LITTLEJOHN IS BACK NEXT WEEK
mercenary and imposed strict discipline on his men, which he regarded as essential for fighting in central Africa.
Deep in the bush, his men were expected to remain clean- shaven and with short hair. The Catholicism of Hoare’s youth was reflected in his insistence on Sunday church parade.
Some regarded ‘ Mad Mike’ just as he saw himself — as a defender of innocence and rectitude against the forces of barbarism. It is certainly true that capture by certain tribal factions often meant a hideous death, preceded by torture and dismemberment.
A Belgian peacekeeping soldier had his legs cut off below the knees and his arms and legs skinned before decapitation. And in one settlement, after 22 men, women and children had been massacred, their hands were chopped off, dried and attached to the hats of the rebel leaders as trophies.
The Congo’s excesses far exceeded those of the Mau Mau in Kenya, and were a forerunner of the Rwanda genocide.
Hoare was not blind to the importance of good public relations in his dubious line of work, but he was not personally avaricious and would be enraged when his men crossed the line into the depravity he believed he was fighting.
When one of his men raped a Congolese girl, Hoare opted to punish the offender — an aspiring professional footballer — by shooting off the man’s big toes.
He liked to claim that his moniker, ‘ Colonel Mad Mike’, was slapped on him by Communist propaganda outlets in Eastern Europe that disapproved of his counter- revolutionary exploits, but in truth it was the work of Fleet Street’s old Africa hands who reported on his exploits in the 1960s.
He liked to drink and exchange tall stories with the band of journalists who then covered African coups in meticulous, if not always strictly accurate, detail.
Mad Mike Hoare was a figure of his time, a type of larger- than- life white man bestriding Africa’s theatres of war that is now virtually extinct.
Perhaps the most surprising thing of all is that his life should end so routinely, in a nursing home.