The Siege of Jadotville - 10/10/16
This is a Netflix movie about a company from the Irish army sent to the Congo in 1961 as UN Peacekeepers. 150 men in a poor defensive position with no logistic or other support were attacked over a period of several days by about 3000 French mercenaries and Congolese troops.
The back story: A newly elected President in the Congo wants to nationalize the rich cobalt and other strategic mineral mines in the Katanga province. The foreign owners of the mines are naturally upset and of course the US and everybody else is worried about who is going to get that raw material vital for nuclear weapons, the Free World or the USSR. The president is assassinated by one of his generals who sets himself up as President but isn’t recognized as legitimate by the UN and a civil war is imminent. Units of the Irish Army are asked to serve as peacekeepers due to their long stance of neutrality. One interesting thing is that De Gaulle sends in 1000 ex-Foreign Legionnaires as mercenaries (“security guards”) to openly attack the peacekeepers and support the foreign mine owners.
Not “Saving Private Ryan” quality but overall a pretty decent battle flick about a little known episode in history. It takes 20 minutes or so to set the backstory and introduce the characters but gets to the action pretty quickly. The overall story is true but of course some of the details are fictionalized. What it does bring home is how once again fighting men are used as pawns by politicians and left hanging and exposed by a complicit upper military leadership, and even heroism under fire is swept under the rug and the fighters ultimately demonized to keep the politicians' hands clean.
The back story: A newly elected President in the Congo wants to nationalize the rich cobalt and other strategic mineral mines in the Katanga province. The foreign owners of the mines are naturally upset and of course the US and everybody else is worried about who is going to get that raw material vital for nuclear weapons, the Free World or the USSR. The president is assassinated by one of his generals who sets himself up as President but isn’t recognized as legitimate by the UN and a civil war is imminent. Units of the Irish Army are asked to serve as peacekeepers due to their long stance of neutrality. One interesting thing is that De Gaulle sends in 1000 ex-Foreign Legionnaires as mercenaries (“security guards”) to openly attack the peacekeepers and support the foreign mine owners.
Not “Saving Private Ryan” quality but overall a pretty decent battle flick about a little known episode in history. It takes 20 minutes or so to set the backstory and introduce the characters but gets to the action pretty quickly. The overall story is true but of course some of the details are fictionalized. What it does bring home is how once again fighting men are used as pawns by politicians and left hanging and exposed by a complicit upper military leadership, and even heroism under fire is swept under the rug and the fighters ultimately demonized to keep the politicians' hands clean.