Mercenary 'Mad Mike' Hoare passes
 

Age 100, in South Africa.

He's certainly one of those people you'd find in the dictionary under "May you live in interesting times"

Article here.

A friend and former teammate was on that last bungled mission with him.

I think I remember reading articles on him in the Soldier of Fortune mag when that was hot, around the mid 80's or so..

Yup...and back in the mid 70's from my recollection....

RIP Warrior, Vaya con Dios

I think Mad Mike might have influenced Warren Zevon's writing of "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner"

NSFW: If you haven't heard it in a while..

What I alsmot heard
 

I grew up with an SF father and in SF circles. One of the family friends was SGM David Disharoon, 7th, 46th co and 5th that I know of. His mother was French so he had dual citizenship and passports. I know he was involved in the Congo operations, ended up doing an E&E eventually being smuggled out by another "A" Team about a year later. What I don't know, and since he passed away never will, is what he actually did. I tried like hell to get him to talk but never managed, even though I used a copy of the Levenworth papers to lay out the overall operations. His comment was, "I was just s como guy with a French passport". He did say that with his TDY settlement, he bought the house his wife still owns in Ponderosa and the car he drove until he couldn't drive. It's a shame that I wasn't smart enough to realize the legends I was around in my youth.

The easy, painless, and moderately quick answer? File a Standard Form 180, Request Pertaining to Military Records (SF180) and see what are in his records.

It will have unit assignments and dates so you can look for survivor teammates.

JJ, no unit specifics but several disparate readings in several genre have popped up a former Waffen-SS guy (or 3) who was a merc in SA during those times. There have been a couple of good books that, marketed as non-fiction, have been widely disputed to be a bit of both. Still, it's a completely believable direction for someone like that, and have seen over time that there's enough smoke that there's probably some fire there too. And probably not a little embellishment as well.

But as youngsters my cousins & I were all yelling "Zeeeem-bob-WAYYYYYYY!" cheering on the merc's exploits and of course what young man worth his testosterone wouldn't love to have an Uzi or MAC-10, ya know?
:D

I got a book written by Mikes son which was launched just a couple of months ago. I have yet to read it, but it is a biography of Mike and on talking to his son, well researched. I will revert once I have read it.

Would be great to hear your impressions sir.