Belgian Cement Worker Albert Verbrugghe was driving his wife and another woman down a quiet street in the copper town of Jadotville one day last week, when he suddenly heard the clatter of gunfire. Pulling the triggers for no apparent reason were nervous Indian troops of the advancing United Nations force. Verbrugghe slammed his little Volkswagen to a halt. His wife was already dead, the other woman dying. With an anguished scream. Verbrugghe stumbled out, blood streaming from a wound under his eye. "My wife is killed," he cried. "Why, why, why?"
The same question, in a larger context, was being asked in many capitals last week. For the third time in 15 months, the world was horrified witness to the spectacle of foreign soldiers, aided by the U.S.. seizing the towns and firing on native soldiers of the Congo. To many, the U.N.'s very presence in the African land was of doubtful wisdom. But in any case, the blazing guns and swooping planes of the U.N. hardly fitted the pacifying intent of its original Congo mandate.
"It is an unspeakable tragedy,'' said Connecticut's Democratic Senator Thomas Dodd. "that the world organization which was set up to prevent war and preserve the peace should be starting wars.'' In London, 90 Tory M.P.s accused the U.N. of acting "contrary to its own charter.'' Even President Kennedy, who last week ordered the U.S. to begin shipping 2½-ton trucks, armored cars and transport planes to the U.N. Congo force, was reported to be alarmed at the disorder that arose from the U.N. shooting.
On to Jadotville. But there was no turning back on the basic decision that had been made. Katanga's Secessionist President Moise Tshombe had used every sly trick in the book to frustrate efforts to reunite his rebellious, copper-rich province with the rest of the Congo. Now, U.N. Secretary-General U Thant, with U.S. encouragement, was determined to end the Katanga problem once and for all. The occasion happened to be the collapse of discipline among Tshombe's boozy, ragtag 20,000-man gendarmerie. When they began shooting at U.N. soldiers in Katanga a fortnight ago, the U.N. replied with all the power at its command.
Last week Irish infantrymen marched into Kipushi, site of copper mines at the Rhodesian border. Ethiopian U.N. troops already occupied Elisabethville itself. But the big prize was Jadotville, a town of 90,000, where the giant Union Mini&3233;re mineral outfit produces one-third of its copper (110,000 tons) and three-fourths of its cobalt (6,600 tons) each year. Toward Jadotville, 70 miles from Elisabethville, moved a two-mile-long column of Indians commanded by Brigadier Reginald Noronha. a gutty soldier who munched hardboiled eggs while mortar shells burst around him.