Mercenary Quotes

“Not for us the sloppy dress and three days’ growth of beard almost mandatory for a Belgian mercenary. Not for us the indecent short shorts and socks rolled down school-girl fashion. With us to be unshaven was a crime. “Fancy dress” was my enemy, and a decent soldierly appearance my foremost demand.”
― Mike Hoare, Congo Mercenary

“The ones that were left were good material and included a number of ex-regulars who stood out head and shoulders above the rest, a good assortment of genuine adventurers (a dying breed), youngsters, who did not know what to do with themselves and thought they would “give this a bash,” and quite a few undergraduates and professional men who really did not know why they volunteered and whom I did not embarrass by asking in case they might ask me the same question.”
― Mike Hoare, Congo Mercenary

“I then began a cleansing operation to rid the unit of the dead wood and those who would never ever make soldiers. Soldiering is an honoured profession and calls for the highest qualities in both mind and body and I would be a miracle man if I would undertake to produce reasonably trained men out of such material.”
― Mike Hoare, Congo Mercenary

“They were feunesse all right, most of them between sixteen and twenty. I wondered if the Sergeant-Major was among them. They wore scraps of uniform and monkey-skin caps and feathers, which made them look grotesque in death. Apart from a few Mausers, they were pitifully armed with home-made weapons.”
― Mike Hoare, Congo Mercenary

“At nine I called a halt and went down the column to see how the men were faring. One man lay on the ground sobbing his heart out. I prodded him with a bayonet. “What the devil’s the matter with you?” I demanded. Sympathy at a time like this, even if warranted, is fatal. “Please, sir, let me go back. I should never have come. I had a row … with my fiancée ….” “Too late to think about that now,” I told him curtly. “Fall in with the others.” He worked himself into hysterics. “You’re mad, Major, you’re mad. We’re all going to be killed. I know we are,” he screamed, terror-stricken, until Grant put a fist in his mouth. Blood trickled down his chin as he fell in.”
― Mike Hoare, Congo Mercenary

“It was all over in a second, but it was a watershed in my life. The leadership of mercenary troops by force of personality alone demands a hardness of character and a conviction in one’s own invicibility which I did not possess. I was obliged to assume those qualities then and there. It was a case-hardening I did not regret; without it I could never have done my duty or lived through the horrors which were to be my lot.”
― Mike Hoare, Congo Mercenary

“I examined the damaged boat. Someone had deliberately put a hole in its bottom, and I assumed it was all part of a plan to frustrate the raid. Obviously the trouble-maker was behind it all so I determined to deal with him at once. He walked over to me, hands in pockets, avoiding my gaze which spoke volumes of fury. He stated his case in a surly manner, but the substance of it was that he knew the lake very well, he had lived in Katanga all his life, and he could assure me that as soon as the wind got up we would all drown, he was certain of it. He had no intention of getting into any boat that night and that was that. He shrugged his shoulders and folded his arms, saying, “You go if you want to, but I’m staying here.” He cooked his goose by adding, “And most of the men will stay with me. I imagine there comes a moment like this in every commander’s life when his authority is challenged and everything stands or falls on his instant reaction. In a flash I whipped out my heavy Browning 9 mm. pistol and clouted him on the side of the head.”
― Mike Hoare, Congo Mercenary

“But this rebellion differed from the tribal disputes of recent years inasmuch as courts had been set up in Albertville which condemned dozens of people to death daily for petty crimes—failure to carry a M.N.C. Lumumba card, failure to agree with the new régime.To be well dressed or to be able to read and write were an invitation to attend the daily tribunal. Daily executions took place in the main street, the Avenue Storms, when the victims were stood against the bricked-up windows of the mission church to face a firing squad. Their bodies were carted away unceremoniously in wheelbarrows to be dumped in the fast-flowing Lukuga. The bullet-pocked walls are there to this day, a grim reminder of senseless tyranny.”
― Mike Hoare, Congo Mercenary

“The basic rate of pay was 150 U.S. dollars a month for a volunteer (the rank given to the private soldier or enlisted man) plus another 5 dollars a day danger pay, payable when a man was in an officially declared danger zone, making 300 dollars a month altogether. At that time 300 dollars would have been roughly twice as much as a qualified artisan could earn in his trade as a civilian in South Africa.”
― Mike Hoare, The Road to Kalamata: A Congo Mercenary's Personal Memoir