experiences are from a different era and a different theatre of
fighting. Recently I read this poem, posted by our very own
“Call Sign Lunch Box” on his personal social media page, which
seemed very apt:
“These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.”
‘Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries’ A. E. Housman
This is a poem in praise of the ‘Old Contemptibles’, the British
Expeditionary Force (BEF) of 1914, the professional British army
that was sent to France at the end of that year to fight against
the Germans. At the beginning of the war, Britain had a small
professional army made up of those “paid to fight”, rather than
the massive armies of conscripts that made up the German,
French and Russian forces. This meant that on the outbreak of
war, the average member of the BEF was better trained than
his foe (famously, at the Battle of Mons, the retreating
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BEF’s rifle firing rate was so fast that German troops thought
they were facing machine guns!), but he was also
massively outnumbered. German propaganda called the
professionals of the British Army “mercenaries” as an obvious
insult.
All that Mike Hoare did was to take that grand tradition
forward, with a commitment to his ideals, strength of will
and spirit, sheer martial professionalism, and a certain
unique flair. Both in the Congo and later in the Seychelles
he stood up for what he personally believed in and for the
men under his command. As Mike himself has often
commented “the use of mercenary soldiers was only
justifiable if they were employed by a democratically elected
government.” It is difficult for us to comprehend what this
meant at the time, but again I believe that many of you who
read this will find some resonance between the “mercenary”
experience of the 1960’s and the lot of the “military
contractor” as it is today. Where “justifiably employed”, when
taking a paid contract to do a specific job, and when putting
life and limb on the line for something you believe in, it’s just
a matter of wording, isn’t?
To conclude I’d once again like to thank Chris Hoare for
sharing his father’s story with PMCI and all of us at the
magazine will certainly be raising a glass to “Mad Mike” on
the 17th March; we will not see his like again.