Their mercenary calling
Prederick Forsyth
As the tumult and the shouting over the Angolan fiasco dies away the moment seems apposite to give it a brief backward glance and attempt some cursory analysis of the role of the mercenary in the world today and, More importantly, his possible role in the future.
The Angolan mercenary affair was as Shabby a scenario as one would come across in a long day's march : from its inception When Holden Roberto of the FNLA, in an attempt to lick his rabble into something like an army, decided with the assistance of the usual pistoleros from the CIA to recruit Mercenaries; to the final fusillade in Sao Paulo prison, Luanda, it was a complete Shambles.
No one emerged from it with credit. Not Roberto and his so-called liberation movement based solely on the Bakongo tribe of Angola's extreme north, nor the shady trio of Banks, Aspin and Perrin who recruited the cannon fodder from the dole queues. Not Agostinho Neto with his army of Cuban saviours and their tidal wave of Soviet Weaponry, not the British Press which Fouldn't make up its mind where the devil it stood. Not the British lawyers prattling futilely about the Old Bailey's standards of Jurisprudence while attending a Communist kangaroo court, nor the abject stooges making up the supposed independent observer commission. And least of all the civil servants who advised the Queen of England to humble herself and her country by begging to a Marxist puppet in Africa for three lives he had not the slightest intention of saving in any event.
Compared to the tide of ineptitude on every side of them, even the 'mercenaries' in the dock, bewildered non-combatant fools for the most part, do not emerge too badly. Ironically, the only one who refused to pass the buck, beg for mercy, crawl or in any way assist Neto and the KGB with their propaganda exercise was Callan; brutal, crazed, oPed-up, manacled Callan, who was snarling defiance when we first saw him and was no doubt still snarling defiance when they
shot him down.
It is not the intent of this article to discuss the morality of the business of being a mercenary, any more than an exercise on architecture debates the morality of property speculation. The idea is to examine whether Neto has achieved his publicly stated aim: to extirpate the mercenary from this planet. In all probability, not.
The pre-requisite has to be to define in generally acceptable terms just what a mercenary is. Firstly, what he is not. He is not just a man who bears the uniform of the fighting forces of a land other than that of which he is a national. Such a definition would include idealists and volunteers, the men of the International Brigades, the Eagle Squadron, the Foreign Legion and the Gurkhas. Obviously, that definition is not enough. Nor is he only one who actually fights in combat under the flag of another country to whom he has volunteered his services, for whatever fee; those experts who train, maintain, sabotage installations, service aircraft or plan campaigns, may also count as mercenary.
Oddly, it is not enough that a man fight for money that he should automatically be called a mercenary. Usually, making large sums of money is not a mercenary's prime motive. There are scores of rough, tough, uncomfortable jobs around the world, not all of them even hazardous, which bring fatter wages than a mercenary calling. If money were the sole aim, why are the mercenaries not simply oil-riggers or shotblasters ? Or why nOt just rob a bank ?
Nor is a mercenary always a sadist or lustkiller, though suchlike may turn up anywhere calling themselves mercenaries. A killer-for-enjoyment will find ample employ among the criminal underworlds of the industrialised West. But, usually cowards, sadists seldom go where they might end up dead in an African rain ditch. Lastly, a mercenary does not necessarily fight for just anybody; almost all must find the war for which they volunteer acceptable to them personally. The real reason why a man goes off to fight in someone else's war far from home as a mercenary soldier is because he just loves the trade of making war. That is not as odd as it sounds. Every war fought by European and North American powers— Cyprus, Kenya, Aden, Algeria, Indochina, Vietnam, Cambodia—produces its crop of henceforward committed combat lovers. The lust is not killing or dying or money, but the jungle, the bush, the dirt, sweat, flies and fear, the smell of cordite and risk, the thump in the guts when the close-firing starts and the wild elation of survival when it is over. The lure is Africa, because large parts of it are warring, lawless and wild.
What emerges is this: that a mercenary is a man who, having undergone combat training and probably been in combat, having decided he wished to seek out and repeat his experience of human combat, having decided that the rigid disciplines and enforced idleness of his national army could not so provide, of his own free will determines to offer his services as a soldier to such employer as shall approve of him and meet his approval, for an agreed period of service under contract, and in respect of agreed payment and conditions of service. That is putting it very highly; the reality inevitably falls short of the above.
Nevertheless, from the employer's point of view the concept is not in the least farfetched. The second 'struggle for Africa' is on, and getting into its stride. Behind the veneer of unity, factions, causes and warlords of varying political hues or none at all jostle for power as in Renaissance Italy. Those supported by Moscow via East Berlin and Havana need have no fear for funds. weapons, training and technical assistance. Those opposing the above—willy-nilly dubbed 'pro-Western', usually quite wrongly—can expect no aid from the West except possibly small sums of covert money.
Providing that such a prospective employer is running a cohesive force with a pragmatic political programme, a chance of success, a territorial area under its own control, some funds and some time in hand, and provided the leader is aware of the defectiveness of his own troops in the more technical areas of combat and weapons-use, he may well wish to engage foreign technical assistance. If he can secure none from a friendly government, he will have to shop for freelances. If the mercenary is or was a genuine soldier, with a specific skill, prepared to do some soldiering and not strut about, and preferably has some experience of the kind of troops he will have to train and command (or even can be guaranteed the time to learn), then he can provide his employer a service well worth his salary.
There will be more war on the face of Africa. And where there is war there also will go men who seek combat, to find those who need their skills. That is why Dr Neto, though his show-trial achieved the objective of causing the West to humiliate itself yet again, has failed to wipe out the mercenary.
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