MAD DOGS AND MERCENARIES CARRY OUT COUPS IN THE MIDDAY SUN

ONE OF the sidebar effects of getting on a bit is that one keeps being reminded of people one knew – in the obituary columns. Another is the arrival in Jiffy bags of biographies – almost always posthumous – with requests for a comment. The wisest reaction is usually “Better not”. The latest in this category is the life of “Mad” Mike Hoare, the mercenary of Congo fame.

Lest I be misunderstood, I was never in the Congo when it was at war with breakaway province Katanga. That was 1965 and 1966 and led to the emergence of the legend of the white mercenaries employed by Katanga. There was Black Jack Schramme (the Belgian former planter), Mike Hoare (South African) and Bob Denard (French). Denard later asked me to write his biography. Not in a month of Sundays. But he did lead a successful invasion and capture of an entire republic, the Comoros islands, on behalf of the French.

As his troops were racing up the beach towards the capital, each carried a paperback French copy of Les Chiens De Guerre, my novel The Dogs Of War. Periodically they would stop and flick through it to find out what they should do next. Cheek! Not a penny in royalties.

But as a war correspondent I did spend two years inside Biafra and they got in there as well – a dozen under “colonel” Rolf Steiner. So I can tell you they weren’t glamorous at all. Two I actually liked and one of them, years later, I introduced to Edward Fox as a possible model for The Jackal when he was filming the role in Paris.

But most were borderline psychos, misfits, weirdos and better avoided. (Not easy in a jungle clearing!) I think they are all dead now. Let’s think of something more cheerful.