Most of the soldiers who gratefully scrambled out of the Globemaster II that evening had never been abroad before, let alone experienced a culture as exotic as that of the Congo. Most of the men had never even seen a black person at first-hand before – now there were Congolese porters, ground crew, airport attendants and drivers curiously gathered everywhere to watch the new arrivals. ‘We stepped out into the heat of Leopoldville in our normal wool uniforms – and I’d say within a few minutes you could have fried eggs on our foreheads we were so hot,’ John recalled. ‘We didn’t get our tropical kit until the following day when we began to organise ourselves at Camp Limiate on the outskirts of Leopoldville. This was the old Belgian colonial capital and it was quiet and pretty safe. Katanga was far to the south and Leopoldville seemed totally unaffected by what was going on.’ The city was known as Kinshasa to the Congolese and Leopold-ville to the Belgians.
