As one of those taken hostage by Congolese rebels at the U.S. Consulate he headed in Stanleyville (now Kisangani), Michael Hoyt provides the first inside account of the 1964 seizure of the American consulate staff and their 111 days of captivity. Their struggle to stay alive and their dramatic rescue offer a gripping story of courage, frustration, and survival. The first time Americans had been held hostage since the Barbary pirate days of the 1800s, the incident described here presents valuable lessons both for the future conduct of hostages and the policies that deal with this type of terrorism.

Hoyt chronicles the hostages’ day-by-day ordeal as anti-West rebels held them in confinement at the central prison in Stanleyville and elsewhere, including the women’s toilet at the airport terminal. Throughout this period they were brutalized and several times led to what they believed would be their execution. Ultimately, they managed to survive the rebels’ final desperate attempt to gun them down when Belgian paratroopers, flown in by American C-130s, arrived to rescue them. While helping readers appreciate the intensity of the drama as it unfolded, Hoyt remains remarkably objective as he reports what happened. His description of those final moments of terror before rescue is nevertheless certain to have an impact on every reader.