The Congo: The Road to Fizi

When the fighting against the Congolese rebels tailed off six months ago, Premier Moise Tshombe knew the war was not fully won. His troops had never dared attack the Simbas’ mountain redoubt of Fizi, located high above Lake Tanganyika and reachable only by roads so narrow and precipitous that they are impassable during rainstorms. Led by Castro Cuban advisers and supplied with Red Chinese arms ferried in from Tanzania to the lake port of Baraka, the 5,500-man ragtag rebel force was roaming at will through a 200-sq.-mi. patch of the eastern Congo, cutting roads, murdering and terrorizing the population. Tshombe knew the Simbas had to be driven out of Fizi, and to do the job he once again called on his favorite gun-for-hire, Mercenary Commander Mike Hoare.

Fortnight ago, everything was ready. Hoare’s plan was to send a diversionary column of 100 mercenaries under Major Alastair Wicks up the road from Albertville in the south while his main assault force—160 men—stormed ashore from an “invasion fleet” composed of one ancient gunboat, the lake steamer Urundi, two barges and five patrol boats. His code name for the mission was “Operation Banzai.”

Blinking Lights. Long before dawn one moonless morning, an advance patrol of seven heavily armed commandos, their faces blackened with burnt cork, landed on a rocky beach north of Baraka. Soon their signal lights began blinking the all-clear, and a patrol boat churned in with the first assault wave of ten men. Before they had waded all the way ashore, however, a cross fire of tracers arced down at them from machine-gun nests in the bluff beyond, forcing the mercenaries to take cover behind their boat.

The second wave had better luck. Landing 200 yds. to the north, its ten commandos managed to scramble across the beach and up the bluff. They walked straight into an enemy village. Chickens scurried out of their way and goats stared at them in surprise, but the village was otherwise deserted. Luckily for the mercenaries, the Simbas had been called elsewhere. Down the road, the chatter of a Russian banana gun joined the machine guns firing at the beach. The commando lieutenant sent a patrol to silence it, then set fire to a cluster of thatched huts as a signal to Hoare to send more men. The huts exploded: the rebels had hidden grenades and ammunition under their roofs.

Stalled Column. From there it was only four miles to Baraka, but hardly had Hoare’s men moved out than their charge began to stall. On the outskirts of town, two battalions of Simbas rained mortar, bazooka and machine-gun fire on the commandos. A spearhead led by Hoare’s two armored cars finally broke through, but it was two long days before he was in firm control of Baraka, and then only after most of the town had been destroyed. Death toll: five commandos, 215 Simbas.

Never before had Hoare been met by such determined opposition, and the battle for Fizi had hardly begun. For the first time in his career as mercenary commander, he was forced to halt his drive and change his battle plan. Last week, calling back the diversionary column in the south, he ordered it into boats for a water trip to join him in Baraka. Then Hoare and his officers sat down to try to figure out how to negotiate the 23-mile mountain road to the rebel stronghold itself.