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How Mercenaries Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is always a
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Speaker 1: smiling Chuck Bryant. I'm smiling. How are you doing, Chuck?
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Speaker 1: I feel like I was just whisked in here, like
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Speaker 1: Elvis or something. You were you like Krusty the clown
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Speaker 1: when he comes in to do the recording for a
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Speaker 1: Crusty Doll? Right you remember? Yeah again? Hey, Hey, that's
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Speaker 1: my best. Yeah. So Chuck came in on a sick day,
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Speaker 1: on a wing and a prayer. I just walked in. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: traffic is bad, it's nasty out, raining, raining, cold, and
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Speaker 1: we're going to talk about something else that is cold. Hey,
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Speaker 1: nice mercenaries, Yeah, Chuck, we've talked about Delta Force before. Remember,
0:54
Speaker 1: we had to keep our composure sure, because we were
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Speaker 1: tittering and excited and all that. Yes, you're taken to
1:00
Speaker 1: task a little bit by liking violence that's not necessarily
1:04
Speaker 1: going to happen in this one. I have a feeling mercenaries,
1:08
Speaker 1: which are as I think everybody knows our soldiers for
1:12
Speaker 1: hire are pretty much universally hated by everybody. Yeah, okay,
1:16
Speaker 1: I didn't get that. Yeah, nobody likes a mercenary. One
1:19
Speaker 1: of the reasons why is because when you go to war,
1:23
Speaker 1: because people go to war because somebody is getting pushed
1:26
Speaker 1: around by some other big jerk country or um, you know,
1:30
Speaker 1: there's some dictator that should be toppler. It's ideological on
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Speaker 1: the suite, on the surface, and that's what attracts you know,
1:37
Speaker 1: brave men and women, braver people than us much who
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Speaker 1: go into service not for money, but because they want
1:45
Speaker 1: to protect democracy or freedom or what have you. Mercenaries
1:49
Speaker 1: don't do that. They go and say, uh, this country
1:53
Speaker 1: is paying a lot right now for this war that
1:55
Speaker 1: they're in, and I'm gonna go kill for them. Sure
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Speaker 1: for money, I'm killing for money. They're pretty much man. Yeah,
2:00
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that the fascinating history of the mercenary
2:03
Speaker 1: until I read this. No, and William Harris, by the way,
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Speaker 1: did a hum dinger of a job. Job. Yeah, So, Chuck,
2:09
Speaker 1: let's talk about mercenaries. Where did they come from? Well, Josh,
2:13
Speaker 1: the earliest account that we know of is about twenty
2:17
Speaker 1: four hundred years ago when uh Persian prince in general
2:21
Speaker 1: Cyrus the Younger, which I like that Cyrus the Younger,
2:25
Speaker 1: not to be confused with Cyrus the elderly guy, right,
2:28
Speaker 1: the bald Uh he hired the ten thousand, which was
2:31
Speaker 1: an army of Greek mercenaries, to seize the throne in Persia, right,
2:34
Speaker 1: and what a sarces? Yeah, and I'm not sure, but
2:40
Speaker 1: I've seen the movie three hundred, so I bet the
2:42
Speaker 1: ten thousand were pretty tough. Yeah, And I was wondering,
2:44
Speaker 1: are the three hundred and the ten thousand related? Are
2:46
Speaker 1: the three hundred the remains of the decimated ten thousand?
2:49
Speaker 1: If so, they're tough dudes. They were tough dudes. That
2:52
Speaker 1: was a great movie. That's stupid disfigured guy gave him up? Yeah,
2:56
Speaker 1: and oh the abs did you know? In that movie?
3:01
Speaker 1: They they wanted to recreate what these guys probably looked like.
3:05
Speaker 1: So when they were training, they didn't use any equipment.
3:08
Speaker 1: They did things like roll tires up hills, did like
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Speaker 1: real like earthy um, like the Strongman competition very much.
3:16
Speaker 1: It carried like concrete beer kegs and stuff, right, and
3:18
Speaker 1: like pickup tractor trailers like the beer cakes what a
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Speaker 1: waste of beer. Seriously. So yeah, so that was back
3:26
Speaker 1: in what four oh one BC, right, and since then
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Speaker 1: we've pretty much used mercenaries almost uninterrupted. Yeah, they made
3:37
Speaker 1: a pretty big splash, I guess you could say in
3:40
Speaker 1: the Hundred Years War, which lasted longer than a hundred years,
3:43
Speaker 1: But they did. But I mean, they're not gonna say,
3:45
Speaker 1: what the hundred and sixteen year War that doesn't have
3:49
Speaker 1: the same ring between the English and the French from
3:53
Speaker 1: s to fourteen fifty three. Well, that's the problem with
3:55
Speaker 1: the long War is that your armies are going to
3:58
Speaker 1: be decimated precisely, so you have to turn to the
4:01
Speaker 1: you know, the paid for higher guys. Well, not only that,
4:03
Speaker 1: the standing political army didn't really appear until I think
4:08
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century. So back back in this time, all
4:11
Speaker 1: these disparate landowning earls and dukes and princes, Um, they
4:17
Speaker 1: had their own private armies and they were all for pay.
4:20
Speaker 1: But um a lot of them were drawn from their
4:23
Speaker 1: own countrymen. But yeah, you make an excellent point. When
4:25
Speaker 1: you have a hundred year war, you're gonna go through
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Speaker 1: a lot of your countrymen. That's just kind of one
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Speaker 1: of the aspects of war. So yeah. Um. In the
4:32
Speaker 1: Hundred Year War, a guy named Edward of Woodstock who's
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Speaker 1: known as the Black Prince, which, by the way, from
4:37
Speaker 1: now on, I want you to call me the Black Prince.
4:40
Speaker 1: I was gonna call you Josh of Woodstock. Not for
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Speaker 1: many years, buddy. Um. He made use of mercenaries in
4:49
Speaker 1: what how do you pronounce this, chuck, I'm gonna go
4:51
Speaker 1: with cheval sha yes, which basically means burned, pillage, loot
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Speaker 1: and rape. Yes, And that's our war. I think fans
4:59
Speaker 1: of Blazing Saddles might know that better as the number six.
5:02
Speaker 1: That was where they go riding into town whipping in
5:05
Speaker 1: a wamping every living thing. Yeah, yeah, that's what they
5:07
Speaker 1: say in Blazing Saddles. Then they also had a number
5:09
Speaker 1: six dance later on, which was a really great line dance.
5:14
Speaker 1: Maybe so, probably not. I think it's a little more
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Speaker 1: bloody and horrifying. Yeah. Um. And then the the Hundred
5:22
Speaker 1: Years War ends, and I guess the use of mercenaries
5:24
Speaker 1: kind of dried up for a little while, right, Yeah,
5:27
Speaker 1: So my earlier comment about them being used uninterrupted was
5:31
Speaker 1: totally baseless. Well, I bet you there were some mercenaries
5:33
Speaker 1: used here and there, just not as widely. Right, Let's
5:37
Speaker 1: talk about some famous mercenaries there, Chuck, Okay, like the
5:40
Speaker 1: Swiss Guard. I think that's pretty tough. Yeah. They made
5:43
Speaker 1: the point in here. William made the point in here
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Speaker 1: that sometimes a soldier would get a specialty, a combat specialty,
5:50
Speaker 1: so they would be sought out because of a particular
5:52
Speaker 1: war or a battle they might be in. And the
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Speaker 1: Swiss Guard was such because they were masters of the pike. Right,
5:58
Speaker 1: and they're still around. There's a pretty cool photo of them, um,
6:02
Speaker 1: and they are holding their pikes and they look Yeah,
6:05
Speaker 1: it's it's it's pretty awesome. It sounds like a euphemism.
6:09
Speaker 1: They're holding their pikes. Yeah, I'm not gonna go there.
6:11
Speaker 1: What about the other one? You speak German? I found
6:13
Speaker 1: out Chuck speaks Germans and Chuck, how do you pronounce
6:16
Speaker 1: this one? And you're gonna ask this and I practiced it.
6:19
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go with lan. Okay, that's better than what
6:26
Speaker 1: I was gonna And you know I do speak German,
6:28
Speaker 1: but that's a really tough one. Even if you are German,
6:30
Speaker 1: I'm gonna can you can you say say hello to
6:33
Speaker 1: my little friends Zach to mankind and freunden. Yeah, checks
6:37
Speaker 1: of Beverly Hills Chuawa fame by the way. So yes,
6:40
Speaker 1: those German soldiers actually also used the pike, and but
6:44
Speaker 1: they also used guns, which was kind of new in
6:46
Speaker 1: the fifteenth and sixteenth century, right, muskets, arquebus, arquebus. Yeah,
6:51
Speaker 1: so those guys made a pretty big impression. One of
6:55
Speaker 1: the reasons why they were I guess heavily sought after
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Speaker 1: was because unlike the Swiss Guard, they I mean they
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Speaker 1: specialized in different weapons, but they had like different aspects
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Speaker 1: of their companies, Like you know, somebody would use the
7:09
Speaker 1: must get, somebody else would use a pike, somebody else
7:11
Speaker 1: would use a sword. So they were like everything you
7:13
Speaker 1: needed all in one right. And actually, did you know that, um,
7:18
Speaker 1: in the Revolutionary War there were tons and tons of mercenaries,
7:22
Speaker 1: not until this and I'm surprised I have not made
7:24
Speaker 1: a film about it yet because William and he even
7:27
Speaker 1: has this uh sourced said that during the Revolutionary War
7:32
Speaker 1: Americans probably fought more Germans than they did English British.
7:37
Speaker 1: Is that true? Is that possible? I could see that. Yeah,
7:40
Speaker 1: it's crazy. You never hear about that. And uh, the
7:42
Speaker 1: one of those um. One of those mercenaries, German mercenaries,
7:46
Speaker 1: I think they're called hessians um, turned out to be
7:49
Speaker 1: the headless Horseman. Oh yeah, yeah, well they could Bud.
7:53
Speaker 1: It could Bud's foe. Oh yeah, that's right, sorry, it
7:56
Speaker 1: could was the he was the nerve act manager. So yeah. One,
8:01
Speaker 1: Like we said, standing armies kind of became popular in
8:04
Speaker 1: the sixteenth century and never really the popularity never waned much,
8:08
Speaker 1: unlike the twist um they so you know, political standing
8:13
Speaker 1: armies have been around for a while, right, you mean
8:15
Speaker 1: the dance a twists um. So as a result, mercenaries
8:20
Speaker 1: have kind of fallen to the wayside until um, World
8:26
Speaker 1: War two, Yeah, which kind of changed everything and a
8:29
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of World War two was a
8:32
Speaker 1: probably the most landmark event in the last I don't know,
8:37
Speaker 1: since the Magna Carta. Maybe everything changed after that. You know,
8:41
Speaker 1: Germans got volunteers actually, so technically they weren't mercenaries. We'll
8:45
Speaker 1: go over in a minute what the Geneva Convention actually
8:48
Speaker 1: says as a mercenary, but I think the Germans actually
8:50
Speaker 1: had volunteers from other country but Fry will just call
8:56
Speaker 1: them free willie free willies. So yeah, was in World
9:00
Speaker 1: War Two. Actually they were um. Yeah, and since they
9:03
Speaker 1: were volunteers and they weren't paid, they weren't technically mercenaries,
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Speaker 1: but they fulfill a lot of the other stuff, a
9:08
Speaker 1: lot of the other criteria. Um. So then yeah, after
9:12
Speaker 1: World War Two, UM, part of the Geneva Convention, this
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Speaker 1: agreement among all the warring nations and the allies on
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Speaker 1: the Rules of War UM, mercenaries and their use and
9:23
Speaker 1: their definition is very much addressed, right, Yes, in the
9:27
Speaker 1: first Protocol of nineteen seventy seven. Should we go with
9:31
Speaker 1: the criteria. Yes. In order to be considered a mercenary, Josh,
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Speaker 1: you must be specially recruited to take part in the conflict,
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Speaker 1: but not a member of the armed forces of the
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Speaker 1: state that recruited you. Right, that's kind of a big one.
9:44
Speaker 1: Like the German volunteers and World War Two, they're from
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Speaker 1: other countries. Exactly. You need to actively engage in hostilities, otherwise,
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Speaker 1: I guess you probably wouldn't be very good mercenary. If not,
9:53
Speaker 1: you're just some guy standing on the sideline. Exactly. Uh,
9:57
Speaker 1: you were motivated by private gain and your p its
10:00
Speaker 1: substantially more than the ordinary armed forces of that state.
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Speaker 1: Soldier of fortune. Yeah, we'll get into that too, though
10:05
Speaker 1: it's not quite as lucrative when you factor in some
10:08
Speaker 1: other things. You know, I was kind of surprised about that.
10:12
Speaker 1: And um, what else is that the last one? Yeah, no, Chuck,
10:15
Speaker 1: that pretty much does wrap it up. I think you
10:16
Speaker 1: covered all the big points, um. And even earlier than that,
10:20
Speaker 1: mercenaries were kind of put on the fringes um, right
10:23
Speaker 1: after World War Two when the original Geneva Convention was established,
10:26
Speaker 1: because they created the definition for a lawful combatant. Yes,
10:31
Speaker 1: basically what we think of as a soldier, somebody who
10:33
Speaker 1: belongs to a nation that's important to that's a war right,
10:37
Speaker 1: because if you're a lawful combatant, Um, you can engage
10:42
Speaker 1: in offensive conflict, yeah, with with people in other countries.
10:46
Speaker 1: You protect people, and if you're caught, you are expected
10:50
Speaker 1: to be treated as a prisoner of war. If you're
10:52
Speaker 1: a mercenary, you're way far out there on the edge. Yeah,
10:56
Speaker 1: you're kind of on your own, like you can be
10:57
Speaker 1: tried for murder and half towards whatever. Um. And remember
11:03
Speaker 1: I think in September two thousand seven, Blackwater, very very
11:07
Speaker 1: famous UM outfit. I thot you're talking about the DeBie
11:10
Speaker 1: brother song No black Water. No, No, we're not talking
11:15
Speaker 1: about that one different guys. Um, yeah, you know Blackwater? Right.
11:18
Speaker 1: Actually I responded to someone asked to do something on
11:21
Speaker 1: black Water, and I responded, yeah, maybe we should do
11:23
Speaker 1: one of the Dubie Brothers as a whole. And he
11:26
Speaker 1: didn't get the joke at all. He wrote back and said, no,
11:28
Speaker 1: that's weird that you thought that I was really talking
11:29
Speaker 1: about black Water. Well that's weird you didn't get the joke, right, Yeah,
11:35
Speaker 1: Um you remember. Okay, so you are aware of black Water? Okay.
11:39
Speaker 1: And they I think that right after this they changed
11:41
Speaker 1: their name to Blackwater Worldwide and now there's z x E. Yeah,
11:46
Speaker 1: they keep changing their name with very horrible travesty. But um,
11:49
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people call them them mercenaries.
11:52
Speaker 1: They're now called private military contractors, but basically they supply
11:57
Speaker 1: soldiers of fortune, right, yeah, for secure mainly. And um
12:02
Speaker 1: that we remember in two thousand seven there was this
12:04
Speaker 1: horrible thing that went down in Baghdad where I think
12:07
Speaker 1: seventeen Iraqi civilians were killed. Um when when black Water
12:13
Speaker 1: um contractors opened fire, Yeah, got real trigger happy, and
12:18
Speaker 1: I think they found that fourteen of those deaths were unjustified. Yeah,
12:22
Speaker 1: they broke the deadly forced rules, right, and Iraq was
12:26
Speaker 1: chomping at the bit to prosecute these guys. And I
12:28
Speaker 1: believe the US stepped in and protected them, but I
12:31
Speaker 1: mean they it was very possible for them to be
12:33
Speaker 1: prosecuted because they weren't lawful combatants. Well, the US uses
12:37
Speaker 1: a lot of these UH contractors, as it turns out,
12:41
Speaker 1: because I saw the U n Pastor resolution in the
12:43
Speaker 1: late eighties outlawing this kind of mercenary, but the US
12:47
Speaker 1: conveniently has still not signed that document because what we
12:52
Speaker 1: want to hire the mercenaries because they What happened is,
12:54
Speaker 1: and William makes a great point, is with UH the
12:58
Speaker 1: different rules of warfare. Now you have lots of weapons
13:00
Speaker 1: systems and UM soldiers that are trained to man these
13:03
Speaker 1: systems and operate these systems. So what happens is they're
13:05
Speaker 1: spread a little thin with UM some of these day
13:08
Speaker 1: to day duties like UH security of like high ranking
13:11
Speaker 1: civil servants, that kind of thing, right, which the military
13:14
Speaker 1: would usually take care of. Right. UM. Anytime you see
13:17
Speaker 1: hummed cars, I you'll see a couple of white guys
13:22
Speaker 1: who wear Oakley sunglasses and have beards with um, I
13:26
Speaker 1: guess uh Heckler and cock um guns. And they are
13:31
Speaker 1: I think former Delta Force, but now they work for Z.
13:34
Speaker 1: They're not smiling, no, but they provide security. And they
13:38
Speaker 1: can do that lawfully. You can provide security. You can
13:40
Speaker 1: provide um a defensive security where you're not engaging in
13:45
Speaker 1: any offense whatsoever. Um supposedly, right, and then you're a
13:51
Speaker 1: lawful or your your a mercenary under the Geneva Convention,
13:55
Speaker 1: the guidelines and the protocol and all that. Right, I
13:57
Speaker 1: gotta staff for you. Okay. It's said that the US
14:00
Speaker 1: likes to use these these soldiers of fortune. There's uh,
14:04
Speaker 1: there's no hard numbers, but they suggest that more than
14:07
Speaker 1: a hundred and eighty thousand of these contractors are working
14:10
Speaker 1: in Iraq alone, and that all together, all over the world,
14:14
Speaker 1: that they outnumber the United States military in total. Yeah,
14:19
Speaker 1: and we've spent about a hundred billion dollars in the
14:22
Speaker 1: Iraq war on these mercenaries, which I think something like
14:25
Speaker 1: a quarter or a third of the total that we
14:28
Speaker 1: had spent. Yeah, when this article was written, I think
14:31
Speaker 1: in late two thousand and eight, right, which of course
14:33
Speaker 1: is smaller now. So Chuck. You know, Africa has been
14:37
Speaker 1: a big site for mercenaries and it still continues to be.
14:40
Speaker 1: That's what I hear. There's pretty much anytime there's a revolution,
14:43
Speaker 1: a coup attempt, something like that, and anybody has some cash,
14:46
Speaker 1: they hire outside mercenaries, right yeah. Uh. And there's a
14:50
Speaker 1: guy named Simon man Do you remember this, Yeah, back
14:53
Speaker 1: in two thousand four. In March two thousand four, man
14:56
Speaker 1: Um was the head of two companies UM that were
15:01
Speaker 1: private military companies, contractors, but basically mercenary outfits. Right, yeah,
15:07
Speaker 1: sand Line International. And I love the name of this one,
15:10
Speaker 1: Executive outcomes, right. I don't know what that means, yeah,
15:14
Speaker 1: but it sounds so shady. Yeah, it does. Executive Like
15:17
Speaker 1: you can just see like their their company headquarters, executive outcome.
15:21
Speaker 1: It's like one of those offices that you wander into
15:23
Speaker 1: to ask, like to use the bathroom, and they never like,
15:26
Speaker 1: what is this place? What do you guys do here?
15:28
Speaker 1: And you just escorted out. When you wake up and
15:31
Speaker 1: on the park bench and take a lump on your head,
15:33
Speaker 1: you have like ink on your fingers. Right, So well,
15:35
Speaker 1: man Um in March two thousand four led a group
15:40
Speaker 1: um of mercenaries from South Africa and I guess his
15:43
Speaker 1: company um to Equatorial Guinea and he didn't make it.
15:47
Speaker 1: He got picked up in Zimbabwe at they were going
15:50
Speaker 1: to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea. UM the president
15:54
Speaker 1: Teyodoro Obang A right nice and uh they got picked
16:00
Speaker 1: up and held and apparently he was just recently pardoned
16:04
Speaker 1: by President Obang and released in November. UM and he's
16:08
Speaker 1: out and he is naming names. The story that he
16:11
Speaker 1: tells now he's back in Great Britain is that Mark Thatcher,
16:15
Speaker 1: Sir Mark Thatcher, whose last name he might recognize. His
16:18
Speaker 1: mom was the PM for a while UM and as
16:21
Speaker 1: some other people from around the world had an interest
16:25
Speaker 1: in the oil fields at Equatorial Guinea and hired allegedly
16:29
Speaker 1: hired time and man to overthrow the government so they
16:31
Speaker 1: could move in uh and get these oil revenues or
16:34
Speaker 1: control these oil fields. And he was condemned pretty roundly.
16:38
Speaker 1: Man was but he was fully pardoned by Obang. He was. Yeah,
16:42
Speaker 1: it was in prison for five and a half years,
16:44
Speaker 1: but he did have to shut down executive outcomes apparently, right. Yeah,
16:48
Speaker 1: and sand Lie, Yeah, they're they're probably opened up under
16:51
Speaker 1: another name. Though probably probably not. But if you think
16:54
Speaker 1: about thinking about how people think of Blackwater or UM.
16:57
Speaker 1: You know, Simon Man, no one cared. He was in
17:00
Speaker 1: prison for five and a half years, like and the
17:03
Speaker 1: reason why is because he was a soldier of fortune.
17:05
Speaker 1: These are mercenaries, you know, and people just don't think
17:09
Speaker 1: of them very highly. True. You can we name some
17:11
Speaker 1: of these other companies? Yeah, sure, just because I thought
17:14
Speaker 1: it was kind of funny some of them. And if
17:15
Speaker 1: I had a mercenary company, I don't know what I
17:17
Speaker 1: would name it, but it would probably not be the
17:21
Speaker 1: Olive group that was one of them. Yeah, And triple canopy,
17:26
Speaker 1: that's that's probably a military term. And what's another goal
17:30
Speaker 1: on this? One's good kroll k R O L L Government. Yeah,
17:37
Speaker 1: that probably stands for something. UM. The one that got
17:40
Speaker 1: that I think stands out above all the rest is
17:42
Speaker 1: Global risk Strategies. I can see us if you go
17:45
Speaker 1: to Guatemala calling on Global Risk Strategies to come get
17:49
Speaker 1: us out. You know, I'd love to have that number. Actually,
17:53
Speaker 1: maybe we should look that up. So, Chuck, let's talk
17:56
Speaker 1: about another famous group of mercenaries that aren't necessarily and
18:00
Speaker 1: a look down upon UM. The French Foreign Legion. You know,
18:04
Speaker 1: the guys with the white Caps with the with them.
18:09
Speaker 1: Do you remember in the eighties, like when did you
18:11
Speaker 1: break dance? No? Do you remember those hats though? They
18:16
Speaker 1: were like baseball caps, but then they had the flapping
18:18
Speaker 1: back yeah, yeah, yeah, they were kind of based on
18:20
Speaker 1: the engineers hats and what's up with that? Who knows?
18:24
Speaker 1: Weird time. They're always leading the way fashion forward. Alright,
18:28
Speaker 1: So these guys with the white Caps, right, yes, the
18:31
Speaker 1: French Legion are technically you could call them mercenaries, although
18:37
Speaker 1: they they can't eventually gain French citizenship through joining the
18:42
Speaker 1: Foreign leagus right after three years and they have to
18:44
Speaker 1: sign up for five year tour of duty, five year contract.
18:46
Speaker 1: And the French Foreign Legion was established in eighteen thirty
18:49
Speaker 1: one because when the French Revolution happened in July of
18:53
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty apparently this opened the floodgates for people I
18:57
Speaker 1: guess seeking their fortune in the newly free France for
19:01
Speaker 1: French republic Um. And so the French said, well, you
19:05
Speaker 1: know what, let's put all these ragamuffins and no good
19:07
Speaker 1: knicks to good use, and they started the French Foreign Legions.
19:11
Speaker 1: So if you came in if you wanted to become
19:13
Speaker 1: a Frenchman. Uh, and I guess you're an able bodied man.
19:16
Speaker 1: They said, sure, you can become a friendman. Sign up
19:18
Speaker 1: five years, we'll put you in the foreign legion. After
19:20
Speaker 1: three years you can become a citizen. After the fifth
19:23
Speaker 1: year you can come back and do whatever you like.
19:25
Speaker 1: And many were no good knicks actually in the early days.
19:28
Speaker 1: And still it's Mike joining the circus or you know,
19:34
Speaker 1: sometimes we have some no good knicks that joined up
19:36
Speaker 1: in the army at eighteen because they're you know, parole
19:40
Speaker 1: officer says that might be a good move for him,
19:43
Speaker 1: and the army will shape them up and turn them
19:44
Speaker 1: into good citizens hopefully or vengeance killers. So can we
19:50
Speaker 1: talk more about the legionnaires. I think we should. Yeah, okay, Well,
19:54
Speaker 1: they get um recruited and they get a proof of
19:58
Speaker 1: preselection and that means you get a little medical check
20:02
Speaker 1: up and what they call a quote confirmation of motivation. Right,
20:05
Speaker 1: they want to make actually do want to do this?
20:08
Speaker 1: Or you're aware that you're signing up for five years
20:10
Speaker 1: to go be in the military, right, And once you
20:13
Speaker 1: pass through that stage, you go to another set of
20:17
Speaker 1: like more thorough questioning and medical uh checkups, and then
20:20
Speaker 1: you go to basic training for fifteen weeks a little
20:23
Speaker 1: country town in the south of France. And at the
20:25
Speaker 1: end of that they introduce you to your you know,
20:27
Speaker 1: your comrades and your military life. They teach you French
20:31
Speaker 1: ideal you can speak a little French at the end
20:33
Speaker 1: of this. And then at the end you get your
20:34
Speaker 1: cape blanc, which is that goofy looking white at right,
20:38
Speaker 1: And it isn't it? It is? And it kind of
20:40
Speaker 1: stands out it's not very practical. No, and uh, there's
20:44
Speaker 1: a picture of a modern foreign legionnaire, French foreign legionnaire,
20:48
Speaker 1: and he does he's wearing like a beret and camo
20:51
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. So I think it's kind of
20:52
Speaker 1: like their dress. Sure thing. Um, but so okay, so
20:56
Speaker 1: you have gone through basic training, you're a legionnaire now. Um,
21:00
Speaker 1: apparently there's eight thousand of them at any given point
21:03
Speaker 1: in time right now. They hail from a hundred and
21:06
Speaker 1: thirty six different countries, strangely including France itself. How does
21:11
Speaker 1: that work? I don't know. We'll have to find out. Yeah. Um,
21:15
Speaker 1: so the uh, they after you get through basic training
21:19
Speaker 1: and you're you're now a legionnaire. They send you to
21:21
Speaker 1: I guess one of eleven regiments all over the world,
21:24
Speaker 1: Chad Ivory Coast, Afghanistan, all over the place, some places
21:27
Speaker 1: you don't really want to be. I would imagine you
21:30
Speaker 1: want to get a Chad. No, I got another staff
21:32
Speaker 1: for you. Eighteen thirty one, Josh. Since then, more than
21:36
Speaker 1: thirty five thousand legionnaires have been killed in combat. Right,
21:39
Speaker 1: it's a lot. Yeah. I think part of the reason
21:42
Speaker 1: we mentioned that legionnaires aren't necessarily looked down upon, even
21:46
Speaker 1: though they are pretty much a mercenary group, because they
21:49
Speaker 1: do get paid and they don't they're not doing it
21:51
Speaker 1: for ideology. But I think the fact that you sign
21:54
Speaker 1: up for five years, you can attain citizenship through this,
21:57
Speaker 1: and you're serving a specific nation kind of ads like
22:00
Speaker 1: kind of a military tinge to it, you know what
22:02
Speaker 1: I mean. Well, they're no more as soldiers instead of contractors.
22:07
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the contractors there, chuck. Yeah, these guys
22:10
Speaker 1: are typically ex military or former police officers. Um, the
22:16
Speaker 1: batter the better, you know, like Green Berets as Delta Force.
22:21
Speaker 1: This is who you want in your PMC. Yeah, Like
22:24
Speaker 1: Simon Mann was a x S a S guy. Right,
22:28
Speaker 1: So these these dudes are brought in, they are paid
22:31
Speaker 1: UM it says six hundred, seven hundred dollars a day,
22:35
Speaker 1: sometimes up to a thousand dollars a day for their work.
22:38
Speaker 1: Not bad, it's substantial. But what we're saying earlier is,
22:40
Speaker 1: and this is kind of funny, is they typically don't
22:43
Speaker 1: get benefits, which surprised me. I thought any company would
22:46
Speaker 1: want to get a benefit pay together. But no, you
22:49
Speaker 1: can't get a break as e mercencey risk. So you
22:51
Speaker 1: gotta pay for your own benefits. You have to cover
22:53
Speaker 1: your own taxes and all that. Yeah, and how much
22:55
Speaker 1: is life insurance if you're a soldier of fortune? I
22:59
Speaker 1: have no idea, but it's astronomical. So at the end
23:03
Speaker 1: of the day, once you take out all the money
23:05
Speaker 1: for all those things and for you know, milk and sugar,
23:08
Speaker 1: they're probably not paid a whole lot more than a
23:10
Speaker 1: regular military personnel. Probably not maybe who I think if
23:15
Speaker 1: you went to work for Blackwater something, you can probably
23:18
Speaker 1: make a pretty decent amount of cash. Um. There's some
23:22
Speaker 1: other things that UM private military companies and contractors do
23:27
Speaker 1: that aren't necessarily war based, and there are actually kind
23:30
Speaker 1: of cool. Um, there is a group that train UH
23:36
Speaker 1: guides who combat poachers in the Congo um to prevent
23:41
Speaker 1: the extinction of things like the black rhino. That's pretty cool.
23:45
Speaker 1: Private security for corporations obviously, when de Beers is poking
23:49
Speaker 1: around Africa, and Exxon and VP or the Beers definitely
23:53
Speaker 1: needs the security. They're traveling around the country in hostile areas,
23:56
Speaker 1: so they need the best of the best. And like
23:58
Speaker 1: you said, um, guarding high risk dignitaries like common cars,
24:03
Speaker 1: eye that kind of thing. Um. And then apparently they
24:06
Speaker 1: also are used in counter drug operations. Yeah. I didn't
24:10
Speaker 1: realize that. I didn't either. I mean, hey, the A
24:13
Speaker 1: can't do it all right, Yeah, good point. Yeah, So
24:16
Speaker 1: especially now in the use of private military contractors really
24:20
Speaker 1: exploded in the nineties and they become, like you said,
24:23
Speaker 1: so far entrenched in our military. That is, there's almost
24:29
Speaker 1: no separating and we become so dependent on them. And
24:31
Speaker 1: they also don't necessarily engage exclusively in um, you know,
24:35
Speaker 1: gun toting missions, like they could cook they the same
24:40
Speaker 1: company can can sing, cooks, drivers, like all all this
24:44
Speaker 1: stuff that frees up our soldiers. Yeah. I didn't even
24:47
Speaker 1: think about that. But there are some risks, some definite
24:50
Speaker 1: downsides to using mercenaries, right, Yeah, I would say that
24:53
Speaker 1: the one that stood out to me the most is
24:55
Speaker 1: what you really want in a situation like war is
24:59
Speaker 1: loyalty above all out, definitely, And when you're hiring a
25:01
Speaker 1: mercenary there after the buck and they're not necessarily even
25:04
Speaker 1: from your country, so you can't really count on that nationalism, right,
25:07
Speaker 1: that ideology that motivates you to go, you know kill. Yeah,
25:11
Speaker 1: that's that's the biggest issue. I would say. There's actually
25:13
Speaker 1: a famous story from the fourteenth century about the Almo Gavaris. Yeah, Almogavaris. Yeah,
25:21
Speaker 1: that's good. The how you say, almogo veris finish frontiersman, Right,
25:26
Speaker 1: Some Byzantine leaders hired these guys to defend uh Byzantium
25:33
Speaker 1: right against the Turks. Yeah, and they did successfully, and
25:36
Speaker 1: then they turned on the Byzantines and um basically just
25:39
Speaker 1: walloped them, did a what number six, number six, number
25:42
Speaker 1: six on them for the next two years, So I
25:45
Speaker 1: didn't work out too well. Yeah, you're the the very
25:48
Speaker 1: people you hire to defend. You can say, you know what,
25:50
Speaker 1: let's um, let's just go ahead and take everything you
25:52
Speaker 1: got afterward, you know, it's much like hiring a hit man. Ah. Yeah,
25:57
Speaker 1: I really really trained former mill terry hit man. Right. Um.
26:01
Speaker 1: There's also uh that if you're in a military detachment,
26:07
Speaker 1: a standing military detachment, right, political army. Um, there's a
26:11
Speaker 1: lot of like you said, loyalty to the state, but
26:14
Speaker 1: there's also a lot of um, interpersonal loyalty among soldiers
26:18
Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily happen with um with mercenaries, So there
26:22
Speaker 1: can be a communication breakdown. They're not sharing intelligence, that
26:25
Speaker 1: kind of imagine. They look out for each other. And
26:27
Speaker 1: that's about it, right and whoever, probably they were hired
26:30
Speaker 1: to protect specifically. But all bets are off at the
26:33
Speaker 1: end of the day when you got a mercenary. I
26:35
Speaker 1: think that's pretty much the key takeaway here, Chuck. All
26:39
Speaker 1: bets are off when buddy that was that that's in
26:44
Speaker 1: this in the fine print when you write that initial contract, Chuck.
26:49
Speaker 1: We talked about this article. I think we covered most
26:51
Speaker 1: of it, but there's a bunch more information that we
26:54
Speaker 1: didn't get in this fine article by William Harris. And
26:57
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about mercenaries is type
26:59
Speaker 1: that war into the handy search bar at how stuff
27:02
Speaker 1: works dot com, which leads us, of course, to listener mail. Yes, Josh,
27:08
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this one from Anya from Boston, just
27:12
Speaker 1: simple and this is about a near death experience. And
27:16
Speaker 1: we we got a few of these, but I liked
27:18
Speaker 1: Anya's just listen to your podcast on inde ease if
27:22
Speaker 1: you couldn't tell from the subject. I had one that
27:24
Speaker 1: I find interesting. I had one myself. I can't remember it,
27:28
Speaker 1: but my mom told me what I said about it.
27:29
Speaker 1: At the time, I was three years old and was
27:32
Speaker 1: stick in the hospital. I can't remember why now, but
27:34
Speaker 1: my lungs were mostly solid. Not a good way to
27:37
Speaker 1: be born. Or I guess, yeah, she had the people
27:40
Speaker 1: one that way. It's like breathing through butter. Yeah. Uh.
27:43
Speaker 1: Suddenly she flatlined and she lived through it, and she
27:46
Speaker 1: woke up. Her mom said she had a dream, or
27:50
Speaker 1: that the girl had a dream where I was standing
27:52
Speaker 1: at the entrance to the hospital and a big yellow
27:54
Speaker 1: school bus pulled up. There was no driver, and when
27:57
Speaker 1: I tried to get on the bus, a little ball
27:59
Speaker 1: girl about a year older than me told me I
28:01
Speaker 1: could not get on the bus because I was too young.
28:03
Speaker 1: Just a note. I had no idea of what even
28:05
Speaker 1: a school bus was at this point in time, because
28:07
Speaker 1: I've been living in England, so that is my near
28:10
Speaker 1: death experience. She tried to board. It sounds like a
28:13
Speaker 1: bus to heaven, and the little gatekeeper said you're too young,
28:17
Speaker 1: You're not ready to go, so go back. She goent back.
28:20
Speaker 1: So look out for bald school girls. You know you're
28:23
Speaker 1: dead when you encounter one of those. And that's one
28:25
Speaker 1: from Boston. Well, thanks a lot, and yeah, we did
28:28
Speaker 1: get a lot of pretty cool emails. Thanks to everybody
28:30
Speaker 1: who sent in and shared their near death experience with us.
28:34
Speaker 1: Somewhere just off the charts chilling indeed. Yeah. Um, if
28:39
Speaker 1: you have any kind of story you want to share
28:41
Speaker 1: with Chucker I. If you are a soldier of fortune,
28:45
Speaker 1: somebody for hire. Uh, if you are a line cook
28:49
Speaker 1: in a chain restaurant, we want to hear from you.
28:52
Speaker 1: Send us an email to stuff Podcasts at how stuff
28:55
Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
29:02
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want more
29:06
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29:09
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