Mercenary Mad Mike Hoare Dies at 100

Mike Hoare, an Irish fortune soldier who led white mercenary forces in the Congo civil wars in the 1960s and a ragtag band of commandos in a farcical aborted coup in Seychelles in 1981, died in Durban, South Africa on Sunday. His son Chris confirmed the death, in a nursing home.

Mr. Hoare crossed the seas on a sailboat, and a bicycle crossed Africa (south to north). He looked for the fabled abandoned Kalahari city and retraced Victorian explorers ' steps toward the Nile's origins.

In World War II, he fought the Japanese in Burma, rescued captives from the rebel forces in Congo, found nuns and priests hacked to death in the jungle, and was jailed for hijacking in South Africa

The exploits of Mr. Hoare, who for his recklessness under fire was called "Mad Mike," were recounted in books by him and others, in a film starring Richard Burton, and in sheaves of the dispatches of foreign correspondents, now faded yellow in old newspaper morgues with datelines from far-off places.

Tiring life as an adventurer and safari guide, Mr. Hoare first worked out in 1960-61 as a mercenary, heading a European force fighting for Moise Tshombe, whose province of Katanga was trying to break away from the newly independent Republic of Congo.

Although paying to fight, his mercenaries were largely motivated by anti-communism and adventure lust, smashing larger, less well-armed Congolese armies and sometimes saving civilians from massacres.

But news correspondents covering the mercenaries said that some were racists who gusto-killed. In fact, these fortune soldiers were largely undisciplined, sometimes pillaging cities and indiscriminately killing them — clearly war crimes, the correspondents said.

Mr. Hoare did not condone these brut 0ality by his testimony, however, overwhelmingly outnumbered by his out-of-control forces, he had been powerless to stop the bloodshed, although he claimed to have once fired off a man's big toes as he assaulted a woman.