Mike Hoare

Michael Thomas Bernard Hoare was born in India in 1919 to Irish parents. He spent his childhood in India, but was sent to England for his schooling, first at Margate College. When World War II broke out, he joined the British army and served in the London Irish Rifles. He attended officer training school, and upon graduation was posted to the Royal Armored Corps as a 2nd Lieutenant.

He was assigned to the Pacific theater, and took part in the Battle of Kohima in India in 1944, which resulted in a stinging defeat for the Japanese. After further service in Burma, he was demobbed and left the army. After the war he continued his education in London, and eventually became an accountant.

In 1948, now married and with a child, he decided that his family's fortunes would be better in South Africa. He, his wife, and their son, Chris, moved to Durban. Hoare started a safari business, taking tourists across the Kalahari Desert to the Okavongo Delta.

In 1961, the Congo in Africa was granted independence by Belgium, and the mineral-rich province of Katanga decided to secede from the new country and declared its own independence. Hoare was contacted by Katanga leader Moise Tshombe for help, as the central Congolese government had decided to forcibly bring Katanga back into the Congo and the United Nations had backed them up. Katanga had no army to speak of, just some local native police. Hoare accepted Tshombe's offer and gathered a group of ex-soldiers to train the Katangese.

In 1964, the Congo was wracked by a rebellion by a particularly savage movement called the Simbas, who rampaged throughout the country, burning villages, raping and murdering civilians in particularly horrific and brutal fashion, in addition to often cannibalizing victims and prisoners. The Congolese government forces were terrified of them and could not, or would not, fight them. Tshombe again asked Hoare for aid, and he responded by raising a mercenary force of veteran soldiers--both African and European--called 5 Commando to put down the rebellion and destroy the Simbas. In little more than a year he and his men had taken Stanleyville from the Simbas, freed hundreds of hostages they had taken and had pretty much pushed the rebels out of the country -- he had once been called "Mad Bloodhound Hoare" by an East German broadcaster because of his reputation for not only defeating his enemies but hunting them down and wiping them out afterwards.

By the time he had completed his mission and retired at the end of 1965, his success at accomplishing with relatively few men what other military organizations could not had made him the most famous mercenary leader in the world. He had single-handedly changed the image of mercenaries from brutal, drunken, disreputable and corrupt thugs to efficient, well-trained and effective military units. He himself came across as articulate, well-spoken and professional, an almost stereotypical British officer and gentleman.

In 1978 he was hired as a technical adviser on the film The Wild Geese (1978), starring Richard Burton (who played a character largely based on Hoare) and Richard Harris, about a mercenary hired to rescue a respected African leader from a murderous renegade general who had overthrown and imprisoned him and was set to execute him. The film was a major success, spawned several sequels and brought Hoare back into the spotlight again.

In 1981 he was in the news once more when he and a band of ex-soldiers were recruited for a coup against a dictatorial regime in the Seychelles, a small island country in the Indian Ocean. The coup failed, however, and he and his men wee forced to hijack a plane in order to escape. They landed in South Africa, where they were promptly arrested.

Hoare was sentenced to ten years in prison, but was released in 1985 after having served almost three years.