Mike Hoare is remembered as one of the most celebrated mercenary commanders of the 20th century. What’s less well known: he was Irish.

Born in Calcutta in 1919 to Irish parents, Hoare served with the London Irish Rifles during World War II before eventually settling in South Africa.

Belgian Congo

By the 1960s, restless for the soldiering life again, he found his way to the then Belgian Congo, one of the most chaotic and anarchic conflict zones on earth.

4 Commando

In 1961, Katanga’s breakaway government hired Hoare to command a mercenary unit called 4 Commando.

Their job: fight against the very forces trying to keep the Congo unified, including United Nations peacekeepers sent to stabilize the region.

Irish soldiers were serving in that same UN mission at that exact time, 1961, the same year as the Siege of Jadotville, one of the most extraordinary Irish military stands in modern history.

Jadotville

An Irishman, commanding foreign mercenaries, fighting on the opposite side of a conflict where his own countrymen wore UN blue.

Hoare later returned to the Congo in 1964, commanding an even larger mercenary force called 5 Commando during the Simba Rebellion.

LEFT. The Sweethearts of Death. Michael Walsh. Fully illustrated, the author was in the Congo at this period. Click picture for details

The Wild Geese

He gave that unit a name loaded with Irish history: The Wild Geese, a direct reference to the Irish soldiers who, centuries earlier, left Ireland after military defeat to serve as mercenaries in foreign armies across Europe.

A Quirk of History

Hoare, fully aware of his own heritage, wore that legacy proudly, even as he fought a war on the opposite side from his own nation’s soldiers.

It’s one of the strangest footnotes in Irish military history: at the exact moment Irish soldiers were making their stand at Jadotville, another Irishman was leading the very mercenary forces working to unravel everything they were sent there to protect. Let readers know what you think

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