Mercenaries in popular culture

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Mercenaries in popular culture. Like piracy, the mercenary ethos resonates with idealized adventure, mystery, and danger, and appears frequently in popular culture. Many are called adventurers, filibusters, soldiers of fortune, gunslingers, gunrunners, ronin, and knights errant.

Contents 1 Books 1.1 Science fiction and fantasy 2 Magazines and comics 3 Films 4 TV 5 Music 6 Board and card games 7 Computer and video games 8 Sports Figures 9 See also

[edit] Books

• 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.
• The male protagonist in G.B.Shaw's play Arms and the Man is a Swiss mercenary.

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.

[edit] Science fiction and fantasy

Mercenaries have featured in a number of science fiction novels. The well-known author Jerry Pournelle has written several books about science-fiction mercenaries known as Falkenberg's Legion. Also, author David Drake has written a number of books about the fictional hovercraft armored regiment Hammer's Slammers. Both series of books are brutal in their portrayal of complex low-intensity warfare despite technological advances. Gordon R. Dickson's Dorsai!, part of his Childe Cycle, includes the planet Dorsai with a society structured like that of Switzerland. Like the old style Swiss mercenaries who hired themselves out to the Italian states, Dorsai hire themselves out to other planets. A series by Mercedes Lackey concerning mercenaries is the Vows and Honor Trilogy (The Oathbound, Oathbreakers, Oathblood). Barry Sadler formerly of the U.S. Army Special Forces and singer of Ballad of the Green Beret wrote a series called Casca series about Casca Rufio Longinius, a soldier in the Roman legions who is cursed by Christ on Golgotha for driving a spear into him.

There have been a number of books based on the fictional universe developed for the board game BattleTech and in which mercenaries feature: Robert Thurston, The Legend of the Jade Phoenix; Loren L. Coleman, Patriots and Tyrants and Storms of Fate. The mercenary industry in the BattleTech universe is also depicted as a booming profession, with mercenaries being accredited for work through an interstellar body called the Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission.

Also George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire an epic fantasy series, feature mercenary characters known as "sellswords", who are portrayed as greedy, unscrupulous and cowardly.

The South African mercenary, Christian Rindert is a principal character in Hugh Paxton's 2006 novel "Homunculus" published by MacMillan in paperback (March 2007, ISBN 978-0230007369) which features mercenary operations and the testing of horrific new bio-weapons during the civil war in Sierra Leone.

The Star Wars series, particularly the Expanded Universe, features many mercenary and bounty hunter style characters, such as Kyle Katarn and the infamous Boba Fett.

In the Ashes series by William W. Johnstone, the main character of Ben Raines is mentioned as having worked as a mercenary-for-hire in several African armed conflicts after leaving the U.S. military (having served during the Vietnam Conflict. During his service time, he was a member of the 'Hell-Hounds', a military unit that is said to be the closest version to a mercenary group that the U.S. has ever fielded in battle.

[edit] Magazines and comics

A magazine ostensibly written for mercenary soldiers is Soldier of Fortune (SOF). The popularity of SOF led to a several similar magazines with titles such as Survive, Gung Ho!, New Breed, Eagle, Combat Illustrated, Special Weapons and Tactics, Combat and Survival, and Combat Ready that have mostly ceased publication

The manga Hellsing features a band of mercenaries known as The Wild Geese, named after the aforementioned Daniel Carney novel. It is unclear whether the mercenaries are intended to be the representing the same group as in the novel, though this is highly plausible, considering that their last operation was in Uganda.

The manga Berserk promeniently features a group of mercenaries, the Band of the Hawk. The main character, Guts, is also raised by mercenaries.

The popular anime series Full Metal Panic! and its various sequels focus largely on a mercenary organization known as Mithril.

The manga and now anime series Black Lagoon focuses on mercenaries in present-day South-East Asia.

The Marvel Comics universe features many mercenary character, most notably Deadpool. Others include the Taskmaster, Agent X, Luke Cage, Silver Sable and Bullseye. The mercenary character Deathstroke is part of the DC Comics universe.

The webcomic Schlock Mercenary follows the galactic adventures of a 31st-century mercenary company.

[edit] Films

See also List of war films: Mercenaries in the Third World

• Professional Soldier (1935) - Directed by Tay Garnett, with the story written by Damon Runyon features ex-Marine Victor McLaglen hired to kidnap young prince Freddie Bartholomew but changing his mind and giving his employers notice that their services are no longer required by mowing them down with a water cooled Maxim gun fired from the hip.
• The General Died at Dawn is a 1936 film which tells the story of a mercenary who meets a beautiful girl while trying to keep arms from getting to a vicious warlord in war-torn China. The movie was written by Charles G. Booth and Clifford Odets, and directed by Lewis Milestone. It stars Gary Cooper, Madeleine Carroll and Akim Tamiroff.
• Flying Tigers (1942) and God is My Co-Pilot (1945) based on the memoirs of Robert L. Scott concern the adventues of the American Volunteer Group of pilots who flew P-40's for China against the Japanese prior to Pearl Harbor
• Casablanca (1942) - Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) is a former mercenary, although it is hinted that he chose sides on an ideological basis, rather than based on who would pay him the most.
• For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) - Based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway, Gary Cooper is a mercenary who finds meaning to life fighting in the Spanish Civil War alongside Ingrid Bergman
• China (1943) - Alan Ladd is a mercenary who finds meaning to life fighting against the Japanese in China before Pearl Harbor alongside Loretta Young
• The Seven Samurai (1954) and The Magnificent Seven (1960) are both fictional accounts that deal with seven unemployed samurai/gunslingers who agree to protect an impoverished village from 40 bandits for sub-minimal wages
• Hell and High Water (1954) - Samuel Fuller's account of a former submarine commander Richard Widmark leading a team of naval mercenaries, an atomic scientist, and his daughter on a secret mission to the Arctic Circle to stop a Red Chinese plan to atomic bomb Korea using a captured American B-29. In addition to its topicality of the Soviet H-Bomb, the film was made to showcase Cinemascope being used in the confined sets of a submarine.
• Soldier of Fortune (1955) - Based on the novel by Ernest K. Gann. Clark Gable is hired by Susan Hayward to locate and free her husband from a prison in Red China.
• The Professionals (1966) - Richard Brooks' film tells a fictional tale of 4 specialists (automatic weapons (Lee Marvin, explosives (Burt Lancaster, tracker (Woody Strode), and mule skinner (Robert Ryan)) who are hired by a big businessman (Ralph Bellamy to rescue his kidnapped wife (Claudia Cardinale) from a Mexican bandit (Jack Palance) at the beginning of the 20th century.
• Africa Addio/Africa-Blood and Guts (1966)-A documentary by the team behind Mondo Cane that filmed Africa in the early 1960's and featured mercenaires in the Congo Crisis
• Dark of the Sun/The Mercenaries (1968) - Based on the novel by Wilbur Smith originally titled Last Train From Katanga about mercenaries in the Congo Crisis and Katanga excitingly directed by Jack Cardiff starring Rod Taylor and Jim Brown, a score by Jacques Loussier, and filmed in Jamaica. The film doesn't explain Rod Taylor's French Parachutist red beret, that is also worn by Stanley Baker in The Last Grenade (1969). A French Foreign Legion para would have worn a green beret with the same badge. The producers may be referring to the French parachute regiments disbanded after the unsuccessful Algiers putsch of 1961.
• Seduto Alla Sua Destra/Black Jesus (1968) - A fictionalised story based on Patrice Lumumba, played by Woody Strode, who is captured by mercenaries.
• El Mercenario/The Last Mercenary (1968) - A fictionalised account produced by and starring Ray Danton as a mercenary who travels from the Congo to work in Brazil.
• Sette Baschi Rossi/The Red Berets/Congo Hell (1969) - Fictionalised account of mercenaries somewhere in sub-Sahara Africa that was the directing debut of Mario Siciliano.
• The Last Grenade (1970) - Fictionalised account of mercenaries beginning in Africa then travelling to the New Territories of Hong Kong and later Red China. Only the characters are based on John Sherlock's 1964 novel The Ordeal of Major Grigsby featuring a cast of Stanley Baker, Alex Cord, Richard Attenborough, John Thaw, and Honor Blackman.
• The Man Who Would Be King (1975) - A John Huston film based on the story by Rudyard Kipling. Two Victorian Era ex-British Army sergeants played by Sean Connery and Michael Caine go beyond the Northwest Frontier with 20 rifles to hire themselves out to local warlords in search of adventure, treasure, and destiny.
• High Velocity (1976 film) - Fictionalised account of former Vietnam War veterans played by Ben Gazzara and Paul Winfield living and working in the Philippines
• The Wild Geese (1978) - The film, starring Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Richard Harris and Hardy Krüger, shows the recruitment, training, and deployment of a 50 man force who rescue a moderate African leader based on Moise Tshombe in an unnamed sub-Saharan African nation. Daniel Carney's book has a screenplay by Reginald Rose, an exciting score by Roy Budd, Mike Hoare acts as technical adviser and is directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, son of Victor.
• Scorticateli Vivi/The Wild Geese Attack/Skin 'Em Alive/Duri a morire/Tough To Kill (1978) - An Italian action film which concerns a group of mercenaries in an unspecified African country who turn on each other. Many action setpieces from The Red Berets reappear in the film that was made by the same director.
• The Warriors (1979) - The plot of the film which was adapted from the novel by Sol Yurick is loosely based on Xenophon's Anabasis
• Cuba (1979) - Ex-SAS Major Sean Connery and ex-RAF pilot Denholm Elliot are hired by the Fulgencio Batista regime to put down Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution in 1959. It was directed by Richard Lester.
• The Dogs of War (1981) - Based on Frederick Forsyth's novel of a mercenary operation led by Christopher Walken that proceeds from Central America to the planning, preparation, and execution of a mercenary operation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Director John Irvin's erudite film begins with a quote from Shakespere's Julius Caesar and ends with A.E. Housman's poem Epitaph For an Army of Mercenaries being sung over the end titles.
• Uncommon Valor (1983) - Gene Hackman recruits former soldiers to rescue POWs, including his own son, from a prison camp in Laos.
• Under Fire (1983) - A fictional account of a comedy relief mercenary in Nicaragua meeting journalist Nick Nolte
• Code Name: Wild Geese (1984) - Lewis Collins and Lee Van Cleef in a fictionalised account of mercenaires in the Far East
• Commando Leopard (1985) - Lewis Collins again is a mercenary up against rival mercenaries led by Klaus Kinski
• Men of War (1994) - John Sayles wrote a film about a group of mercenaries led by Dolph Lundgren who are sent to an unnamed Asian country on behalf of big business interests, When they empathise with the locals, their employers have to hire another mercenary group to destroy them.
• The Substitute (1996) - Tom Berenger stars as the head of a crew of mercenaries who finds himself teaching as a substitute teacher in a tough American high school by day and fighting a drug ring in his off time.
• Ronin (1998) - Robert DeNiro, Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone, Sean Bean and Stellan Skarsgård plays mercenaries.
• Savior (1998) - American Regular Army officer Dennis Quaid loses his wife and child in a terrorist bomb attack in Paris that leads him to plot revenge, escape prosecution by joining the French Foreign Legion then leaving to become a mercenary in Bosnia where he rediscovers his lost humanity.
• The Chronicles of Riddick - A trilogy that contains numerous mercenary/bounty hunter characters, most notably William J Johns and Toombs.
• Man on Fire (2004) - Denzel Washington plays a former mercenary hired as a bodyguard for a young girl in Mexico City who subsequently gets kidnapped. Christopher Walken plays his buddy and fellow mercenary who currently runs a bodyguard service in Ciudad Juarez.
• Blood Diamond (2006) - Leonardo DiCaprio plays a mercenary and diamond smuggler who attempts to obtain the diamond from Djimon Hounsou's character. The film also extensively shows mercenaries role in African conflicts.
• Rambo (2008) - Rambo, the main antagonist of the series, played by Sylvester Stallone joins a team of mercenaries, on a mission to save a group of volunteered missionaries, who are held captive in Burma.

[edit] TV

• Soldier of Fortune (1955)-had John Russell and Chick Chandler as two do anything go anywhere adventurers, however none of the episodes involved them being hired to wage war.
• Have Gun Will Travel (1957-1963) featured Richard Boone as "the man named Paladin" whose services were hired in each episode, answering the requesting telegram with the title of the show. Paladin's symbol was the head of a horse, the knight piece in chess that narration would explain the unexpected moves of the piece. On a later television show The Richard Boone Show Boone played a modern version of Paladin on one episode.
• The A-Team was a popular TV series about a team of benevolent mercenaries. The violence was usually "toned down" to an almost cartoonish level to make the series acceptable for prime-time viewing (everybody shoots, no one gets hit).
• The television anime series of Area 88, portrays fictional mercenaries in a country called Asran where foreign freelance pilots of all nationalities are assembled in Area 88, an isolated air force base that houses the military's only mercenary unit to fight in Asran's civil war.
• Molotov Cocktease from the Adult Swim cartoon The Venture Bros. is a former KGB agent who went freelance, presumably after the dissolusion of the USSR.
• The Band of Seven (Shichinintai in the Japanese version) from InuYasha, also from Adult Swim, were a band of seven mercenaries that loved to kill and were so strong that warlords feared their strength even as allies. They were hunted by the warlords (with some difficulty) and beheaded. They were revived 10 years later as spectres guarding Naraku, the show's main antagonist, in exchange for eternal life from Shikon Jewel shards.
• One of the major antagonists in the TV series Jericho is a mercenary group called Ravenwood. They were working for the government to help restore order after the nuclear bombs went off but eventually went rogue and devoted themselves to looting. They attempt to invade Jericho but are driven off for now.
• The character Jayne Cobb in the Firefly series is a career mercenary who joined the crew of the Serenity after his previous employeer hired him to track their ship only to switch sides when offered a larger percentage and better perks. When later offered a bribe to again switch sides, Jayne refuses. When confronted, he explains that he would have but, "The money wasn't good enough." Despite questionable loyalty, Jayne remained more or less loyal to the Serenity crew until the end of the series.
• The comedy Machinima series Red vs Blue uses the mercenary premise regularly, usually around Tex and Wyoming, who themselves, were freelance mercenaries.
• The soap opera Days of Our Lives features a villain named Stefano DiMera, a wealthy Italian businessman with a history of dabbling in organized crime and terrorism, and who has utilized a cadre of private mercenaries to execute some of his more outlandish operations, including John Black, and his own nephew Andre DiMera. Flashbacks on this show have included Black leading a team of soldiers in battle in some type of (unidentified) Third-World conflict. DiMera has also kidnapped and brainwashed some of his own antagonists, including Roman Brady, Hope Williams, and Steve Johnson, into serving as his agents.
• In LOST a group of mercenaries come to take over The Island, kidnap Ben Linus, and kill everyone on the Island in order to completely secure it for their employer, Charles Widmore, so he can exploit the Island's mythical properties for his own gain.

[edit] Music

The song "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" by Warren Zevon involves the exploits of a Norwegian mercenary in the Congo. Similarly his track "Jungle Work! does the same, citing "le mercenaire" directly in the lyrics.

The song "Straw Dogs" by The Stiff Little Fingers (as they say themselves in an interview on the re-release of their album Nobody's Heroes "a dirty nasty song about a dirty nasty subject") is about mercenaries

British death metal band Bolt Thrower released an album entitled Mercenary in 1998.

Biritsh band Iron Maiden has a song titled The Mercenary, on their album Brave New World (album).

[edit] Board and card games

In Magic: The Gathering, 'Mercenary' is one of several 'creature types' game cards can possess. The type was introduced in Ice Age, but became widely used in Mercadian Masques, in 1999. The Mercadian Masque mercenary cards were colored black, representing evil/darkness. Many of these cards could expedite bringing smaller Mercenaries into play.

In Warhammer, Dogs of War is a mercenary army that can act independently, but it is also possible for other armies (barring Bretonnians) to field Dogs of War units. These units include the Regiments of Renown.

The board game BattleTech has several mercenary units, some very powerful and well-equipped.

[edit] Computer and video games

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The computer game series Jagged Alliance focuses on a team of mercenaries doing several missions in fictional underdeveloped nations. In 2005, LucasArts released a game for PlayStation 2 and Xbox titled Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, where the player controls one of three mercenaries in North Korea, and is able to accept mercenary contracts from the Allied Nations (a fictional version of the UN), South Korea, China, and the Russian Mafia. The game Army of Two focuses on a pair of Mercenaries.

Mercenaries from the board game BattleTech were featured in several of the spin-off MechWarrior computer games.

Several video games feature mercenary characters or organizations, either in a modern setting such as Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, the Metal Gear Solid series; or in a fantasy/sci-fi setting, such as Mass Effect, Final Fantasy VII's Cloud Strife; or a full organisation like SeeD from Final Fantasy VIII, the Star Fox team, or the mercenaries from S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, who form a separate faction in the game. Players may also participate as mercenary pilots in Air Combat, Ace Combat 2 and Ace Combat Zero, and the game Strike Commander features a player-run mercenary air force. Armored Core features a mercenary organization consisting of pilots of huge Mecha. In the Total War series, battalions of mercenaries can be hired at inns (in Medieval: Total War 1) or in the field (in Rome: Total War). In various Fire Emblem games, the protagonists are mercenaries, usually working for the benefit of everyone as well as for personal gain. In the Treasures of Aht Urgan Expansion for Final Fantasy XI, players are recruited into the "Salaheem's Sentinals" mercenary company, for which they can take on various missions called "Assaults" for various rewards. This is likewise for Dante (Devil May Cry), the protagonist (antagonist of Devil May Cry 4) of Devil May Cry. In a recent release, Age of Empires III and Age of Empires III: The War Chiefs allows a feature that mercenaries from foreign countries may be hired. Blizzard Entertainment's award winning series Diablo II features several mercenaries for hire in each Act to fight for the player. The same applies to Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, Blizzard's expansion to their strategy game Warcraft III, where players can hire mercenary heroes for a slightly higher cost than regular heroes from a special building called the tavern. Numerous mercenary characters are found in the Resident Evil, groups that provide such services as mercenaries include the U.B.C.S. or characters like HUNK, Jack Krauser, etc. In the Xbox 360 game Chromehounds, a mercenary organization called Rafzakael guides the player throughout the story mode and the online mode. Solid Snake is a mercenary in the popular video game series Metal Gear Solid.

[edit] Sports Figures

Some sports stars such as Alex Rodriguez and David Beckham have been labelled mercenaries after leaving their original clubs to obtain extremely lucrative free agent contracts with other teams - [1][2]

[edit] See also

• Yojimbo