Help Wanted

Any fit young man looking for employment with a difference at a salary well in excess of -L- 100 per month should telephone 838-5202/3 during business hours. Employment initially offered for 6 months. Immediate start.

--Ad in the Johannesburg Star Into the recruiting offices they wandered, the adventurous young and desperate middleaged, from offices and schools and barrooms, the motley white volunteers for Moise Tshombe's new mercenary army in the Congo.

With the approval of the two governments, Tshombe's chief agents had set up shop in South Africa and Southern Rhodesia. Identically worded want ads ran simultaneously under three headings (Vacancies, Opportunities, Business) in major newspapers. In Salisbury, recruiters passed slips of paper reading "55715" to nightclub loners, whispering to them to "Ring that number, Jack, and you'll be all right."

Salisbury 55715 led to a small dental surgery clinic, where a shapely blonde receptionist welcomed the applicants. She got right down to the point. The mercenaries would fight as an all-white brigade. Each man would probably clear about -L-150 a month, and "the closer to the danger area you get, the more money there will be for you." There would be no physical examinations, she told the hundred or so applicants who filed in every day, and only three weeks of military training: "We cannot afford more at this stage."

Two-Front Raid. In Johannesburg, a pal of Tshombe's, Patrick O'Malley, a former R.A.F. bomber pilot and Brigade of Guards officer, was recruiting 25 to 30 mercenaries a day. By week's end, Tshombe had gathered some 200 mercenaries. Early arrivals had already gone into action against the rebels--and lost. Led by two South African officers, a force of 35 mercenaries and 50 Katanga gendarmes attempted a daring, two-front commando raid on Albertville to rescue 140 European hostages held by Rebel Chieftain Gaston

Soumialot. But one column was ambushed 30 miles south of the city, and the other, which was to have landed from Lake Tanganyika, was held up by bad weather and lack of fuel.

As Recruiter O'Malley sees it, the mercenaries have plenty to fight for. "Tshombe is an African leader who has refused to turn his back on the white man," he says. "White men can go to his aid with a clear conscience. The forces under formation will be a clean, efficient fighting unit which will remove the name of mercenary from the list of dirty words."

Nucleus Command. Throughout most of Africa, both mercenary and Tshombe were about the dirtiest words on the list. Hiring troops from hated white supremacist countries will just about finish whatever chances Tshombe may have had of ever getting along with other black African nations. And there is little evidence that Tshombe even cares.

Ever a man to put faith in the people he pays, Tshombe wanted to hire mercenaries from the start. And, secretly, he did so. Fully aware that the Congolese army was wholly untrustworthy and that his nationalist African neighbors were unlikely to send him even token support, the smiling little Premier imported the nucleus of his mercenary command six weeks ago, less than two weeks after he took office.

By last week, Tshombe's country was in flames, his army in disgrace, and leftist ex-Vice Premier Antoine Gizenga had formed a rebel-lining political party right under his nose. So Tshombe felt ready to bring the mercenaries into the open and to start recruiting more. Not that mercenaries alone could solve the Congo's long-range problems but they might conceivably clear and hold the rebel areas, thereby giving Tshombe time to put some order into the nation's chaotic and corrupt administration.

No Alcohol. Occasionally, a Congolese emerges who can fight better for his country than any mercenary. One such is Colonel Leonard Mulamba of the government forces, commander of the garrison that fought off the bloody rebel invasion of Bukavu and gave the Congolese army something it could be proud of for a change. Mulamba, a tough disciplinarian who got his training as an adjutant in the Belgian Congo Force Publique, last week tried to turn his victory into a springboard for reform.

He stopped his troops from looting the city, forbade them to loiter on the streets, even ordered Bukavu's bartenders not to serve them alcohol. He issued a stern warning to Bukavu's provincial president that local police brutality must end, personally ransacked a block of houses in which several murderous cops were thought to be hiding. Riding in an open Jeep, he inspected nearby communities, stopping long enough to organize temporary local governments in each. "I intend to maintain law and order," said Mulamba. It was a forlorn intention in the present Congo.

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