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While a ghostly Stanleyville was gradually secured by the government troops, hundreds of white hostages still remained in rebel hands elsewhere. Two days after the Stanleyville drop, the Belgian paras jumped again, this time at Paulis, northeast of Stanleyville, where 270 whites were being kept prisoners.
Simba Scrimshaw. When they arrived, the paras found 20 hostages murdered with a deliberate savagery reminiscent of the Nazi death camps. A group of Simbas had burst into a Dominican mission where 71 Belgians and an American missionary, Joseph Tucker, 49, had been held for three weeks.
The rebels, drunk and high on hemp, chose their victims for the night. Jean de Gotte, Belgian honorary consul in Paulis, watched in horror: "The first dozen were bound, hands and feet tied together behind their backs—trussed like chickens. They were taken outside and dumped on the sidewalk. Five white fathers were stripped of their cassocks and their beards were cut off. Mr. Tucker was first. They hit him across the face with a beer bottle and blinded him. Then they beat him slowly, down the spine, with rifle butts and sticks. Every time he squirmed they hit him. It took him 45 minutes to die.
Some of them died more quickly." The next night, seven more Belgians were killed. The priests' bodies were left on the mission steps; others were dumped into a crocodile-infested river.
In Paulis, the rebels were equally savage with their fellow Africans. The pro-Tshombe provincial president had been executed as an example to the town's 30,000 inhabitants. The Simbas first cut out his tongue, next lopped off his ears, feet and hands. Then they began a slow scrimshaw from the bottom up. It took him 15 minutes to die.
One survivor estimated that 4,000 Congolese were killed in Paulis—mostly the town's "intellectuals" (clerks, teachers, civil servants). "They started by killing anyone who was well-dressed," said a 27-year-old railway employee who got out alive. "In this country, the well-dressed are well-educated." As the paras tried to get the survivors out of Paulis, the Simbas followed them back to the rutted dirt airstrip where the C-130 waited. A rearguard held them off while the first planes took off, then scrambled for the last plane, which waited with its engines whining impatiently. They took off in a hail of mercifully inaccurate rebel fire. Aboard one of the planes flew Mrs. Angeline Tucker and her three children. She had not seen her husband die. After that, to the disgust of U.S. and Belgian officials on the scene, the paratroopers were withdrawn, presumably in deference to "world opinion," even though an estimated 1,100 whites were still in rebel-held territory.
The Road to Wasolo. Against the background of Stanleyville and Paulis, the quick machine-gun death of Paul Carlson appears merciful. But against the deeper background of his life, particularly his two years of service as a surgeon in a high, hot corner of Africa, where medicine was as rare as a morning frost, it appears cruel and incredibly wasteful.