Kinshasa Then and Now: Leopoldville 1942 – US Army establishes Camp Presnell

In a previous post (May 23, 2011), I described the arrival of the U.S. Army in Leopoldville at the end of August 1942, with an assignment to upgrade Ndolo airport to handle heavy bombers in transit to the Middle East and the China-Burma-India Theater in Asia. Among the troops was a segregated African American unit, Company C of the 27th Quartermaster Truck Regiment. The Belgians were outraged. The Colonial administration had long sought to subvert claims by millenarian sects that black American soldiers would come to liberate the Congolese from colonial tutelage, a sentiment which the demands of the war effort helped to accentuate. On September 1, the Assistant Belgian Military Attaché in Washington delivered a formal complaint from Minister of the Colonies de Vleeschauwer.

US Army troops on arrival in Leopoldville (Ph. News from Belgium, Nov. 14, 1942)

In Leopoldville, the Black soldiers were aware they were not welcome and, if they were not, didn’t understand why they were there. They had the same pass privileges as the white troops, but as their commander wrote, were disinclined to exercise this right because,

“There are no places where our troops may go to be served food, or drink, in contrast to the freedom which is enjoyed by our white troops. … they state that a general outward and bold exhibition on the part of the populace showing Colored soldiers' presence and services are not wanted makes their status very obvious.”

The unit did not want to return to the US and ultimately it was transferred to Liberia, without its white officers. On Armistice Day, the unit paraded through Leopoldville and crossed over to Brazzaville for onward transport to Liberia.

The 27th Quartermaster Truck unit marching through Leopoldville (Ph. author coll.)

US Army troops boarding the ferry to Brazzaville (Ph. author coll.)

The US troops initially arrived with minimal equipment and were housed under tents near the Leopold II Force Publique camp (now Camp Kokolo). Initially named Camp Roosevelt, it became Camp Presnell, named for a soldier missing in action in the Philippines. By the end of September, there were 1500 soldiers in Leopoldville. The Force Publique loaned them 20 Chevrolet trucks and an ambulance. The soldiers eventually erected over 50 plywood buildings for dormitories, dining halls and bathing facilities during their stay. At the same time, the 23rd Station Hospital was established to provide care if flight crews were injured. The nurses were initially lodged in the Hotel ABC (Mar. 27, 2011) until barracks were built.

Barracks at Camp Presnell (Ph. author coll, courtesy of NARA)

The barracks (Ph. author coll, courtesy of NARA)

Camp Presnell barracks (Ph. author coll, courtesy of NARA)

The U.S. engineers completed the upgrading of Ndolo airport in record time. Earlier in the year, the Belgians had extended the landing strip to a length of 2,300 meters and 30 meters wide. The Americans laid down a concrete runway, enabling Army Air Corps B-17 and B-24 bombers to land without damage to the surface. The engineers also erected and installed all the buildings and facilities necessary for the operation of the ferrying base. By the end of the year, they were ready to move on to their next assignment in Dakar, where the French Vichy government had capitulated after the Allied landings in North Africa in November.

Ndolo airport in the 1940s (Ph. author coll.)

In January, the last of the engineers left Congo for Dakar. In March, the medical staff of the 23rd Army Station Hospital was airlifted to Morocco. Except for a small Air Transport Command liaison unit commanded by an Army Air Corps lieutenant, the US Army was gone. A notice in the Courrier d’Afrique in June advised all creditors to present any claims at the US Army HQ at “Villa Roseraie” on Avenue Olsen (Kabasele Tshamala) before June 15. This was the complex of buildings into which the US Consulate and other war agencies moved in May (Aug. 2, 2018).

A member of the 38th Engineers with Congolese (Ph. author coll.)

The "Roseraie" building, which later became the US Consulate
(Ph. Northwestern University, digital collections)

The adjacent "Villa Tropica", which also housed US War Agency offices
(Ph. Northwestern University, digital collections)

Camp Presnell remained unoccupied –military visitors were lodged at the Avenue Olsen complex– until August 1944, when Mullins and Jack, a Rhodesian company based in Elisabethville, contacted the Central African Division of the Air Transport Command in Miami about purchasing the structures. Advised to contact the ATC liaison officer in Leopoldville, Mullins and Jack submitted a bid on November 15 for 50 buildings at Camp Presnell and 28 hospital buildings, offering Fr. 475,000 ($204,250.00). A minor turf battle ensued between the Foreign Economic Agency (FEA), which had the authority to dispose of surplus property and the US Army, which had the authority to declare the property surplus, but which took no action. The FEA noted that the buildings were deteriorating and the Army did not have the capacity to salvage them. The situation remained unresolved during 1945 and not until November were the two properties declared “excess”, with the camp structures estimated to have cost $778,470 and the hospital $64,900. The cost differential with the Mullins and Jack bid likely includes the cost of shipping the materials to Congo versus its salvage value.

Camp Presnell barracks (Ph. author coll, courtesy of NARA)

Congolese Force Publique guard at Camp Presnell (Ph. author coll, courtesy of NARA)

Camp Presnell barracks, note thatch added to the metal roof of the building on the right
(Ph. author coll, courtesy of NARA)

By this time, however, it appears there were no buyers, as six months later an influx of Belgians returning to the colony from Europe so overwhelmed local hotel capacity that the arrivals were lodged in the barracks. Similarly, attendees at Protestant meetings in June and July 1946 stayed in the hospital and Camp Presnell. I have not yet found any record of final disposal of the buildings.

There are still vestiges of Camp Presnell in Kinshasa, though no physical trace remains. An area west of Camp Kokolo in Commune Ngaliema’s Quartier Basoko is called Camp Américain. A street that parallels Avenue de l’Union Africaine behind GB/Shoprite is called Avenue Kalikaki, a reference to Kalikak International, established by American investor Harold Kalikak, who tried to break into the Kinshasa construction market in the 1970s and built a residential compound there.