History of the Congo

Heroes Remember

History of the Congo

Transcript

The Congo people wanted their independence. The country was actually run, it was a colony of Belgium so an agreement came that at a certain date they would take and turn over, give the government the country to the Congolese and the Belgiques were supposed to stay there for a period, a certain period of time to oversee, to oversee the operating of the government. When it was given to them, then what happened was that you had the war lords that wanted to take over and they wanted to run the country themselves, they want, they didn’t want the Belgiques in there whatsoever. And a lot of the Belgiques, some of them got massacred and so on. And they just didn’t want them there. And the first troops that went in, the UN, there were some, there were paratroopers, Canadians and and they were dressed with their red beret and so on. They were mistaken as Belgiques.

Description

Mr LeBlanc gives a brief history of the situation which had developed in the Congo before he arrived.

Fred LeBlanc

Fred LeBlanc was born on September 5, 1935 in Moncton, New Brunswick. Having trouble finding a job, he decided to join the Royal Canadian Signal Corps. He remembers convincing his mother to sign the permission slip because he was only 17and a half. After three months of training Mr. LeBlanc had to leave for brain surgery. He believes he was lucky it happened while he was in training because he probably would not have survived if it had happened during civilian life. In 1953 he went to Kingston,Ontario his first time away from home. Mr. LeBlanc was trained as a as a teletype operator and eventually became a cryptographer. With young children and a wife back home Mr. LeBlanc was posted to Congo for a seven month tour.

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