William (Billy) Keane (1940 2024) – hero of Jadotville
Billy Keane, who died on September 22, was a veteran of one of the most extraordinary battles in Irish history. In September 1961, aged just 21, he was serving in A Company, 35th Battalion, on United Nations service in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. For five dramatic days, Private (later Corporal) Keane and his comrades fought against over-whelming odds in the mining town of Jadotville.
Billy Keane arrived in the Congo in June 1961. The Irish troops were deployed as peacekeepers in the mineral rich province of Katanga, which had seceded from the Congo shortly after it gained independence from Belgium in 1960. In early September 1961, A Company was sent to Jadotville, a place largely run by a Belgian mining company. The Irish troops were supposed to be protecting the Belgians in the town. But two other UN companies had been withdrawn due to local hostility and it was clear that the Belgians did not need protection and hated the UN troops.
The Commander of A Company, Pat Quinlan, feared an attack and began preparing defences. Billy Keane and his comrades were ordered to dig deep diagonal trenches – the five-foot deep trenches would save their lives.
Billy was assigned to the stores area and was also working as a cook. On the morning of September 13, while most of the Company was at Mass, he was cooking breakfast when he heard what he thought were pebbles hitting the sheet iron over the cooker; then: “I saw a tracer bullet fly by.” The Katangese gendarmerie (“gends”, as the Irish called them) and a force of Belgian, French and other European and African mercenaries were attacking the Irish compound. Alerted by the quick actions of Billy and of the sentries, the soldiers ran to their positions and repelled the attack.
A few hours later, the Katangese returned and Billy and his comrades were subjected to a storm of bullets and mortars. The men and teenagers of A Company had no experience of armed combat. They were lightly armed in comparison with the battle experienced troops attacking them. But they were well trained and superbly led, and they returned disciplined and deadly fire.
For the next four days, the men of A Company fought repeatedly beat back attacking forces which outnumbered them 20 to 1. (The Company numbered 156 men and the Katangese around 3,000). Armed with FN rifles, Bren machine guns and a small number of 66mm mortars used to maximum effect, they inflicted heavy casualties on the Katangese. At one point, A Company was bombed and strafed from the air by a jet fighter. And still they fought on. They suffered no fatalities and only five lightly wounded. As food ran short, they lived off a mix of ingredients they called ‘Jadotville stew’. They endured a lack of water and ferocious heat.
Billy’s comrades remember his steadfastness and courage in ensuring that ammunition from the stores reached the machine gunners and snipers at their posts. One of his colleagues recalled how Billy “dragged and carried boxes of ammunition to all the platoons fearlessly”. On second day of the siege, as he was carrying a box of ammunition to an outlying post, a hail of bullets fired from a Katangese machine gun missed him by yards, but undaunted, he made sure his comrades got their ammunition. He was described as being “bravery personified”, fighting for his comrades as they fought for him.
After five days of fighting, Commandant Quinlan agreed to a ceasefire and surrender. By then A Company had run out of food, water and ammunition. Attempts to get reinforcements to them had failed. Quinlan had the highest respect for his men. He would describe Billy Keane and his comrades as “Ireland’s finest sons”. The Company had been let down and abandoned by the UN. He was not prepared to see his “brave boys” die for nothing. His men held Quinlan in the highest regard and would have followed him anywhere. They believed that their commander saved their lives. Billy told a reporter that if it had not been for Quinlan, “we would have come home in boxes”. Billy had wondered when the battle started whether “I would ever see home again”. Quinlan was determined that he would bring all his boys home to their mothers, and he did so.
The Katangese broke the ceasefire terms and the men of A Company were illegally taken prisoner and held as bargaining chips in negotiations between the UN and the Katangese president, Moise Tshombe. The Irishmen were reasonably treated most of the time but there were occasions when they were subjected to psychological, physical and verbal abuse and they had reason to fear for their lives. Billy would later describe it as a “harrowing experience”. He recalled being moved around on buses between Jadotville and the town of Kalweisi with the sun burning down on them. Throughout their captivity, however, they kept up their discipline and morale.
Eventually, after five weeks in captivity, they were released on October 26. (They had planned to seize control of the buses taking them from their prison if they were not released.)
A Company then returned to the Katangese capital Elizabethville and continued their tour of duty, including, at one stage guarding the home of Conor Cruise O’Brien, the Irish UN Special Envoy in Katanga, About half the company returned to Ireland at the end of November. But the rest of the men, including Billy Keane, stayed on to assist the Swedish and Indian UN troops and the incoming Irish 36th Battalion in a military operation that would become known as the Second Battle of Katanga. The UN called it Operation UNOKAT.
This would be the first time that the Irish Army would be involved in a military offensive overseas. The men of the 35th and 36th battalions were no longer peacekeepers. They were part of a UN attack on the Katangese Army and their mercenary allies. From December 5 to 18th, A Company, 35th Battalion helped spearhead attacks on Katangese roadblocks close to Elizabethville Airport.
The Katangese attempted to cut off the road linking the UN HQ and bases occupied by UN troops. Despite encountering fierce mortar and gunfire the men of A Company cleared the roadblocks and launched an attack on a major fuel depot controlled by the Katangese. They fought their way into the depot and set fire to the fuel tanks. The flames could be seen from 25 miles away and the damage was a major blow to the Katangese military effort,
The men from the 35th Battalion were stationed at Rousseau Farm, close to the strategic Route Charlie. On December 10, they set up a post known as ‘Shop’. Their main duty was to protect a huge refugee camp that contained civilians and captured mercenaries, and to prevent the mercenaries from escaping. Conditions were bad. Commandant Quinlan described ‘Shop’ as, “a most uncomfortable and unpleasant post by any point of view”. The Irish soldiers were plagued with flies and intense heat, monsoon rains, and conditions in the trenches were filthy. But Quinlan praised the spirit of his men, who carried out their duties without complaint.
The Second Battle of Katanga ended on December 18, after President Tshombe requested a ceasefire. That evening, A Company, 35th Battalion, left Elizabethville and began their journey home. They reached Athlone on Christmas Eve and received a warm welcome from the local population before heading back to their families for well earned leave.
Billy Keane was born in Cloonaglasha, County Galway on February 13, 1940, the third in the family of 13 children of Richard and Nuala Keane. All his life, he remained a proud Galwayman and was once a recipient of a Galway Man of the Year Award. As a teenager, he loved attending the October Fair in Tuam. He joined the Army in 1959, after seeing a newspaper recruiting poster. His parents did not want him to join but, as Billy explained, it was the army or emigration to England. There was no work locally and the economy was in poor shape. He packed a suitcase, cycled to Tuam and took the train to Galway, where he enlisted at Renmore Barracks.
Billy returned to the Congo two years after Jadotville, serving there from November 1963 to May 1964. He was based at the very place in which A Company had been held hostage in Jadotville. But by that time the Katangese secession had ended and, as Billy recalled: “We (the UN) were in charge.” (The Katangese and their allies had finally been defeated in January 1963 in a new military offensive in which the 38th Battalion Heavy Mortar Troop from Mullingar had taken a major part.) Billy also served two tours of duty with UN forces in Cyprus, which he described as being “like holidays compared with the Congo”.
Back in Ireland Billy spent most of his military career in Mullingar with the 4th Field Artillery Regiment. Altogether, he did 21 years of military service, and retired in 1980.
He was a founding member of the Mullingar Branch of the ONE (Organisation of National Ex-Service Personnel of Ireland) in June 1985. He was proud of the ONE and of its work in caring for ex-service men and women, some of whom fell on hard times after their military careers ended. Billy was a stalwart member of Mullingar ONE over four decades and, it may be said, he WAS the Mullingar ONE. He sold hundreds of books of tickets for the weekly raffle, gave long hours to standing or sitting on the streets or at shopping centres at the annual ONE and Fuschia Day collections. (The Fuschia is the emblem of the Defence Forces).
Billy was the main mover in the building of the ONE Memorial outside Columb Barracks, and served two terms as president of Mullingar ONE. He was assiduous in his attendance at ONE parades and Masses across the country and carried out duties on behalf of ONE up to the last weeks of his life. He never forgot his Jadotville comrades and the other members of the military family of ex-service personnel.
Life was difficult for Billy and the other Jadotville veterans when they got home. Although they were praised by a British war correspondent as “the Jadotville Tigers”, there was little awareness in Ireland about what they had endured or how bravely they had fought. They were seen in some quarters as cowards who had surrendered rather than dying heroically. The reputation of senior military men and UN officials and politicians had to be protected. So the true story of Jadotville was covered up. Billy and his comrades endured snide remarks about white flags and cowardice from men who had never been within a thousand miles of war. Not until 2005, when Declan Power’s book, ‘The Siege of Jadotville’, was published, was the full story of the battle told.
Happily Billy lived long enough to see his courage and that of his comrades finally honoured by the Irish state. In September 2016, at a ceremony in Athlone, the men of A Company received a special Presidential Unit Citation, the first time such a citation had ever been awarded to a unit in the history of the Irish Defence Forces. The same month, Billy and many of his surviving comrades were invited to Dublin to attend the world premier of the Netflix film ‘The Siege of Jadotville’. In October 2016, a special Jadotville Day commemoration was held at Collins Barracks in Dublin.
In December 2017, the men of A Company received a special military decoration, the Jadotville Medal, An Bonn Jadotville, at a ceremony in Athlone. The medal depicts a Celtic warrior and the words Cosaint Chalma (Valiant Defence) and ‘Misneach’ (Courage). It was, as one of the Company officers Noel Carey said, “a great day for the veterans”. The honour of the men of A Company had finally been restored after 56 years.
In September 2022, a Monument honouring the heroes of Jadotville on which the names of all the members of A Company are inscribed, was unveiled at Assumption Road in Athlone at a ceremony Billy and many of the other veterans attended. And in July 2024, along with other veterans of the Irish deployment to the Congo between 1960 and 1964, Billy was honoured with the presentation of a special Certificate of Appreciation by the Irish United Nations Veterans Association (IUNVA) at a ceremony in Mullingar. The Certificate states that: ‘The courage, fortitude, soldierly conduct and sacrifices by personnel brought great credit to Ireland and the Defence Forces and contributed to the effective fulfilment of the United Nations Security Council Mandates, during a complex and dangerous mission, in the cause of world peace.’
Billy met his wife Molly at a dance in Tullamore. Molly was from Castletown Geoghegan and Billy played with the Castletown hurling team for some years, and was a great supporter of the club. They shared a love of Irish traditional music and travelled all over the country to attend sessions and dances nearly every week. Billy had a collection of more than 800 trad music tapes. Molly played bodhrán at seisiuns in Manny’s pub in Dysart, Finn’s Bar in Mullingar and elsewhere, Billy often acting as MC for the sessions. He was a keen supporter of the Galway football and hurling teams and a passionate follower of Manchester United.
Billy Keane died suddenly but peacefully just days after the 63rd anniversary of the Siege of Jadotville. He was laid to rest in Castletown Geoghegan following Mass at the Cathedral of Christ the King, Mullingar. Full military honours were rendered at the Mass and at the graveyard. The national flag was draped on the coffin and there was a large attendance by members of the ONE UN Veterans and the Permanent and Reserve Defence Forces from all over the country.
Billy Keane was “a good soldier to the core”, who served Ireland and the United Nations with courage and distinction. He was one of a remarkable “band of brothers”, who can be counted among 20th century Ireland’s true military heroes. In the words of their Commander, Pat Quinlan, they were, “The pride of all who wish to admire them.”
May Billy Keane Jadotville Tiger, Hero, Patriot and Gentleman, rest in peace, and rise in glory.
Billy was predeceased by his parents Richard and Nora, siblings Mary, Christy and Tony. Billy will be sadly missed by his beloved wife Mary (Molly), Michaela, Jay, Logan and Brody. He is survived by his sisters Bridie, Eileen, Bernie and Patsy, brothers Sonny, PJ, Oliver, Vincent and Tim, other relatives, and is remembered by friends, neighbours and his ex-servicemen companions.
– Ruth Illingworth