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The crack Belgian paratroops had been expected to display an iron discipline, in contrast with the disorderly and irrational behavior of the mutinous Congolese troops of the Force Publique. But the paratroops soon got out of hand. Storming their way into Leopoldville after cap turing the airport, they beat up any stray Africans they encountered, disarmed and arrested Congolese troops. When Congo Foreign Minister Justin Bomboko pro posed a truce, with joint patrols from both sides to police Leopoldville, the paratroops indignantly refused to sit be side "those black apes" in military jeeps. They were trigger-happy and arrogant. TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs was shot at by a paratrooper, who then apologized because "in the dark I thought you were an African."
Holed Bastard. When Premier Lumumba returned to Leopoldville from one of his hectic flights and got into a Sabena bus for the elevenmile ride into the city, paratroopers rocked the bus so violently that they raised it a foot off the ground. One of them shouted: "We ought to shoot this bastard full of holes!" Lumumba finally escaped under the escort of a U.S. embassy car. U.N. Representative Ralph Bunche, who had been confined to his hotel room by Force Publique mutineers, was manhandled by Belgian paratroops at the airport.
Militarily, the Belgians did not do so well. They restored order in the white section of Leopoldville, in Luluabourg chased Congolese mutineers away from a hotel where they had besieged 75 whites for two days. But they failed embarrassingly in an attack on the Congolese garrison of the river port of Matadi.
Fast Vote. In New York the U.N.
Security Council convened in extraordinary session to consider Lumumba's appeal. To avoid any charge of colonialism, the U.S. had earlier turned down an appeal to send U.S. troops. Behind the scenes, U.S. Delegate Lodge argued that the Congo problem should be solved by Africans, backed a Tunisian resolution that authorized the dispatch of a U.N.
military force to the Congo and demanded that Belgium withdraw its armed forces.
The first U.N. detachments were to be made up of troops from such states as Tunisia, Morocco, Ghana and Ethiopia.
Though Russia's Arkady Sobolev routinely charged that the U.S., Britain and France were engaged in a "colonialist conspiracy," in the end Russia was forced to vote for the resolution, which passed 8-0 (Britain, France and Nationalist China abstained). Within hours, Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold had the first contingents of a 6,000-man force on their way.
In Belgium the Congo crisis shook the government of Premier Gaston Eyskens.