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Mercenary Reading
16 years ago
General
Arrh! Avast! I be all out 'o books!
Does anyone out there know of any good reading material pertaining to the mercenary trade? I've already read through "The Dogs of War", and I also picked up an interesting (though somewhat bizarre) title called "Manual of the Mercenary Soldier", but now I'm curious to see more perspectives. I briefly looked at "Blackwater", but in spite of its informative nature the purpose of the book appears to be the condemnation of PMCs in general, and I admit I'm more interested in less contemporary accounts of mercenaries.
If I'm not mistaken, the era of the 'super mercenaries' was in West Africa in the 1960s, particularly in the Congo and in Angola. There's also the Rhodesian Bush War (this is before a Bush War took place in Iraq) and any number of conflicts that seemed to cool off by the late 70s. However, once you dive into the 80s there seems to be less to look at... unless I'm mistaken.
Is there any available reading on the transition from celebrity mercenaries to the modern norm, the PMC? Something had to have spurred a sea change in the profession, forcing mercenaries from large scale wars into quieter, smaller, more tactical operations.
Does anyone out there know of any good reading material pertaining to the mercenary trade? I've already read through "The Dogs of War", and I also picked up an interesting (though somewhat bizarre) title called "Manual of the Mercenary Soldier", but now I'm curious to see more perspectives. I briefly looked at "Blackwater", but in spite of its informative nature the purpose of the book appears to be the condemnation of PMCs in general, and I admit I'm more interested in less contemporary accounts of mercenaries.
If I'm not mistaken, the era of the 'super mercenaries' was in West Africa in the 1960s, particularly in the Congo and in Angola. There's also the Rhodesian Bush War (this is before a Bush War took place in Iraq) and any number of conflicts that seemed to cool off by the late 70s. However, once you dive into the 80s there seems to be less to look at... unless I'm mistaken.
Is there any available reading on the transition from celebrity mercenaries to the modern norm, the PMC? Something had to have spurred a sea change in the profession, forcing mercenaries from large scale wars into quieter, smaller, more tactical operations.
I'd also recommend you watch the movie "Africa Addido" (or Blood and Guts Africa). Its a documentary, which among other things, has some of the best video of mercenaries in action I've ever seen.
MAD MIKE HOARE IS AWESOOOOOMMMME~.
I have two books I like on this topic. The first is more recent, and more on the ground - Maiking a Killing, by James Ashcroft - about a hired gun in Iraq.
The second is rather more obscure and I think you'll have trouble picking it up, but it deals with guys active in the rather interesting period of the eighties and nineties, specifically focussing on a helicopter pilot active around Sierra Leone. The book is called 'War Dogs', by Al J Venter, and was published by Casemate. It mainly focusses on the African wars, and mainly on South African mercenaries. It's much more recent, 2003, and is fairly interesting in that it's still about the very early days of the PMC, and talking about a theoretical level of legitimacy which looked good on paper, but is now practically impossible ever since Simon Mann got busted.
He worked with Executive Outcomes in Angola, founded Sandline international (now dead), and then got hired to perform a coup in Equatorial Guinea. ... He got caught in Zimbabwe, unfortunately, and has just spent the intervening time in a godawful prison, getting tortured, until very, very recently making a plea bargain and going home.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Mann <--