Jean Schramme

Jean Schramme (also Jacques ) (born March 25, 1929 in Bruges , Belgium , † December 14, 1988 in Rondonópolis , Brazil ) called Black Jack , was a Belgian mercenary , plantation owner and convicted murderer.

Life

Born the son of a lawyer, Schramme immigrated from Belgium to the Congo at the age of 14. He built a large plantation near Stanleyville, today's Kisangani . When supporters of Patrice Lumumba devastated the plantation after the independence of the Congo , Schramme fled and founded a self-protection group, the “green fighting force”. Schramme reached the newly founded Republic of Katanga via Uganda at the beginning of 1961 , where he initially joined a unit made up of native whites and foreign mercenaries, called the 4 Commando . Later he led his own unit with the name "Gruppe Leopard" with the rank of major . The teams were made up of young people from the local tribes, the officers were former plantation owners. While other units paid attention to the strict separation of whites and locals at the front and in the stage, both groups lived close together at Schramme. Together with Bob Denard and Mike Hoare , Schramme was one of the most important mercenary leaders in the Katanga army. They put down the Baluba uprising in northern Katanga by burning down villages, massacring the residents and torturing and murdering prisoners. The mercenary units were initially able to hold their own against the UN troops, but eventually they had to evacuate ever larger parts of Katangas. In January 1963 Schramme withdrew to Angola with around 100 other mercenaries .

When the Simba rebellion broke out at the beginning of 1964 , Schramme (now with the rank of lieutenant colonel ) marched back into the Congo with 8,000 former soldiers of the Katanga army who had gathered in Angola. In the east of what is now the province of Maniema , he set up his headquarters near his former plantation, and called his unit the 10 Commando . In order to gain control of the area assigned to him, Schramme organized a flotilla of ferries and motor boats on the tributaries of the Lualaba . The ferries carried armed jeeps with which Schramme's soldiers could advance along the course of the rivers on roads and railways.

In 1967 Schramme was the leader of the mercenary rebellion in the Democratic Republic of the Congo , which broke out on July 5, 1967 in Stanleyville . From Stanleyville, Schramme and his troops made their way to Bukavu , which they reached on August 8, 1967. In Bukavu, the troops of around 1,500 men were encircled by units of the Congolese army. Bob Denard tried to relieve Bukavu from Angola with another mercenary group, but was repulsed. After seven weeks, Schramme was finally able to get to Rwanda with the last survivors of his troops on November 6, 1967 .

Shortly after his return to Belgium in 1968, Schramme was arrested for the alleged murder of a white farmer in Katanga and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment on April 17, 1986 for murder. During the trial, Schramme was allowed to travel to Brazil, where he ran a plantation until his death.

In the novel The Dogs of War by Frederick Forsyth , actual events in the Congo around Jean Schramme are assembled into the fictional plot.

Works

• Le Bataillon Léopard / The Leopard Battalion , 1969

literature

• SJG Clarke: The Congo Mercenary: A history and analysis , South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), 1968, pp. 24–32, here :, accessed April 10, 2014
• Ruth Margaret Delaforce: A Mafia for the State. Mercenary Soldiers and Private Security Contractors 1946–2009 , Thesis, Griffith University 2010, pp. 138–165, here :, accessed April 10, 2014
• Hans Germani: The beautiful days of the mercenaries in Bukavu are drawing to a close. Schramme's men enjoyed the "sweet life" for a long time . In: Die Welt, November 3, 1967, p. 3
• Anthony Mockler: The new mercenaries . Corgi Books, London 1986, ISBN 0-552-12558-X , pp. 59-161
• Torsten Thomas, Gerhard Wiechmann: Modern Landsknechte or Military Specialists? The "rebirth" of mercenaries in the 20th century in the Congo, 1960-1967 . In: Stig Förster, Christian Jansen, Günther Kronenbitter (eds.): Return of the Condottieri? War and the military between state monopoly and privatization: from antiquity to the present . Paderborn et al. 2009, pp. 265–282.
• White giants . In: Der Spiegel . No. 35 , 1967, p. 97 ( online ).
• Al J. Venter: War Dog: Fighting Other People's Wars-the Modern Mercenary in Combat. Casemate Publishers, Havertown PA 2006, ISBN 1-932033-09-2 , pp. 253-255 ( limited preview in Google book search).

Web links

• Biography of Schramme
• Schramme's role in the Simba Rebellion and the Mercenary Uprising
• Frank Westenfelder Katanga. At the beginning of the 1960s, the mercenaries reported back in Africa.