Jean Schramme

Jean Schramme (March 25th, 1929, Bruges, Belgium -14 December 1988, Rondonopolis, Brazil) was a Belgian chief of Mercenaires .

He settles with the Congo at the eighteen years age, where he directs a plantation. He treats his employees well, without racism (he adopts three black children), and learns the Swahili, which is worth to him admiration and the fidelity of much of them, which form a militia completely with its orders.

He does not leave Congo at the time of the independence of the country, in 1960. He implies himself in the civil wars of Congo, with the assistance of his militiamans, and gives up his plantation.

Thus, in 1967, it takes part in the coup d'etat of Moïse Tshombé against Mobutu, in collaboration with the mercenaries of Bob Denard. The putsch is a disaster, the populations of Kinshassa remaining faithful to the president. Schramme, which has the rank of colonel in the army kantangaise, made retirement towards the East, with Stanleyville (today Kisangani), then towards Bukavu, at the border Rwanda ise, which it occupies on August 10th. There, its army made up of one hundred twenty-three mercenaries and six hundred gendarmes katangais faces from October 29th to November 5th 1967 the troops of the Congolese National army, twenty times higher of number. Folding under the number, lack ammunition, betrayed by Denard, shouldered by soldiers katangais completely exhausted, the army of Schramme folds up itself with the Rwanda where it is demobilized.

Schramme and some of his/her companions turn over to Belgium the April 28th 1968. In 1986, it is condemned by contumacy to twenty years of prison for the execution of a spy. He dies in 1988.

Sources

Honorin Michel, the end of the mercenaries , 1972, editions I read.
anglophone Wikipédia

Works

Schramme, J.: the battalion Leopard /The Battaillon Leopard, 1969 (its biography)

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