Katanga, later called Shaba, was the province in the Belgian Congo where Creasy and Guido found a war after their French Foreign Legion service. Its mineral wealth and attempted breakaway brought mercenaries into the conflict, making it the setting for the beginning of their life as hired fighters and for a partnership forged in combat.

Province and Secession

Katanga was a province of the Belgian Congo. When the Belgians withdrew in 1961, it tried to secede; as Guido explains, its people belonged to a different tribe from the rest of the country, and the province held much of the mineral wealth. The failed secession forms the political background to the mercenary fighting that drew Creasy and Guido there.

Creasy and Guido in Katanga

After leaving the Legion, the two men stayed together: Guido was still wanted by the police, and Creasy had nowhere to go. With military training as their principal qualification, they looked for a war and found one in Katanga. They joined a group of mercenaries led by the French former paratroop colonel Trinquier, who knew them from Algeria and welcomed their experience.

The transition from legionnaires to mercenaries changed little in the practical demands of their work, but they missed the Legion. That shared sense of loss drew them closer. Their fighting skills became widely recognized among the mercenaries: they moved and fought as if they were a single unit, without needing apparent communication. In urban combat, they excelled at clearing buildings, covering one another as they advanced from room to room and building to building with a precision that other mercenaries stopped to watch. They also made highly practiced use of grenades and submachine guns.

After the Katanga Campaign

The secession failed, and Creasy and Guido moved with other mercenaries to Yemen under Denard. They returned to the Congo when Tshombe came back from exile, continuing to fight through the war until Mobuto triumphed. Katanga therefore marks the start, rather than the whole course, of their mercenary careers: the failed breakaway leads into successive campaigns elsewhere, while the shared experience of loss and combat establishes the unusually close bond that carries forward through them.