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Did the Irish Defence Forces "bury" all record of the battle? That sounds highly unlikely, even if not taken literally. 203.184.41.226 ( talk) 08:38, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
There area lot of failed links, please consider 188.104.95.22 ( talk) 12:38, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
I raised this in an edit summary a few weeks ago, but I think it's probably worth putting a comment here too, especially since I anticipate that this problem will only be exacerbated with a string of similar edits in the coming weeks as the new film comes out. To read the article as it currently stands spends great emphasis on the perceived heroism of the Irish troops in the face of an anonymous mass of Katangan troops and about how the "plucky" Irish troops were betrayed by commanders. This is historically dubious. Remember that the Congo Crisis was not a "war" but a period of political turmoil with sporadic outbreaks of violence - the military details of this (small-scale) engagement are much less important than its consequences.
The entire battle was a disaster for the United Nations in general, the already-controversial ONUC mission especially, and the Irish government in particular. Remember that Ireland had seen its membership of the United Nations - the measure of post-war respectability - vetoed in 1945 for its "war record" and had only been allowed permitted to join in 1955. The humiliation of international forces being forced into surrender - to a state not recognised by the UN itself - and the need to negotiate for their return threatened the whole basis of the UN presence in the Congo. Basically, there's an international context that this article desperately needs in order to make sense - and why would the Irish commanders have been embarrassed otherwise?
I believe the problem at the root here is that the sources used in this article are, on the whole, pretty poor. Modern newspaper journalism is not a critical historical source, especially if they are only chosen because they're available online. There are no shortage of legitimate academic texts which deal with the battle in detail: O'Donoghue's The Irish Army in the Congo, 1960-1964: the far battalions (2006) and Ireland, the United Nations and the Congo: A Military and Diplomatic History, 1960-1 (2014) are just a few examples of
legitimate academic works - they are literally dozens of others. Without using decent, balanced, sources there is no way this article can provide a balanced account.—
Brigade Piron (
talk)
10:52, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
The article states "Irish and Swedish UN troops based in Kamina and Indian army Gurkhas,[3] but they were beaten back by a supporting force of mercenaries who were brought in by the Belgians and General Moise Tshombe, Katanga's premier."
Is there any source for that claim? I have a hard time to believe EU founding member Belgium paid mercenaries to attack fellow European UN troops...— Preceding unsigned comment added by Wefa ( talk • contribs)
I have felt obliged to remove Bill Ready from the infobox's commanders and leaders, since he seems to have been just a private at the time. The Indo (
here) describes him as "Bill Ready of Mullingar, then a private aged 20", though it also calls him Sergeant Ready ("Sergeant Ready was the first casualty, shot in the left thigh about four hours later."), presumably because that is how he was later known (an article quoted at
this forum says "The four are Sgt Bill Ready (60), Gunner Tom Cunningham (62) and gunner John Flynn (58) from Mullingar, and Sgt Bobby Allen (73), from Collinstown."). The Westmeath Examiner (
here) agrees with the Indo that he was the first wounded("Death of Jadotville soldier Bill Ready ... he was shot at Jadotville, and held the unusual distinction of being the first Irish soldier injured in combat on foreign soil"). And the cast list for the movie has "Sam Keeley as Billy (Sniper) Ready". If somebody wants to add him into the Aftermath section, backed by
WP:RS citations, as part of the discontent and/or campaign sentences (" ... such as Sergeant Bill Ready (a 20 year-old private at the time[cite], played by
Sam Keeley in the movie) and ..."[cite]), please feel free to try, though some editor (though probably not me) may well then remove it as alleged unencyclopedic trivia, and/or as
WP:UNDUE. Meanwhile I'm thinking of trying to add him in to the wounded sentence, because of the above mentioned unusual distinction.
Tlhslobus (
talk)
06:08, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
I've now added his "Unusual Distinction" as a footnote.
Tlhslobus (
talk)
08:11, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
Article says "6 days" but in the article's box it says "13–17 September 1961", which is 5 days. Which is correct? 2A02:8084:6A22:4980:69EF:224D:B768:F3B4 ( talk) 15:35, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Siege of Jadotville article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() |
Daily pageviews of this article
A graph should have been displayed here but
graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at
pageviews.wmcloud.org |
Did the Irish Defence Forces "bury" all record of the battle? That sounds highly unlikely, even if not taken literally. 203.184.41.226 ( talk) 08:38, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
There area lot of failed links, please consider 188.104.95.22 ( talk) 12:38, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
I raised this in an edit summary a few weeks ago, but I think it's probably worth putting a comment here too, especially since I anticipate that this problem will only be exacerbated with a string of similar edits in the coming weeks as the new film comes out. To read the article as it currently stands spends great emphasis on the perceived heroism of the Irish troops in the face of an anonymous mass of Katangan troops and about how the "plucky" Irish troops were betrayed by commanders. This is historically dubious. Remember that the Congo Crisis was not a "war" but a period of political turmoil with sporadic outbreaks of violence - the military details of this (small-scale) engagement are much less important than its consequences.
The entire battle was a disaster for the United Nations in general, the already-controversial ONUC mission especially, and the Irish government in particular. Remember that Ireland had seen its membership of the United Nations - the measure of post-war respectability - vetoed in 1945 for its "war record" and had only been allowed permitted to join in 1955. The humiliation of international forces being forced into surrender - to a state not recognised by the UN itself - and the need to negotiate for their return threatened the whole basis of the UN presence in the Congo. Basically, there's an international context that this article desperately needs in order to make sense - and why would the Irish commanders have been embarrassed otherwise?
I believe the problem at the root here is that the sources used in this article are, on the whole, pretty poor. Modern newspaper journalism is not a critical historical source, especially if they are only chosen because they're available online. There are no shortage of legitimate academic texts which deal with the battle in detail: O'Donoghue's The Irish Army in the Congo, 1960-1964: the far battalions (2006) and Ireland, the United Nations and the Congo: A Military and Diplomatic History, 1960-1 (2014) are just a few examples of
legitimate academic works - they are literally dozens of others. Without using decent, balanced, sources there is no way this article can provide a balanced account.—
Brigade Piron (
talk)
10:52, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
The article states "Irish and Swedish UN troops based in Kamina and Indian army Gurkhas,[3] but they were beaten back by a supporting force of mercenaries who were brought in by the Belgians and General Moise Tshombe, Katanga's premier."
Is there any source for that claim? I have a hard time to believe EU founding member Belgium paid mercenaries to attack fellow European UN troops...— Preceding unsigned comment added by Wefa ( talk • contribs)
I have felt obliged to remove Bill Ready from the infobox's commanders and leaders, since he seems to have been just a private at the time. The Indo (
here) describes him as "Bill Ready of Mullingar, then a private aged 20", though it also calls him Sergeant Ready ("Sergeant Ready was the first casualty, shot in the left thigh about four hours later."), presumably because that is how he was later known (an article quoted at
this forum says "The four are Sgt Bill Ready (60), Gunner Tom Cunningham (62) and gunner John Flynn (58) from Mullingar, and Sgt Bobby Allen (73), from Collinstown."). The Westmeath Examiner (
here) agrees with the Indo that he was the first wounded("Death of Jadotville soldier Bill Ready ... he was shot at Jadotville, and held the unusual distinction of being the first Irish soldier injured in combat on foreign soil"). And the cast list for the movie has "Sam Keeley as Billy (Sniper) Ready". If somebody wants to add him into the Aftermath section, backed by
WP:RS citations, as part of the discontent and/or campaign sentences (" ... such as Sergeant Bill Ready (a 20 year-old private at the time[cite], played by
Sam Keeley in the movie) and ..."[cite]), please feel free to try, though some editor (though probably not me) may well then remove it as alleged unencyclopedic trivia, and/or as
WP:UNDUE. Meanwhile I'm thinking of trying to add him in to the wounded sentence, because of the above mentioned unusual distinction.
Tlhslobus (
talk)
06:08, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
I've now added his "Unusual Distinction" as a footnote.
Tlhslobus (
talk)
08:11, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
Article says "6 days" but in the article's box it says "13–17 September 1961", which is 5 days. Which is correct? 2A02:8084:6A22:4980:69EF:224D:B768:F3B4 ( talk) 15:35, 7 September 2019 (UTC)