditions For Tshombe's Mercenaries

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30530, 27 August 1964, Page 16

Welfare Conditions For Tshombe's Mercenaries

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) JOHANNESBURG, August 26. A steady flow of young white men entered a sparselyfurnished two-roomed office on the seventh floor of a central Johannesburg building yesterday morning to volunteer to fight for the Congolese Prime Minister, Mr Moise Tshombe. They had responded to an advertisement in a Johannesburg morning newspaper which said “any fit man” looking for “employment with a difference” paying more than £lOO a month should telephone a certain number.

The advertisement said employment was “initially offered for six months” with an “immediate start.”

At- 9 a.m. there were four men waiting in the outer office of the “Recruiting Centre”—it still had the name of the previous tenant, a “handwriting expert” on the door’—while two others were being interviewed in the inner room. As those interviewed went out, newcomers arrived. The telephone kept ringing. Guards Tie The man in charge, 46-year-old Patrick O’Malley, a Briton wearing the Brigade of Guards tie, said a quarter of an hour later they had dealt with the first 15—with several still waiting. When Mr O ! Malley was asked on whose authority he was recruiting men, he replied: “The - Prime Minister, Mr Tshombe.” He said he had been doing preparatory work in Johannesburg for about a month and had already sent off his first group, but now he had been given “the green light and I can go.”

Mr O’Malley more than 6ft tall, burly and with greying hair, declined to reveal the number of men he hau already recruited or whether he had a limit. Regarding the pay offered, he said it was a “Minimum of £lOO sterling a month and a maximum of £2OO sterling a month in all, with extras such as danger allowance, family allowance and food and lodging.” Charter Planes He said there was an indemnity of £7OOO to be paid to parents or next of kin in the event of death and proportionately increasing indemnities for loss of limbs. Those accepted would be flown to the Congo by chartered aircraft. He said he was having “no trouble” in effecting charters. Mr O’Malley said: “Mr Tshombe has received little aid from his black brothers but he is a proven and able politician and administrator who has not turned his back on the white man in Africa.

“So I feel that the white man should come to his aid in an hour of sore need. Not A Nice Word “The word mercenary has taken on a connotation which I dislike,” he said. It was intended to “change the meaning of that word. “We are setting out to produce a fine well-disciplined body of flighting men,” he said. Some of those already interviewed had previously fought for Mr Tshombe in Katanga, Mr O’Malley said. He had been in Katanga himself in 1961 “on business” and had become “associated with Mr Tshombe’s forces.” War Record Mr O’Malley served in the Second World War in the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry. The Brigade of Guards and as a bomber pilot. With a crushed foot, caused by a post-war car accident he says: “I can’t do any fighting now and the best I can do is liaison.”