If you grew up with a martial mindset in the late 70s and early 80s, it was impossible not to be aware of the magazine “Soldier of Fortune.” A quick perusal of the subject matter revealed a fixation on military weapons and tactics at the unit level, and opportunities to be had the world over – there was always trouble brewing somewhere. That was during the Cold War of course, when wars were fought by proxy. If anything, things got more chaotic after the Berlin Wall came down.
It wasn’t quite my cup of tea: Blowing bubbles in the mud at a couple hundred dollars a month while rounds snapped overhead in the service of one or another otherwise indistinguishable foreign autocrat warmed no cockles in my patriotic heart. And the classified ads in the back spoke of sociopaths looking for work to wet. I found it off-putting myself, but each to his own says I, and every man must find beauty where he can.
Rob Krott, a Pennsylvania hill boy and a veteran of US Army infantry tours in Korea and elsewhere, found his beauty fighting foreign wars with an AK-47 in his hand.
He was, as he freely admits, a mercenary.
We should probably choose another word: “Mercenary”sounds so, well. Mercenary. But Krott makes clear that there’s little more than survival rations fighting in the seams of wars the rest of the world would rather not think about. Having next to nothing, his Croat patrons couldn’t pay much. The best money Krott made was as a contractor for the US government in hopeless Somalia.
The word has a pejorative connotation over here, always has. The otherwise neutral Swiss have earned something of a reputation for themselves out of doors in the old country, while the Hessians fought over here for pay, making no friends along the way. We’ve a decided preference for citizen soldiers, muskets and back yards. We resent going afield, do it only when we think we have to for the sake of the Republic and scamper home as soon as ever we might.
But some of us are not all of us, and for a professional soldier concluding his work in a peacetime army, sometimes the lure of adventure beckons. Some men fight not because their country is threatened, but because that is all they know. They’re made for it.
It has to be adventure, or a desire to put one’s skills to the active test: For $100 per month, the only people who’d choose to sign on in Other People’s Wars are those who 1) aren’t welcome at home, or 2) are never happier than with a full magazine, load bearing equipment and someone to shoot at that shoots back. For an adrenaline junkie, it is the most dangerous game.
You get introduced to the lot of adrenaline junkies in Krott’s book. It’s a peek inside a world that few know but many wonder about. A pull no punches novel that reads like an extended conversation over endless bottles of beer. There’s a feeling of stubbled beards, stubbed cigarettes and lurking danger.
Krott starts out in the Balkans, and ends there too, with a brief interlude in Somalia. Other climes are hinted at – other books promised – but the story is clear enough: In the late 20th century’s wars of suddenly liberated sectarians, any fight will do. It’s only a matter of making your way over, clearing customs, picking the side that most needs your help and telling a compelling story. When you’re on the side of the hard pressed – the Serbs alone had armor – almost any story would apparently do.
Krott has good words for most he fought for, and a few for those he fought alongside to go with his unmasked contempt for many – the wannabe’s who’d bluff and bluster but never show up. He reserves his worst condemnation for a few of those that do. The psychopaths, mental deficients and serial liars who drop in, draw weapons and then scamper home, whether that be to a tavern behind the lines or all the way back to Germany, France, Britain or America. Intermixed with these are examples of real heroism, even grace. It’s a picture that never quite coalesces, a canvas that remains maddeningly impenetrable.
Just as those who haven’t served under arms in their country’s defense will never really understand those who have, so too will the rest of us – even those who have had the opportunity to be shot at and shoot back - never really understand what it means to sleep off a hangover in Tomislava before setting off on a combat patrol against irregular Serbian militias in the contested hamlets of a disintegrating country. Krott’s book brings you close to understanding the players, if not the game.
Recommended.
Lex, can’t say I really want to peak behind the veil of the mercenary world. But if I did, your review would make me want to. As you once said to me: if you ever get tired of the pay and the grind, you have a future in writing book reviews.
Speaking of… I’m expecting a pre-release copy of this.
I have to agree with you, Fuzzy, on the peek behind the veil; my dalliance with mercenary tales has been limited to Hammer’s Slammers and The Prince (which, if you dig into it, really isn’t much of a mercenary tale.)
Lex, your comment about psychopaths and serial liars reminded me of a character from Ronin, where this one yahoo nearly got Robert De Niro and the other teammates killed on a procurement run, and then planned such a screwed up ambush that he proved himself a wannabe pretending to be ex-SAS. The lady who hired the team for the hit (her accent is supposed to suggest IRA) pays him off and then sends him home with the admonishment that he should keep quiet, as her people know who he is.
David Drake is one fine author. He’s certainly made money off of me
Don’t forget Falkenbergs Legion!!!
By Jerry Pournelle, who also wrote the Mercenary Trilogy, which began with “Prince of Mercenaries.” The trilogy has been placed in a single volume lately called “The Prince.” It is an excellent series that has been recommended for reading by company grade and junior field grade officers. The third volume carried a preface by an Army Officer who recommended carrying it to “Graf” to read while waiting your turn at the Tank Ranges.
Jerry writes excellent military Science Fiction, and I would recommend it to anyone with a martial bent. Drake is OK, but near as good as Jerry. But Jerry served in our last full blown conventional war, Korea and his experience as a company grade officer shows in his novels. One scene in “The Mercenary,” his second, which is now in “Falkenberg’s Legion,” was drawn directly from the story that was told to him by an Ethiopian LT he knew in Korea. I think Jerry’s company may have provided the fire support for that fight.
I will admit to Drake making some money off me. Pournelle has made a lot more
I used to read SOF regularly during the 80s. I gave several copies to a South African Army Chaplain who was affiliated with my denomination and was visiting the states at the time. He wanted to see what some of our people were writing about SA and Rhodesia at the time.
SOF was a good mag if you wanted to keep up with Soviet military technology at the time. SOF was the first to bring to the states a Soviet Automatic Grenade launcher which was captured in Afghanistan. The thing was dangerous to fire as the individual grenades had no safeties like our did. They were known to have muzzle detonations, and when the SOF reps started to fire it, the Afghans hid. The Afghans wouldn’t fire it themselves. SOF also broght back the Soviet copy of the LAW rocket. Looked exactly like ours. It had probably been reverse engineered from copies captured at the fall of Vietnam.
I lot interest in SOF back about ’95. Things were getting too quiet in the world by then and they were running out of material.
Ah, the road not taken. I’m reminded of a chilly December evening in Marseilles, what seems to be a lifetime ago. I ended up alone in the off-limits part of the city well after midnight. Intentionally. I found myself in a bar very near the Légion étrangère offices. Very little English was spoken, but it seemed that half the bar was urging me to join up and the other half urging me to return to my ship. I met an old guy who had a few small ribbons on the lapel of his jacket. Turned out he had been at Dien Bien Phu back in the day. I think it was he that finally talked me out of it.
Random LT,
I had given serious thought to the Legion, for the same reason other men do: An affaire d’cour that ended badly. O often think about how different things might have been had I taken the path that led to a small building in Paris, vice the one that led to a Navy Recruiter in the States.
To this day, I do not remember how I ended up where I did, but suffice to say I made a choice, and there is little regret regarding it, save when I hear the strains of L’Kepi Blanc.
Respects,
Not Le Boudin?
Not having read the book, I am nevertheless a little familiar with the people who seek this “line of work” and some of the many complexities of the issue. Lex, you have done a nice summary and review on the subject.
Indeed although a little older than optimum, I once toyed briefly with offering my services to the Mujahideen via intermediaries in their fight against the Soviets, making some initial contacts through the Soldier of Fortune magazine and other sources. Fortunately better offers distracted and captured me. But I also have to wonder forever what might have been had I gone…(probably an unmarked grave)
I believe today there are far more entities employing mercenaries worldwide, in many disparate countries for many causes. But the reasons and character types haven’t changed all that much. And they are now called “contractors” rather than mercenaries. And unlike the old days, quite a number of ‘employers’ are paying top dollar to Americans, (i.e. Blackwater, and several others not so well known) but not so to those ‘mercs’ from third world countries for the same services.
I’ll have to put the book on my list.
The fight is just the gateway. Then one wonders about the source of the money for the fight. Be it opium from Afghanistan to the Triangle. From emeralds and coca in Columbia. Diamonds and gold from Africa.
“…a wretch like me…”
Allen,
It’s always that same argument… that same concern… where does the money come from. I have known a few who sold themselves out, but each one had refused other offers because the source of the funding, and the reasons for the hire were less than forth-coming.
And yes, the fight is very much the gateway. There is a void that must needs be filled, a desire for relevance as the years pass by, and a longing for something that lies just a whisper beyond the fingertips.
I regret that, at my age, I can no longer offer myself to the market. I would do so, without hesitation, with but a few provisos.
Sadly, I have realized as I grow older that I am not bred for peace, for familial duties, for the yoke of matrimony and citizen-farmer. I miss the rush of adrenaline, the thumping of rotor blades, the smell of JP, and the hightened sense of living in the moment, of risk, of balancing my future against some fleeting undertaking.
That’s not to say I don’t love and cherish my children, my home, my community. It’s just that there are still tests to be taken, wagers to be risked, barriers to be pushed, out there, where the tall ships go.
No one who has seen the vastness of the ocean, who has smelt the richness of the soil, who has lived life one moment at a time, can ever be content to wait on the beach for the note to say that time is up.
Tim,
Well at least I miss the smell of JP. For the rest of it I drive Highway 52 to work.
I would be interested in reading this book.
But it amuses me that these retired Mercenaries always find it in themselves to write a book. Rolf Steiner, Gayle Rivers, and Mike Hoare wrote some fascinating stories but now that I am a bit older and wiser, I can see that those adventure tales are a bit quixotic. Who wouldn’t have wanted to be a member of “The Wild Geese” if only to save Africa?
But the pay is probably better for a writer than the soldier for pay.
dc cat/
And the down-side a helluva lot less–unless you consider rejection slips a mortal wound to the psyche.
Harrumph!
Excellent review, Lex. The local library doesn’t have a copy, but if a patron asks for it, they’ll usually pick it up. Loved the reference to SoF magazine, you nailed it to a ‘T.’ Back in high school one of my buddies had a subscription and the way you describe it is pretty much the way I remember it.
A group of opportunistic bottom feeders and military f*ck-ups/ misfits…the few who manage to survive… drink, whore or shoot up their pay waiting for the next opportunity for fun, travel and adventure in some third world sh*t-hole… not the world the good folks/boy scouts who comment here would really want any part of…even for you closet Walter Mittys…reality actually does bite. Best
Like Tim, I thought of the Legion. I also considered Rhodesia, where they spoke English. Alas, I hurt my back and still have the bulging disk as a souvenir of a day in 1978 to remind me of it. That ended any thought of a military career, although I foolishly enlisted in the Army National Guard and went to OCS in 1986, from which I was forced to resign because my one and only body gave me a very long lecture on the subject.
The “Soldier of Fortune” lives on in Xe LLC (previously known as Blackwater). Personnaly I would think it more norble to risk life and limb in the service of something greater than the love of adenaline. Looks like a good read though.
As an old colleague of Rob Krott and a bit of scribbler myself (War Dog), I’m keen to get hold of the man. He was supposed to have joined me in Africa at one stage but it never happened. Can anybody put me in touch with the man?
Al!
Howzit, mate? you can email me at para6@hotmail.com … I’ll ping you back from there with best email address and cell #.
To all those who have bought my book, you can also email me at that address with your postal mailing address and I will send a signed bookplate. Dedications okay also, just specify.
regards,
Rob
[...] Neptunus Lex [...]