Mercenaries in Popular Culture - Books

Books

• In "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", from Washington Irving's'Knickerbocker Tales, the infamous Headless Horseman was said to be the ghost of a Hessian who had been decapitated by a cannonball during the American Revolution.
• Walter Scott's "A Legend of Montrose", set in Scotland during the Civil War of the 1640s includes the finely drawn character Dugald Dalgetty, an experienced mercenary who does not fight out of political or religious conviction, but purely for the love of carnage. However, he is very professional, and remains loyal to an employer to the end of his contract. He gained his experience fighting for various armies during the Thirty Years' War, then still raging in Germany.
• During the 1880s, Colonel Thomas Hoyer Monstery wrote or co-wrote a series of dime novel adventure stories said to have been inspired by his own activities as a mercenary in Central America and South America.
• Richard Harding Davis wrote an 1897 novel Soldier of Fortune
• Davis later wrote a non-fiction Real Soldiers of Fortune in 1906. The account featured true stories of Major-General Henry McIver, Baron James Harden-Hickey, Winston Spencer Churchill, Captain Philo Norton McGriffin, General William Walker, and Major Frederick Russell Burnham, chief of scouts.
• The novel The Dogs of War by Frederick Forsyth and the film (1981) with the same name, which go into some detail about an actual if fictionalized mercenary operation in Africa in the 1960s.
• The novel The Wild Geese by Daniel Carney and the film (1978) with the same name. The plot is that a global British financial syndicate seeks to rescue the deposed leader of a central African nation. It hires a band of mercenaries to do the job.
• Both the titles Dogs of War and The Wild Geese are derived from other sources. Cry Havoc, and let slip the dogs of war is from Julius Caesar (III.i), a play by Shakespeare. After the signing of the Treaty of Limerick (1691) the soldiers of the Irish Army who left Ireland for France took part in what is known as the Flight of the Wild Geese. Subsequently, many made a living from working as mercenaries for continental armies, the most famous of whom was Patrick Sarsfield, who, having fallen mortally wounded on a foreign field, said "If this was only for Ireland".
• An episode in With Fire and Sword (Ogniem i mieczem), an 1884 historical novel by the Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz, set in the 17th century Khmelnytsky Uprising, depicts a band of German mercenaries with high professional ethics, who prefer to fight to the death against impossible odds rather than betray their contract to the King of Poland.
• At the end of Micah Clarke, a historical novel by Conan Doyle, the protagonists - hunted in England for their part in the failed Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 - set out to be mercenaries in Europe, until conditions in their homeland change. The book's young protagonist is told: "You are now one of the old and honourable guild of soldiers of fortune. While the Turk is still snarling at the gates of Vienna there will ever be work for strong arms and brave hearts. You will find that among these wandering, fighting men, drawn from all climes and nations, the name of Englishman stands high".
• The 1967 novel Dirty Story by Eric Ambler depicts the misadventures of the half-caste petty criminal Arthur Abdel Simpson who takes up a career as a mercenary for a cynical mining company in Central Africa. Simpson is a misfit unsuited for the role of mercenary, yet he manages to outwit his far tougher professional colleagues, and to keep the reader's sympathy as an engaging rogue.
• Tenth Man Down by Chris Ryan, a military novel regarding modern-day British training advisers in a chaotic post-colonial African nation (Known as "Kamanga", possibly after the unrecognized state in Congo), features mercenary characters ranging from minor antagonists to unlikely allies. Many are revealed to be Afrikaans-speaking white South Africans who formerly served with the SADF. The mercenaries in this storyline are initially working for anti-government rebels, paid for their services in diamonds pilfered from a local mine. However, this alliance begins to falter after subsequent clashes with Kamangan Special Forces robs the employers of their payment source. Several of the Afrikaners desert, while two others, including a sniper, are captured and cannibalized by the government troops. The only American mercenary soldier in the unit, a former US Navy SEAL, eventually helps the protagonist, Geordie Sharp, escape from a rebel camp.