Turn your Congo memorabilia into cash
They say the truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. And indeed the following tale about 5 Commando photographs is stranger than fiction.
It concerns a pile of photographic enlargements of Colonel Mike Hoare, his second-in-command Major Alistair Wicks, and other 5 Commando officers and men including Hans Germani.
Pivot now to Cape Town a few years ago, when a collector of militaria and secondhand books decided to also collect and sell succulent plants. Johan, not his real name, soon realised that the good people of Cape Town did not realise the value of these succulent plants and would sometimes throw them away at the Wynberg municipal dump.
So Johan would sometimes go there and gather any such succulents, and on this particular day he found someone had dumped a small box of about 25 photographic enlargements, and about 15 documents. The documents were mainly in German, and some had the name Hans Germani on them. And then it started to rain so Johan grabbed the box and ran, thus preserving some valuable historical collectibles and potentially earning himself a pile of cash.
Germani had been in the German Army at the tail end of World War 2, and had then qualified as a medical doctor. Needing more action, he had become a stringer for Bilt magazine, covering East Africa. When the Simba rebellion ignited in the Congo he joined 5 Commando hoping to get the inside story, but was pressed into service as a doctor. Then, interestingly, as Germani spoke many languages including Swahili, and as he was also an intellectual, Mike gave him the job of translator, working alongside Mike. And after it was all over, Germani wrote an excellent first-hand account of the fighting in the Congo in 1964/5; the book is titled “White Soldiers in Black Africa”.
Johan somehow got hold of me, Chris Hoare, and when I was in Cape Town in March 2025, we met over a cuppa and he showed me the photos and documents. As I represent an avid collector of 5 Commando militaria, I was able to secure a very good price for Johan for many of the photographs. And I can do the same for anyone who has 5 Commando memorabilia for sale. Feel free to contact me using the Contact tab, and tick the Memorabilia sub-heading.
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