"Black Jack" Jean Schramme: Congo Mercenary, Part One

 "Black Jack" Jean Schramme was born in Bruges, Belgium to a wealthy upper class family in 1929. Once he became of age, he started his mandatory military service in the Force Publique, where they trained him in the traditional Belgian military fashion. Schramme deeply loved Africa and called himself un Africian blanc ("a white African"). He ran a successful estate in the Congo, and felt that he understood the Congo far better than the average Congolese citizen and strongly believed the Congo should never be released from Belgian rule. 

He despised the more Western educated Congolese and had the stance that they weren't real Congolese like the workers on his estate, and that Belgian settlers should provide the strict, but loving paternalistic care that he believed was what the Congolese needed. 

In 1959, when the riots in the Congo started, the Belgians agreed to finally let it become an independent state in 1960. Schramme, unwilling to accept Congolese independence, started to stockpile arms and ammunition and even attached metal plates and a light machine gun to his car to create a makeshift APC. As the riots grew more dangerous, Schramme decided to flee to Uganda, though once he heard about the State of Katanga led by Moise Tshombe.

Schramme traveled to Katanga and enlisted as a mercenary with a goal to reestablish himself as a planter in Africa, having abandoned his estate in the Congo. In the spring of 1961, Schramme enlisted in Groupe Mobile E, a mercenary unit that had a terrible reputation for cruelty,  and was commanded by the hard-drinking Scotsman Robert Chambers, who called himself Louis Chamois, even though French was atrocious. Schramme was extremely unimpressed with Chambers, stating: "At first glance, I thought I was dealing with a double crazy drunk. He pretended to be an officer, but he was interested in nothing more than his bottle and his revolver".

Schramme spent some time in Southern Rhodesia and recruited several of the white British and South African settlers to come with him to fight as mercenaries for Katanga. In October 1961, Schramme and his men took the town of Kisamba from the Congolese, proudly reporting his small unit had just routed two battalions of the Armée Nationale Congolaise, owing mainly to their superior discipline. After the battle, Schramme was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant.