Missing in Action Read online

  Pat had made it barely 100 metres from the ambush site when, to his horror, he realised the darkness was all consuming. He could barely see three metres in front of the Ford. There was no street lighting and every roadside house, building and factory was shrouded in blackness. He would have to find his way by memory and dead reckoning.

  Pat eased back on the throttle to give himself extra time to judge the road direction in the pitch-black void. He had no option but to hit the button for the headlights. It would advertise his position but he had to see where he was going – and if he kept the Ford moving he would present a very difficult target.

  There was a spotlight fitted to the Ford, primarily used to benefit the Vickers gunner, but Pat was loath to switch it on because, difficult target or not, he didn’t want to advertise his presence that blatantly to every Katangan soldier within a square mile. Despite the dim light offered by the small headlights on the Ford, he still did not recognise any landmarks to guide him onto a route he knew.

  ‘How do I get back to battalion?’ Pat wondered. He wasn’t familiar with this road. He could retrace his steps back to battalion along the patrol route they had already used this night – but that would mean lumbering past the ambush site where the Katangan soldiers had their anti-tank position. Retracing his steps back along Avenue Wangermee was only asking for trouble. He had no idea how many Katangans were there and if he turned around and stumbled upon a Katangan roadblock, he’d be finished.

  ‘Keep going, keep going,’ Pat desperately thought. He strained his eyes through the armoured slit and willed himself to see a road, a building, a bridge, anything, that he could recognise. But the darkness beyond the flickering beam of the headlights was like a shroud. An icy knot formed in the pit of his stomach as he realised that, whatever happened, he simply could not afford to crash.

  Suddenly, a road junction loomed out of the gloom in front of the Ford. There were two major routes to the left and the right but no signposts that Pat could see. Avenue Wangermee continued straight on – but he knew this would only take him further away from the Irish base and out of the city. Which way to go? He was terrified of bringing the Ford to a halt in case the engine stalled. If the trusty V8 stopped he might not be able to restart it. After a moment’s hesitation, Pat carefully swung the Ford to the left. He judged that this might bring him back towards the city centre where he could find a road he recognised leading to either the Italian hospital or Battalion HQ.

  The armoured car rumbled on and Pat was careful not to gain too much momentum. The Ford, which utilised a non-synchromesh gearbox, had four forward speeds. Changing gears was an art form that took drivers repeated practice to fully master. You had to double de-clutch when going either up or down a gear, and if you didn’t do it right, the Ford would threaten to shear its gears, not to mention jerking giddily in protest. Any sudden movement and the cabin rattled with the violent shaking of Vickers ammunition belts stored in the metal brackets welded onto the floor and hull sides.

  Pat leaned forward and searched desperately to the left and right. There had to be something here that he could recognise. The armoured car rumbled past several smaller road junctions. After the fourth junction Pat began to panic. ‘Where the hell am I?’ he wondered. There were buildings to the left and the right but the darkness made it difficult to discern precisely what they were. The road surface was good, smooth tarmac, so this road must lead somewhere significant. The seconds passed like hours as the car rumbled away from the junction.

  Without warning, the Ford arrived at another T-junction. The road to the left and right was much bigger than the route he had just travelled over. Maybe this was the road to the airport? Pat paused for a second, wondering whether to swing left or right. Finally, he eased the steering column to the left. He guessed that this would result in the armoured car doubling back on itself, which would bring him back towards either the Hotel de Ville or the Cathedral. Once there, he could find his way back to base.

  Pat had travelled almost 100 metres when he got the first clue to his location. The road swung to the left before straightening out. As he looked right, he realised that he was driving past the Parc Zoologique with the River Lubumbashi flowing directly behind it. Pat was confused. If the Zoo was on his right, then wasn’t he now driving away from the city centre instead of towards it?

  Out of the darkness, a building loomed. It was a major structure, maybe three storeys tall with lots of glass and concrete. Out of the haze of his memory, Pat struggled to identify the building. ‘What the hell is it?’ he thought. Barely two seconds passed before Pat felt the icy ball in the pit of his stomach expand and spread its cold tentacles up to his heart. ‘Oh Jesus, this must be the road into the African city,’ Pat realised. In an instant he understood that by twice turning left at the crossroads, he was now heading into the African section of Elisabethville – where the staunchest bedrock of support for the Katangan secession was based. Virtually all the Katangan gendarmes either lived or had families in the African city, which was established alongside the vast Union Minière complex. The native city surrounded the vast mine complex and also the western side of the river. UN patrols were under strict instructions never to cross the river and to stay on the Elisabethville or eastern side of the Lubumbashi. The last place a damaged UN vehicle needed to be tonight was heading into the African city.

  Pat slowed the Ford to a crawl as he slid the transmission into the lowest gear he dared without running the risk of stalling. In desperation he realised that he had no alternative but to turn around and head back to the junction. ‘I should have turned right,’ he thought bitterly to himself, ‘I should have turned right.’ He could have tried to turn left now but he reckoned he was too far south of the city centre for a simple turn to bring him back to his destination. It was safer to retrace his steps.

  Staring grimly out the driver’s slit, Pat tried to gauge a wide section of roadway where he could turn the armoured car. The Ford – despite its 4.5-tonne weight – was a relatively nimble vehicle. Its thirty-two horsepower V8 engine was its single greatest asset: rugged, reliable and capable of sustaining significant damage and still operating. The engine design dated back to the 1930s and variants of the V8 had powered everything from the Sherman tank to the Chevrolet C60 truck in the Second World War. If the engine had one problem it was that it was petrol rather than diesel fuelled.

  Irish troops were fond of the Ford AFV but had learned that it needed to be treated with caution and respect. Ultimately, the chassis was still that of a three-tonne Ford truck. In fact, the chassis had been sourced by the Defence Forces from Ford’s Cork plant and stripped down was identical to the Ford trucks that now plied the Irish roads carrying everything from coal to flour and milk to newspapers. The reality was that the chassis wasn’t specifically designed for this kind of body weight, nor was it designed to offer anything like cross-country mobility. If you ignored the ‘soft’ armour, the Ford AFV’s greatest weaknesses were its brakes and its turning circle.

  The Ford lacked any form of power-assisted steering, so the driver guided the armoured car through sheer brawn and the force of his arms. That meant that its turning circle was nothing less than woeful. The wheels had tyres with a 7.5-inch width on a 20-inch diameter rim, which further worsened handling. But, without power steering, wider and heavier tyres simply couldn’t be countenanced. Making matters even trickier was the fact the Ford had drum brakes that could barely cope with the 4.5-tonne body weight. Drivers who had to brake suddenly when the Ford was close to its top speed found they almost had to stand on the brake pedal, using their entire body weight to maximise the available braking power. Put bluntly, the Ford wasn’t designed for doing three-point turns on narrow roads. But Pat had no other choice. And he had to move fast before the Katangans realised what was on their doorstep.

  Choosing his moment, Pat settled on what appeared to be the widest stretch of the road in sight. If he swung hard into the turn, he would gain precious inches for the di
fficult reversing manoeuvre. Steering the Ford while reversing was an exercise in luck as much as judgement as the rearward vision was virtually non-existent. Worse still, Pat didn’t have a gunner to shout reversing directions and distances to him at the steering wheel. He knew there were steep drainage ditches on either side of the roadway, so he had to judge the turn to perfection. Pat mouthed a silent prayer as he swung the wheel to the right.

  The Ford turned precisely as Pat had planned. The sharp angle of the turn meant that he achieved the sweep he had intended so as to make the reversing manoeuvre easier. The nose of the Ford was exactly where Pat intended and he hit the brakes. But then disaster struck.

  The front wheels inched over the tarmac road surface and suddenly came onto compacted earth. The brakes bit hard but the heavy Ford just kept edging forward. The wheels fought for grip but, instead of biting hard tarmac, they slid on the compacted earth. The weight of the armoured body inexorably pushed the Ford into the turn – and, with maximum brakes now applied, the 7.5-inch wheels struggled to halt the car’s forward momentum. With a crunching sound, the Ford’s front wheels skidded off the elevated road into the steep drainage ditch beyond. The underside of the chassis scraped and scratched along the road surface – finally grinding to a halt and achieving what the brakes had failed to. The Ford was now lying on its belly on the edge of the roadway, its front wheels sunk deep in the drainage ditch. Its rear wheels were still on the road surface but the Ford was now pitched forward at a thirty-degree angle into the ditch. The Vickers machine gun was pointed down into the drain – a danger now only to Congolese frogs and rats. The force of the sudden stop had jolted some of the Vickers ammunition belts free from their storage brackets and they now rolled noisily across the metal floor.

  The sudden drop of the Ford’s nose had propelled Pat out of the driver’s seat. The jolt as the Ford then settled onto its belly slammed him hard back down into the seat and, for a few seconds, he sat dazed. Then, with growing horror, he realised that the Ford had skidded too far forward and the vehicle was now stuck. The engine had stalled and the silence left Pat with nothing but a ringing in his ears and a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  His hand reached for the ignition start. The venerable Ford engine, still hot, caught at the first turn as Pat kept the transmission in neutral. But, as he slid the car into gear and gingerly eased out the clutch in an attempt to reverse, his worst fears were realised. The rear wheels spun and tyres squealed as the rubber desperately tried to get a grip. The car stayed stubbornly still. Too much of the car’s heavy nose was now wedged into the ditch – there just wasn’t enough grip for the double rear wheels to drag the car back up onto the road.

  The Ford only had rear-wheel drive. Pat realised that even if it had four-wheel drive it would still have been touch-and-go whether it could pull the 4.5-tonne chassis weight clear of the ditch. With a sinking feeling, he realised that a winch would probably be required to get the armoured car free of the ditch, and the Ford had no winch fitted as standard.

  Pat’s head dropped for a second with the stark realisation of what had just happened. The armoured car was their best chance of reaching safety and now it was gone. What were they supposed to do now? A quick glance into the back made up Pat’s mind. Mick was badly hurt and he needed to get medical attention. If they had to get away over the fields and walk to a hospital then that is what they would do. If he had to carry his friend, so be it.

  Pat slid awkwardly out of the driver’s seat and onto the floor beside Mick Nolan in the rear. He reached over and opened the side access hatch and, when it only creaked open a few inches, he used his boot to kick it open further. Pausing for only a second, he jumped out into the Katangan night. Pat gazed around warily but there was only silence along the road. He reached back into the Ford and, after scrambling around for a few seconds, finally found the Carl Gustav sub-machine gun he was looking for. He slung it over his shoulder and reached back in to try and get a grip on Mick’s unconscious form.

  ‘Come on, Mick – it’s time to go. We’ll get you to a doctor straight away,’ he whispered. The angle of the car and his friend’s limp position made getting him out of the vehicle all the more difficult. But, after a minute, Pat had finally eased Mick out of the Ford and propped him up alongside the armoured car. All he had to do now was get his arm around Mick and try to walk and drag him away from the stranded UN vehicle. Maybe they could move along the drainage ditch for extra cover, he thought. But the idea vanished as, out of the darkness, came a sudden guttural shout.

  Pat cringed at the realisation that they had just been discovered. He knew instantly from the tone of the shout that it was not a local resident curious at what had just happened on the road. The shout had the tone of soldier or policeman stamped all over it – it was a challenge not a simple question. Then, from the darkness, came the distinctive metallic ‘click’ of a weapon having its safety catch released.

  Pat’s training took over. He turned to ease Mick back against the armoured car for shelter, and in one smooth motion, swung the Carl Gustav off his shoulder and brought it to bear on the area where the shout had come from. ‘Damn it but we weren’t even able to get clear of the armoured car,’ Pat thought. ‘But, then again, if there’s going to be a fight, better that it is by the car for some kind of cover.’

  From the darkness came a second shout. Pat couldn’t make out what was said – he was not even sure if the language was French or Katangese – but he knew it was not the accent of a friend. He crouched down in the ditch, careful not to offer any outline of himself or Mick against the armoured car. He reached back to check that Mick was okay, but his friend was slumped motionless against the Ford. Pat hadn’t even time to bring his hand back onto the Carl Gustav when the first volley of shots shattered the stillness of the night.

  One hundred metres from the Ford, a patrol of Katangan gendarmes knelt by the side of the roadway. They had been on duty near the perimeter of a nearby gendarme barracks when, in the distance, they heard the distant approach of a vehicle. The engine revs were being kept low as if the vehicle was being driven very carefully and cautiously. The noise of the engine sounded louder as the vehicle came closer. Then, suddenly, there was a slight ‘crunch’ and the engine noise stopped. It started up again a few seconds later only to be cut off a second time.

  The gendarmes initially thought it was a UN patrol but realised that the Irish, the Indians or the Swedes wouldn’t send just a single vehicle into this neighbourhood. The base on Boulevard Elisabeth was the major camp for the Katangan gendarmes in Elisabethville and everyone had been on high alert since the fighting broke out over the past twenty-four hours. And it was clear that the noise was that of a single vehicle. The senior gendarme ordered one of his privates back to HQ to report what had just happened to his Belgian mercenary commander. ‘Les Afreus’ would know precisely what to do, the corporal decided. In the meantime, he ordered his men to follow him up the road to determine what was going on.

  The Katangan patrol had travelled barely 100 metres when, in the darkness, they made out the distinctive shape of a vehicle across the road. ‘Mon Dieu,’ the corporal whispered, ‘it is a tank.’ He frantically waved to his patrol and the gendarmes spread out along the road, trying not to offer a single target to the tank’s guns. ‘What the hell is a single tank doing here?’ the corporal thought. ‘And where are its infantry?’ The corporal decided to hold position until his mercenary commander arrived at the scene with reinforcements. Suddenly and without warning, one of his men issued a shouted challenge to the tank. Emotions had been running high over the past twenty-four hours because of all the UN operations around Elisabethville, but the corporal was appalled that the man should so readily have given away their position.

  Before he could hiss a reprimand at the man, one of his comrades – emboldened by his friend’s challenge – shouted a warning of his own. The corporal – now furious at his men – decided safety was now the best policy and he slipped the
safety catch off his FN rifle, which he now brought to bear on the tank shadowed in the gloom. He was peering at the vehicle for any sign of a threat when, in the darkness, he thought he spotted a shadowy movement. ‘Merde,’ he whispered to himself as he squeezed the trigger without a second’s hesitation.

  The volley was well aimed and noisily ‘clanged’ off the armoured hide of the tank in the darkness. The corporal heard the sound of footsteps behind him as his Belgian officer brought gendarme reinforcements racing to the scene. That sound was instantly obliterated by the roar of gunfire to his left and right as the other members of the patrol followed his lead and opened fire on the tank. Ignoring his own training, the corporal glanced sideways straight into the muzzle-flash of an assault rifle – instantly losing what little night vision he had.

  In the drainage ditch, Pat Mullins pressed himself into the damp earth as the bullets whistled around him. Mick was in the shelter of the armoured car but Pat knew he had to try and keep from being flanked. He realised that the soldiers were to his front and right. There was no sound of movement or gunfire coming from behind him or back up the road on which he had just travelled. ‘Protect your flanks, fire aimed bursts and watch your ammunition,’ he thought as he levelled the Carl Gustav.

  The Swedish sub-machine gun roared into life as Pat fired a short burst. He eased the muzzle to the left and fired a second short burst. The Carl Gustav fired a 9mm shell, which was fine for close and medium quarter work, but pretty useless for long-distance fire. ‘Don’t be gung-ho and empty a whole magazine,’ Pat recalled his training sergeant warning. ‘Short, aimed bursts,’ the NCO had chanted as a mantra. The young trooper was uncertain if he heard a shout of pain in the darkness, but he scrambled over to the armoured car to get whatever 9mm magazines were available for the Gustav. Above his head, the Vickers machine gun aimed limply and uselessly into the bottom of the ditch.