The 5 Craziest Soldiers of Fortune To Ever Cash a Paycheck
Some people are reluctantly called to war, either drafted into service or volunteering out of a sense of duty. Other people, well, they just really like fighting.
That's why there is such a thing as the soldier of fortune, the mercenary who'll show up and fight in a war between two countries he didn't even know existed until they offered him a paycheck. It takes a certain breed of person to lead this lifestyle. And that breed is batshit insane.
#5. James Long Takes on Texas
You know how sometimes you just get fed up that your government isn't doing something about those bastards across the border? And how sometimes you just go gather your own army and go to war on your government's behalf? No?
Getty
"We have the Second Amendment for a reason. And that reason is going to war whenever we feel like it."
Well, then you're not James Long, a wealthy military surgeon and war veteran. In the early 1800s he settled down in Mississippi, planning nothing more for his future than a quiet, Southern kind of life. Until ...
In 1819, America signed a treaty with Spain that would just let those sons of bitches have Texas! And all the U.S. got in return was freaking Florida. Long could do nothing but sit on his plantation, watching the events unfold and quietly seething in patriotic rage until he just couldn't take it anymore.
narthalc.wikispaces
"What the fuck, arbitrary borderline? I thought we were friends!"
The Madness:
In 1820, Long finally snapped. He gathered several hundred followers and marched straight into Texas. His crew, rumored to be unofficially endorsed by the U.S. government, employed what was perhaps the simplest tactic in military history: They flat out walked in and took over the central town of Nacogdoches. There, they passed the declaration of independence for the newly formed Republic of Texas, elected Long for their president and proceeded to just settle in, establishing their own newspapers and customs rules and everything. While literally in the middle of the legal jurisdiction of a rather powerful and heavily armed European superpower.
texashistorypage
This is a rip-off of something, but we're just not quite sure what.
A month later, the laughter finally died down in Spain and they realized that, holy shit, this Long guy is actually serious. So they sent a 500-strong force to drive him and his followers the hell out of Texas.
Long escaped with his life and whatever dignity he imagined he still had -- and immediately proceeded to raise another army, this time against the freshly independent Mexico that was now in possession of his precious Texas. He managed to gather some 300 men (and his pregnant wife, because whatever could go wrong?), march in Texas yet again and straight up commandeer a Mexican military fort.
Wikipedia
Noted for its excellent pre-natal plan.
Mexico, like Spain before, was getting a bit annoyed by now, so they went in and arrested Long. He was sent to a prison in Mexico City where he was assassinated by a sentry in 1822, presumably while trying to recruit him into his Texas Crusade Mk. III.
texashistory
Meanwhile, his arguably more badass wife and three kids were holding off invaders with cannons.
#4. Neall Ellis Trolls Sierra Leone Rebels to Defeat
Neall Ellis had a successful career as a military pilot behind him and an easygoing civilian life to look forward to. There was just one problem: He was immensely bored with living like a regular guy.
So Ellis decided to become a soldier for hire. Specifically, he started taking work as a private mercenary helicopter pilot, securing his first contract fighting for Bosnia in the Yugoslav wars. After that, he spent some time in Angola. Finally, in the late '90s, his duties took him to Sierra Leone.
BBC
Um, that's probably a welcoming rocket launcher.
The Madness:
The Revolutionary United Front, a rebel faction fighting the UN-supported government of Sierra Leone, was winning in 1999. They were knocking on the door of the nation's capital, Freetown, and the situation was in fact so hopeless that British forces were abandoning the area just as Ellis arrived.
militaryphotos
"The beer's in the fridge. Don't get killed too much!"
Ellis and his team, however, were unshaken by the fact that they were pretty much the only foreigners still in the game. They stayed and fought, presumably for their own amusement, flying missions with Ellis' gunship helicopter and messing with the rebels any way they could. The RUF got so enraged by him that they soon sent him a message:
"If we ever catch you, we'll cut out your heart and eat it."
Ellis responded by stocking his gunship full of weapons (in case he should ever be shot down) and hovering over RUF strongholds, showered them with leaflets saying:
"RUF: This time we've dropped leaflets. Next time it will be a half-inch Gatling machine gun, or 57 mm rockets, or 23 mm guns, or 30 mm grenades, or ALL OF THEM!"
flyafrica
"I'll probably throw myself out, and then you'll be sorry."
After a while, the government of Sierra Leone stopped paying Ellis, because they were forced to abandon the Freetown area, too. Ellis, however, enjoyed the little flame war he got going so much that he kept flying missions for another year, pro bono. During that time, in addition to his usual antics, Ellis single-handedly stopped the RUF from advancing into Freetown -- without a co-pilot, in the middle of the night and without any night vision.
Wikipedia
The first time they forgot the grenades, and everyone knows you get your whole war free if that happens.
At some point, the Brits realized that the ragtag bunch of madmen they'd left behind were actually winning, so they skulked ashamedly back into the fight by financing Ellis and offering assistance.
Ellis and his helicopter stuck with Sierra Leone all the way up to the RUF's defeat in 2002. What does he think of the war-torn country he's spent years fighting in, with a significant portion of its denizens wanting to eat his heart? He loves it. So much, in fact, that he's going to move there when he retires.
flyafrica
"No other country will let me keep my helicopter and my missiles."
#3. Carl Gustav von Rosen and the Biafra Baby Fleet
Some guys just really, really like war.
Take Swedish count Carl Gustav von Rosen. Oh, his career started off normally enough. He started his flying career doing small plane stunts in an aerial circus, then got his first taste of military conflict when Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1936, at which point he apparently said, "I want to do nothing but this, from now on. Find me a war!"
ushmm
Wow, Germany, that's surprisingly generous!
So, when World War II broke out, he immediately volunteered in the Finnish Air Force to combat the Soviet Union. There, he gained notoriety as a bomber -- literally. Unable to score a bomber plane that satisfied his needs, he opted for physically pelting the Soviet troops with bombs, throwing them by hand at the terrified Reds from the open cargo door of a civilian airliner.
guillermodiaz
"Adequate arm room, helpful air-hostesses, effective destruction. Would fly again."
This is when von Rosen started to run out of militaries willing to let him fly for them. He applied to the RAF but was rejected due to his family's Nazi connections. As a backup plan, he went back to flying commercial flights, and after the war became a special UN pilot. After narrowly avoiding death when the United Nations aircraft he was supposed to be piloting was blown up over the Congo, von Rosen decided to take some time off in 1969. And by "time off" we mean he scoured the globe looking for another war to join.
kajgana
For some reason the wars always erupted a few days after he left their protected airspace.
He decided to head to Biafra, to help them in their civil war against Nigeria. Why? Because life just wasn't worth living unless he was flying in an aircraft that other people were shooting at.
The Madness:
Upon arrival, von Rosen noticed some imbalance between the warring parties' aerial capacities. Namely, the Nigerian Air Force consisted of powerful Soviet MiG-17 fighters and large bombers, whereas the Biafran counterpart consisted of paper airplanes that the generals made and threw into the sky.
Wikipedia
The Soviet Nerf-gun 3000.
So he set out to improve their fleet -- the von Rosen way. He bought five of the tiniest, least intimidating planes he could find. Then, he turned these propeller-driven training planes into makeshift war machines by ... well, strapping some rockets onto their wings and giving them a green paint job. That's it, really.
boelkow
The Pimp My Ride of the aviation world.
Still, beggars can't be choosers, and a fleet of tiny, overloaded almost-planes is better than nothing as far as the Biafrans were concerned. So von Rosen was allowed to lead his "Biafran Babies" to battle. And boy, did they kick some serious ass.
Somehow, von Rosen's fleet managed to destroy air bases, troop formations, power plants and a good chunk of the superior-on-paper Nigerian Air Force. Despite being under heavy anti-aircraft fire roughly 100 percent of the time and returning from many of their missions riddled with bullet holes, not one Biafran Baby was ever shot down.
flightglobal
It would be like hitting a mosquito with a house.
Eventually, the Biafrans did lose the war -- but we imagine the old Nigerian war veterans piss themselves to this day whenever they hear the squeaky buzz of a toy plane.
The article on British involvement in Sierra Leone is complete bullshit and reeks of typical American jealousy and Anglophobia.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesIn the wake of the Lome agreement, the original UN forces were a motley collection of poor quality, incompetently led ECOMOG (African national) and UN member state troops, who were completely incapable of offering resistance to the RUF and constrained by a rigid set of SOPs that led to a good 500 or so of them being captured by the rebels.
The British involvement started in May 2000 with a battalion of Royal Marines being deployed to safeguard the evacuation of civilians under Operation Palliser, but then escalated to several battalions of infantry and Paras, with offshore support. This culminated in the British forces taking command of the existing UN formations and directing them to victory over the rebels.
Neall Ellis also flew his Hind in a fire support role alongside three British Army Lynxes in the Operation Barras hostage rescue. He is also a national hero in Sierra Leone, where he is known as 'Nellis'.
Yeah, you know us Americans alright. We're famed for being jealous of the British.
I know, right? Relentlessly making up lies to dump on the British and portray them as cowards is just a fantastic coincidence that can't be adequately explained!
In Sierra Leone, the British single-handedly took control of the existing UN forces and led them to victory over the rebels, even though their original deployment was a single battalion of Royal Marines in mid-2000. The hilarious part was that the 'West Side Niggas' (which is what they referred to themselves as ) stated that they wanted to 'do a Somalia' on the British, in reference to the Mogadishu disaster, where America got scared and ran away,after being completely humiliated by a ragtag mob of semi-clothed tweakers.
Thanks America!
There are loads of people who would have ran from that, not just the british. It just so happened to be them, or so the article said anyway.
You sure are a pathetic, over-aggressive little pricked nancy if it's this easy to anger you, though you come off as having just sat there waiting for an excuse to spew America-hate like the bitter toddler you are. Kids like you are a problem and why nobody can get along, because you get off on the idea of Brits and Americans hating each other. Anyone and everyone with half a brain ( i.e. not you ) knows the hate is pointless no matter who it's coming from.
Speaking of Sierra Leone, remember Operation Barras? The whole mess in 2000 when some Brit boys took a wrong turn and ended up being taken by the West Side Boys? The rescue operation that the Brits executed was Operation Barras, involving the SAS and all that. What the article missed pointing out was that Neall was involved in running interference for the Brits in Op Barras.
Replywhat an odd coincidence. i spoke to neall just earlier today.
ReplyGotta admit I'm rather surprised Lt. Col. Mike Hoare didn't make this list. The dude:
Reply Hide All See All 3 Replies1. Fought for Katanga during it's brief attempt at secession as CO 4 Commando (alongside Bob Denard).
2. Fought for the Congo as a whole, CO 5 Commando, against communist backed rebels including Che Guevara. Denard was also in this, as CO 6 Commando, and Hoare wasn't all too impressed with him, noting his unit had "a marked inability to get off [its] fat lazy bottom" which kinda made cooperation between 5 and 6 Commandos rather difficult. He also thought that naming 6 Commando's core unit "First Shock" was rather silly.
3. Decided to try and take down the commie-backed Seychelles government in a rather farcical attempt.
4. Served as technical adviser to the folks who made the film The Wild Geese, a very good film.
So yeah. Mike Hoare's pretty cool too.
Mike Hoare was originally on this list, along with Frederick Townsend Ward. But both were cut in the final editing process.
If you don't mind my asking, why'd he get cut? The man has done some pretty sweet shit.
You got me. I wrote the list to have all seven. The editors make the final call.
I think I feel like taking over a country now...with a wave of pure unadulterated teens hyped on Monster.
Replythat would so work.. dont forget to mix the monster with steroids n cocaine..
Neall Ellis was also involved in child sex slave trafficking out of Bosnia
ReplyI frankly doubt it. When they went into Bosnia, he was new to the game and they barely got out of there alive and confused. They didn't know anybody else and all their contacts were entirely arranged for them by someone else. He was a small part of the team, I'm not sure how he'd be able to have been involved unless it happens that his team's contact with the Bosnians was involved in it. Even then, the pilots and ground crew wouldn't have known about it, much less him. They barely even spoke the language there at the time.
I wonder if these guys' theme song is "Soldier of Fortune" by Deep Purple.
ReplyI admit to be rather fond of William Walker, he's responsible for Costa Rica's only Military achievement. We didn't even know we where independent until a month later
Replywell thats pretty funny
"You look like someone who would never surrender. We need that."
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesToo bad they never found another one.
One day you're going to say something like that to a member of the French Foreign Legion. And they're going to pimp-slap you. With a FAMAS. And you're going to cry. Remember that.
Oh right ... French Foreign Legion.
Apparently France needs foreigners to fight for them.
Actually, French military has always been one of the best in the world. For instance, their tactical squad is said to be better than the SWAT by far. Fact is, they lost badly some pretty important wars which gave them a bad reputation... in america. It's like saying the USA are a bunch of pussies because they lost to the Vietnamese...
I'm not saying that France is full of pussies (the reputation really only comes from ww1 & 2). But Pierre you don't have to lie to defend France's military tradition. You obviously don't know what SWAT is so don't try to say France "beat" them.
Wow.. now cracked is cheering.. literally.. nazis. You pathetic punks need to get out of your moms basements..
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesVon Rosen was not a Nazi. Yes, he was related to Goering. Much to Goering's chagrin. Von Rosen was just a guy that really loved planes and tried to help out "little people" being screwed in the war - sometimes the ones doing the screwing were the Fascists, other times it was Russians going "now looks like a great time to invade Finland!"
You reaaaaaaaly need to get those glasses fixed, grandpa.
Von Rosen is one of those guys who proves that both good and evil can come out of the same blood. As someone's already pointed out, Goering was not exactly pleased to be related to them. Hey did you know a nephew of Goering fought on the American side as a pilot? Nazi connections can sometimes just mean family connections, unfortunate but does not make someone a Nazi. Von Rosen was a true hero, you've really done him an injustice by calling him a Nazi.
I think I've been inspired by this article.
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesWhat's a nice small, country that's easy to invade? Haiti? Cuba?
Sealand! I'll buy a boat, you buy a couple of nerf guns! Let's do this!
I've got a small NerfGun armory from my time playing Humans vs Zombies! All we need is a kayak or two...
I've got 4 of the big Nerf machine guns, 2 rocket launchers, and a sniper rifle. Sealand is ours, sir.
am starving, let's go something to eat first!
Stay away from Haiti. It's totally not worth it man.
Yeah, Haiti seems to be cursed. Every guy to lead it ends up being a nutty dictator and then tends to die, not normally in a nice way.
That last picture of Denard really reminds me of Terrence Stamp.
ReplyWow. Just...wow.
ReplyMarvelous article. Very VERY interesting individuals. However, to be honest, I would have praised you on your first name alone. Xavier is the name of a powerful man, of a man commanding respect, of a ladies man, a name fit for a god.
ReplyJedijax's real name is Xavier, everyone take note.
It's a pity that the Thai mercenary who knocked out of the air an aircraft with only his AK-47 didn't make this list.
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesYeah, but almost nothing is known about that guy.
Besides, as great as downing a plane with a rifle is, it just doesn't come close to the level of insanity these douches displayed!
I guess you guys are right. I hope America rewarded him.
Planes have been shot down with rifles more often than people think.
Volt, it was part of the reason the Argentines lost a lot of planes in the Falkland Islands war. Though, in that war, a lot of them fired upon a single aircraft. Techniques for doing so can be found in soldier manuals (I read a British technique from Combat and Survival Magazine).
The awesome role of that Thai mercenary was that he only used a single rifle to do the job of a squad. Its almost like Christopher Walken shooting down a fighter jet with a single pistol round.
The Thai guy came in first on the list of most awesome dogfights.
One of the highlights in the school year here in Costa Rica was remembering the Second Battle of Rivas, that led to expulsion of Walker from Nicaragua. The teachers built a small house in the school yard, where a bunch of students would play the role of Walker and the filibusters, under siege by the Costa Rican army, and then the army would actually burn the place to the ground, with the other students still inside and struggling to get out! I never heard of anyone getting hurt during these reenactments, but they were epic. Endangering students in order to show how the battle was won: that's how you teach history!
ReplyNo shit! I certainly would have payed attention in school had imminent death been an issue.
I had a history teacher that made reenactments of brazilian history, like the siege of the Palmares' Quilombo (hinterland settlement of slaves)... one side the portuguese soldiers, the other the slaves... and how did he do it? throwing 12 year olds into the middle of the brazilian cerrado(savannah) vegetations at summer, walking 10 miles and using sticks as weapons. winner team would earn a tenner. loved that guy.
Proud to be french after hearing from that magnificient lunatic in 1.
ReplyOoops! Sorry about the thumbdown, my mistake!
There is a great movie about WW originally named Walker, with Ed Harris in title role
ReplySaw it and thought WTF. The best part of the movie was watching ED f*****g HARRIS try to play a guy crazy enough to do what Walker did. He kind of failed, I think.
And I can't think of someone who could have pulled it off... Jack Nicholson, maybe? Al Pacino DEFINITELY, but you know, not whitebread enough for the role.
It just goes to show you that "manifest destiny" was a game for kookballs, whether your name is Andy Jackson, Armstrong Custer, or those assholes who ruined Kenya.
That movie is batsh-t whacky. 20th century stuff pops in to beat the viewer over the head with Reagan-era allegory. It more or less killed the director's career, too (before WALKER, he made the classic REPO MAN).
Your link states that Ellis fought in the Balkan war on the side of Islamists. Wtf?
Reply Hide All See All 7 RepliesMercenaries don't give a f**k about religion, they do care about money. Bosnian muslim side in war was financially backed by sheiks of middle east. So there you go.
In fairness, so did NATO. Or at least, fought the same group of folks the Islamists were fighting: Milosevic et. al. It wasn't the last time either; there are a good number of Islamists among the Libyan rebels who just ousted Muammar Gaddafi with the help of NATO air support and resupply efforts. Also, let's not forget the Soviet-Afghan War of the 1980s, when the US funneled munitions to the mujahideen (courtesy of the Pakistani ISI) to use against the Red Army. The enemy of my enemy...
NATO fought alongside terrorist KLA supported with Al-Quaida in 1999 on Kosovo. Again against Serbs.
You know that Bosnian muslims were the victim of Balkan war, right? WTF is wrong with helping them?
Are we talking about the war that finished when the radical party detonated seven nuclear warheads on their own soil, the one where Solo Pixie and The Demon duked it out?
"The enemy of my enemy..." is usually who you'll be fighting next.
There are no victims in the Balkans. Everyone is batshit insane, it just happened that the Bosnians had the shorter stick. Only someone who's not from the Balkan area would say otherwise. And that's why i'm disgusted of where i live.
Denard is like the French General Kurtz...
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesOnly Kurtz failed and was killed by his own arrogance. Denard died of natural causes, probably due to humanity not being allowed someone so awesome for too long.
I don't really see what is awesome about Denard, but then again I don't buy into that whole 'bad ass' crap that people love on here. There's nothing bad ass about some rich white guy playing with African politics for his own greed and amusement. In fact it's what has Africa in such a screwed up position anyway.
joooooo: Africa's screwed primarily because geography. The climate, soil, and native species simply don't amount to enough natural resources to provide for healthy population growth and advancement. About all they do have in decent quantities is gold and diamonds, but while those are highly sought after by societies that are already past the basic survival stage, they're utterly useless when it comes to actually feeding yourself. You could trade them in theory, but in practice when you're an order of magnitude behind the technological curve, yeah, people are just gonna take em.
I'm gonna agree with jooooo on this one... they have some incredibly corrupt governments. Much of the aid that is sent to these countries is intercepted and never gets to it's intended recipient.
god dammit ph3.. how the hell did you come to such a conclusion? Uneducated guess? The african resource problem does not lie in the lack of resources, it is the distribution of resources. The rulers export most of the resources for their personal gain, using their own people as cheap labour. When so little gets to the people, the size of the population does not help either.
African problem is despotism. Now, shut up, ph3.