90 years ago today in 1929, the Belgian mercenary, soldier of fortune, and plantation owner, 'Black Jack' Jean Schramme (pictured), was born in Bruges.

 90 years ago today in 1929, the Belgian mercenary, soldier of fortune, and plantation owner, 'Black Jack' Jean Schramme (pictured), was born in Bruges. 

He is best remembered for his attempt along with his fellow white mercenaries to overthrow the Congolese leader, President Mobutu, in 1967.

Born in the interwar period, Schramme grew up as the son of a highly respected Bruges lawyer and was raised on the principle that law, order, and justice were not mere words but were "reasons to live and die." His family had had a stake in the Belgian Congo since before the First World War and Schramme's idol, his uncle-in-law, Joseph Muylle, had been a legal servant in Katanga since 1914 who told the young Jean about his time in the colonies and of Belgium's civilising mission in the Congo. 

After the tumult and upheaval of the Second World War, in 1947, Schramme, aged 18, decided to take off for the Congo himself and run the family's plantation near Bafwasende, northeast of Stanleyville. For thirteen years he ran a vast estate there, living the typical high life of a European colonialist.

When the Congo suddenly achieved independence in 1961, Schramme along with many other Belgian colonials predictably made a run for it, and originally wound up in Uganda. 

Not long after the Congo had broken away from Belgium however, the mineral rich province of Katanga had broken away from the Congo under the leadership of Moïse Tshombe. 

To protect himself and his secessionist state, Tshombe hired in mercenaries from Europe amongst whom were the Irishman Mad Mike Hoare and the Frenchman Bob Denard.

 On hearing of this Schramme swiftly returned back to the Congo and was enlisted as a training officer at Kamina Base. Schramme was no soldier to begin with and certainly did not cut the figure of a mercenary the way the dashing Hoare or Denard did. 

He was said to have been a shy and nervous individual, an almost servile man who was eager to please others.

 During the Siege of Jadotville in which a tiny Irish U.N company held out against the mercenaries, Schramme served as a junior officer to the French mercenary commander, Robert Falques. 

Thereafter he was sent to Kansimba in the north of Katanga to muster fresh forces and there he recruited a gang of young men aged between fifteen and eighteen from the local tribes to form his own unit which he came to call the Leopard Battalion, commanded by himself and a few other ex-planters. Acting within a position of authority he soon came into his own as he led his men into battle.

When the dream of Katangan Independence came to an end in 1963, Schramme, Denard, and Puren along with a hundred other mercenaries fled across the border and sought refuge in Portuguese Angola. 

While Denard took his leave of Africa for a time, Schramme remained and became a full blown condottierre, the number of men under his command swelling to over 8,000. 

In 1964 he crossed the Angolan border and returned to the Congo as it grappled with its latest crisis, the Simba Rebellion.

 This crisis was so dire that Moïse Tshombe had been recalled from exile to lead the country and with the return of Tshombe had also come the return of the mercenaries, chief amongst them being Mad Mike. 

Black Jack renamed his Leopard Battalion as the 10th Commando to compliment Mad Mike's crazy 5th Commando. 

After reconquering a portion of eastern part of the country Black Jack established himself as a colonial planter again, this time around Fizi-Baraka in the eastern province of Maniema. 

The good times however were not to be restored for the colonial planter as not long after the rebellion's suppression Tshombe was booted out of office and Colonel Mobutu ascended to power in 1965 with little interest for his predecessor's affinity for white mercenaries. 

Black Jack remained in the Congo nonetheless and continued to maintain his enormous estate though he had little love for the new government.

In 1967 he and his comrades hatched a plan together to place the exiled Tshombe back in power by staging a second secession of Katanga.

 Tshombe was en route from Spain when his plane was suddenly hijacked in Algiers and he was imprisoned by the Algerian authorities for the next two years in spite of Bob Denard's efforts to break him out.

 Black Jack and his men were undeterred however and led 11 white mercenaries and 100 Katangans in an attack on a Congolese army base in Stanleyville.

 Mobutu instantly retaliated by slaughtering 30 mercenaries whom had not been involved in the affair at all and then mustered a great army of some 30,000 men to face Black Jack's resurrected Leopard Battalion which had swollen to just over 1,000 men. 

In spite of being so hopelessly outnumbered, Black Jack and his men managed to conquer a number of towns and held out in Bukavu for several weeks, beating back wave after wave of attacks from the ANC who suffered from a lack of effective artillery and became increasingly frustrated at the losses incurred by the rabble of mercenaries.

 Some of the missions executed by their air force were so ineffective that they wound up attacking their own men instead of Schramme's. 

Schramme called for Mobutu to enter into negotiations with him and demanded that democratic rule be reestablished with Tshombe part of the new cabinet. Mobutu unsurprisingly refused, asserting that he would not sit and speak with the white 'assassins.

' Schramme in return scoffed that 'We have shown that the Congolese National Army is incapable of defeating us,' and threatened to march on Kinhasa itself.

Admirable as Schramme's stand in Bukavu was he could not hold out indefinitely.

 Bob Denard, now in Angola, gathered up a force and tried to invade the Congo to aid his fellow mercenary-in-arms only to be driven back by air strikes.

 Mobutu then assembled over 15,000 paratroopers to eventually overpower Black Jack and his Leopard Battalion. 

By the end of October they were defeated and the 'white giants' were forced to flee across the border into Rwanda. From there Schramme at last left Africa for Europe only to be put on trial in Belgium for the murder of a fellow Belgian Planter in the Congo.

 Schramme defended his actions as those of normal conduct in the circumstances of war, citing how “It was my duty to prevent him from putting his plan into action, I then shot him and ordered Rodrigues (a Mercenary barman) to finish him off and dump his body into the Lowa River”. 

While out on bail and still awaiting his sentence, Schramme decided to make a runner for it in 1969 and travelled to Brazil, dumping his passport and changing his name so that there would be no trace of him.

 There in South America he is thought to have owned another plantation whilst also acting as a security adviser to the Bolivian army from time to time. Back in Belgium he was at last sentenced to twenty years in prison for murder.

 Black Jack unsurprisingly did not return to serve the sentence and live out his days on his farm at Mato Grosso. He died there in 1988 at the age of 59.