# 5 Commando The mercenary unit commanded by Mike Hoare in the Congo — and a **corrective page**, because almost everything popularly believed about who paid it is wrong. ## What it actually was 5 Commando was raised in **July 1964** by Jerry Puren at the request of **[[Moïse Tshombe]] — by then prime minister of the *central* Congolese government**, not of secessionist Katanga. Its purpose was suppressing the Simba rebellion. Mike Hoare commanded it; John Peters took over in December 1965. **It was funded and paid by the Congolese government through contracts managed by Tshombe's administration**, at rates of roughly $280 a month base plus $420 danger pay for enlisted men, up to $1,100 for officers, with a $19,000 death benefit. **The [[CIA]] provided air support, Swift boats crewed by anti-Castro Cuban exiles, and vehicles.** **No mining company appears anywhere in the sourcing.** ## Why the corrective matters The popular account collapses two distinct periods into one story about mining companies hiring mercenaries: | Period | Who paid | For what | |---|---|---| | **1960–63, Katanga secession** | [[Union Minière du Haut-Katanga]] advanced Tshombe **1,250 million Belgian francs** against taxes owed to Kinshasa; Tshombe's Katangese state paid the gendarmerie and its European irregulars | Holding the copper province | | **1964–67, Simba rebellion** | The **central Congolese treasury**, plus a superpower intelligence service | Suppressing a national insurgency | The first is a documented mining-company transaction — a **tax advance to a state**, not a payment to soldiers. The second is patronage, not a minerals model. Conflating them produces the myth that Katanga's mercenaries were a mining company's private army, which the evidence does not support. See [[Security-for-Minerals]] and [[Katanga Secession]]. ## The end The **1967 mercenary revolt** — Jean Schramme with Bob Denard and Puren, around a hundred former Katangan gendarmes and a thousand Katangese fighters — was triggered by news that Tshombe's aircraft had been hijacked over the Mediterranean and forced down in Algiers, where he was imprisoned. Mobutu's army assaulted Bukavu on 4 November 1967; the mercenaries crossed into Rwanda the next day and surrendered. Rwanda refused Mobutu's extradition requests, and they left in April 1968. By then [[Mobutu Sese Seko]] had already nationalised Union Minière into what became [[Gécamines]], on **31 December 1966** — a date commonly misreported as 1967. ## See also [[Katanga Secession]] · [[Moïse Tshombe]] · [[Security-for-Minerals]] · [[Congolese History Hub]] · [[Mobutu Sese Seko]]