and, as he found no trouble or rioting in Jadotville, requested to be withdrawn. As B Company were crossing the Lufira Bridge, ten miles from Jadotville in the direction of Élisabethville, they passed their fellow soldiers from A Company, heading towards Jadotville. Naturally, they questioned in their own minds the decision to send A Company to replace two companies who had just decided to withdraw as they saw no rioting in Jadotville. Why was a company being deployed sixty miles from base without adequate transport, logistics or heavy support weapons? It violated every military principle they knew.
Sent to Jadotville to defend the town and its white European population against possible riotous unrest, the Irish were to be made feel unwelcome from their arrival and ultimately had to defend themselves from those they were sent to protect. Instructed to occupy the area by ONUC headquarters, they had done so to prevent atrocities and a massacre, yet soon it would be A Company themselves who would be beleaguered and under siege. The reasons that caused such a deployment have been much ruminated upon ever since. High-level political manoeuvrings, manipulated by the Belgians as a ruse to entrap UN troops, were considered foremost as a possibility. Simply directed to deploy in Jadotville, A Company had no prerogative where they could select the location of their campsite. They just had to take over an area that had initially sufficed for those before them; chosen for accommodation purposes and convenience for quick access to the town’s European quarter rather than with any regard to thoughts of tactical defence.
Preparing a trench for the defence of Jadotville.
Courtesy of the Military Archives, Dublin
Located on the town’s outskirts, in essence it was billet accommodation pure and simple. Consisting of single-storey villas and outhouses centred around the Purfina service station and garage, Support and No. 1 Platoon faced towards the golf course and No. 2 Platoon occupied villas on the left of the road. Company HQ was to the left of Purfina garage, while No. 3 platoon, on the other side, also occupied villas and tents. The distance between the platoons was about 750 metres, an area containing a number of deserted villas. There was a railway crossing at the entrance to the town and to the left was the huge Union Minière Mining Company and hundreds of tin huts on the hilly ground to A Company’s left. Close to the area of their positions, for up to 450 metres, was scrubland with high elephant grass. All this was conducive to covered concealment for unobserved encroachment by any attacking force and the site was chosen purely for its suitability to accommodate the soldiers rather than any thought of defence, offering its occupiers neither an all-round field of observation nor 360 degree interlocking arcs of fire. In short it would be difficult to defend, and in a short time, unknown to A Company, they were going to have to defend it. This time it would not be the primitive Baluba tribesmen they would be fighting but a mercenary-led force of Katangese Gendarmerie.
Katanga’s attraction was its vast copper, cobalt and uranium mineral wealth, and Jadotville was a thriving copper mining town. Its 10,000 or so white Europeans mainly worked in mining or associated services, while 50,000 Katangans, living in the tin huts, were the mine’s native workers. About the size of Newbridge, Jadotville’s railway line connected to Northern Rhodesia, today Zambia, as part of the copper belt. Post-independence the white Europeans stayed on, maintaining their links with mining and their equally firm links with Belgium.
Digging In
Red, hard-compacted and copper-saturated, the soil was no more ideal than the site to have to dig into. Yet that was what Commandant Quinlan decided A Company’s best form of defence would be, in a situation which offered very few advantages. The tense situation, having begun with intimidation, had now become one of danger. Cut off and surrounded, Commandant Quinlan ordered A Company’s four platoons to dig in. It was a basic infantry tactic when tasked to hold ground in a conventional warfare scenario, however no one had expected to be doing so as peacekeepers. But under the circumstances his clear presence of mind had a logic to it. It was becoming increasingly likely that A Company would have to put up a defence and he was giving his men the best chance of doing so to best effect. (See map on p. vii.)
Trenches – holes dug into the ground to get in to, fire from, and be protected by – was what ‘digging in’ was all about. It could not be done haphazardly and there were guiding principles involved, principles that had to be adapted to the terrain and the circumstances. There were other considerations: time and materials available, both for digging-in with and for actual use in trench construction, were also important factors. It has been said that the most important tool any soldier can have is a spoon, since you can dig with it as well as eat. A Company were not reduced to that though, and despite the searing heat and blinding dust set about their task in earnest. The seriousness of the situation was not lost on them, as they knew from their training that digging-in offered them the best defensive option to defeat an enemy attack, providing cover from view, protection from fire and, if their trench included overhead cover, shelter from airbursts and shrapnel. It was crucial that the correct siting of trenches in relation to the terrain and to each other facilitated the optimum possibilities for interlinking, mutually-supporting arcs of fire. An individual trench was required to have a fire-bay and a shelter-bay, with proper overhead cover, and all to be camouflaged.
A ten-man section dictates a combination of two and three-man trenches, with the sections’ fire support light machine gun (Bren gun) requiring careful sighting to derive best effect from it. A platoon would have three such sections, plus two-by-two-man trenches at platoon headquarters – the platoon commander and platoon sergeant being in different trenches. The dimensions of an ‘infantry trench’ are not exact but are usually armpit deep with elbow rests for occupants in the standing position. The use of depth in defence, or as it is also known, ‘defence in depth’, is essential to prevent enemy exploitation of a penetration, should they overrun the forward trenches. The depth will absorb the enemy’s momentum, the penetration progressively destroyed by the fire from those in trenches sited in depth. Sited ‘two forward, one back’, be it sections, platoons, companies or even battalions, this was how depth and mutual support was achieved.
This was not, however, the alignment allowed under the circumstance experienced by A Company. They were dispersed more than was recommended, strung out in groups of two, two-platoon positions, with 800 metres in between the two, two-platoon groups. The textbook frontage for a company, two platoons forward, one behind, was anywhere between 600 and 1,500 metres. A Company’s area of responsibility was a far too large quarter of a mile by a half a mile. Good communications grants good command, and the reverse is also the case. Inter-platoon communications, however, were not readily facilitated by the old No. 88 radios, which were obsolete and whose batteries were awkward and defective.
An obstacle forward of the front trenches to be covered by fire is also very useful, but A Company had no barbed-wire, mines or trip flares. It was now that the absence of their 81mm mortars was acutely felt. A Company did, however, have six 60mm mortars located with Support Platoon, which had a range of 750 metres; as well as two 84mm recoilless rifles with a range of 550 metres used for anti-tank purposes, and two Second World War vintage belt-fed, water-cooled Vickers machine-guns mounted on tripods with a range of 900 metres. Each man had the newly-purchased FN automatic rifle, while NCOs and officers had the Gustav sub-machine gun, and each ten-man section had a light support weapon, the Bren gun. Also available were the two mounted Vickers machine guns with the Armoured Car Section.
Lieutenant Noel Carey recalls the dig-in as follows: ‘That evening [Commandant Quinlan] ordered all platoons to dig in, camouflage trenches and hide spoil [dug-out earth]. We worked desperately in [the] stifling heat and hard ground but that night all were dug in and camouflaged by placing scrub and elephant grass over the trenches and removing spoil. Commandant Quinlan personally checked trench positions, all-round protection and fields of fire.’ Commandant Pat Quinlan’s decision to have A Company dig in was far-seeing, effective and, crucially, was to save Irish lives.
The Noose Tightens
On
