PMCI MARCH 2019

Thomas Michael “Mad Mike” Hoare was born on 17th March 1919,
and is a British-Irish mercenary leader best known for his military
activities in Africa and his attempt to conduct a coup d’état in the
Seychelles. The epithet “Mad” Mike originates from broadcasts by
East German radio during the fighting in the Congo in the 1960s.
They would precede their commentary with “The mad
bloodhound, Mike Hoare”.
Mike was born into a tough Irish seafaring family in Calcutta,
and was dumped at a good public school in England at the age of
eight where he spent many holidays in the care of a teacher who
had fought in the Anglo-Boer War of 1900/1 and who infused
Mike with military fervour. At the outbreak of WWII Mike joined the
London Irish Rifles, serving as an officer in India and Burma, often
being cited as the ‘best bloody soldier in the British Army’. He was
demobbed as a Major after seeing action at Kohima, and qualified
in London as a chartered accountant before emigrating to South Africa.
Many have asked, “How does an accountant end up living this
kind of life?” And there are many elements in the answer including
genes, nurture, luck, gifting, blarney, and what Mike called “a
double dose of spirit of adventure”.
Going rogue, he started living dangerously to get more out
of life, including trans-Africa motorbike trips, blue water sailing,
exploring remote areas, and leading safaris. While running
safaris across the Kalahari Desert to the Okavango delta in the
then Bechuanaland, he met Donald Rickard, a CIA agent. They
became best friends, and Rickard infused Mike with an anticommunist
fervour and put Mike’s hand up when America and
Belgium decided to fund a mercenary army in the Congo. Mike
led two separate mercenary groups during the Congo Crisis; in
1964, Congolese Prime Minister Moïse Tshombe hired Major Mike
Hoare to lead a military unit called 5 Commando, Armée Nationale
Congolaise (5 Commando ANC) made up of some 300 men, most
of whom were from South Africa. The unit’s mission was to fight a
revolt known as the “Simba Rebellion”.
Later Hoare and his mercenaries worked in concert with Belgian
paratroopers, Cuban exile pilots, and CIA-hired mercenaries who
attempted to save 1,600 civilians in Stanleyville from the Simba
rebels in “Operation Dragon Rouge”. This operation saved many
lives, and Mike was later promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel in the
Armée Nationale Congolaise and 5 Commando expanded into a
two-battalion force. Hoare commanded 5 Commando from July
1964 to November 1965.
Speaking on the conflict, he said, “I had wanted nothing so
much as to have 5 Commando known as an integral part of the
ANC, a 5 Commando destined to strike a blow to rid the Congo
of the greatest cancer the world has ever known; the creeping,
insidious disease of communism.”
Later Mike was technical advisor to the film The Wild Geese,
which starred Richard Burton playing the Mike Hoare character. In
1981 though, Mike led 50 ‘Frothblowers’ in a bid to depose the
socialist government of the Seychelles. Things went wrong and
soon Mike was to spend three years in jail for hijacking a Boeing
707 before being granted an amnesty.
A CELEBRATION OF A LIFE WELL-LIVED
“Mad Mike” Hoare: The Legend” is a new book by Chris Hoare
on his father. On the celebration of his 100th year, Mike will
receive a letter of congratulation from the President of Ireland. A
big afternoon party is planned for 17 March 2019 in Durban. Ex-5
Commando men from Johannesburg, Cape Town and other parts
of South Africa will be there to honour their former commanding
officer; everyone attending the party will be asked to make a short
speech to show their respect to Mike, and whisky will be served
when the sun is thought to have gone below the yardarm.
The biography on the legendary ‘Mad Mike’ Hoare was written
by his son, Chris, a journalist, who had unique access to his father’s
life story and consequently was able to separate the man from the
myth, and we’d like to thank Chris for agreeing to let us run this
excerpt from it here in PMCI.
“MAD MIKE” HOARE: THE LEGEND
pmcimagazine.com