How Mercenaries Work

my best. Yeah. So Chuck came in on a sick day, on a wing and a prayer. I just walked in. Yeah, traffic is bad, it's nasty out, raining, raining, cold, and we're going to talk about something else that is cold. Hey, nice mercenaries, Yeah, Chuck, we've talked about Delta Force before. Remember, we had to keep our composure sure, because we were tittering and excited and all that. Yes, you're taken to task a little bit by liking violence that's not necessarily

going to happen in this one. I have a feeling mercenaries, which are as I think everybody knows our soldiers for hire are pretty much universally hated by everybody. Yeah, okay, I didn't get that. Yeah, nobody likes a mercenary. One of the reasons why is because when you go to war, because people go to war because somebody is getting pushed around by some other big jerk country or um, you know,

there's some dictator that should be toppler. It's ideological on the suite, on the surface, and that's what attracts you know, brave men and women, braver people than us much who go into service not for money, but because they want to protect democracy or freedom or what have you. Mercenaries don't do that. They go and say, uh, this country is paying a lot right now for this war that they're in, and I'm gonna go kill for them. Sure

for money, I'm killing for money. They're pretty much man. Yeah, I didn't realize that the fascinating history of the mercenary until I read this. No, and William Harris, by the way, did a hum dinger of a job. Job. Yeah, So, Chuck,

let's talk about mercenaries. Where did they come from? Well, Josh, the earliest account that we know of is about twenty four hundred years ago when uh Persian prince in general Cyrus the Younger, which I like that Cyrus the Younger, not to be confused with Cyrus the elderly guy, right, the bald Uh he hired the ten thousand, which was an army of Greek mercenaries, to seize the throne in Persia, right, and what a sarces? Yeah, and I'm not sure, but I've seen the movie three hundred, so I bet the

ten thousand were pretty tough. Yeah, And I was wondering, are the three hundred and the ten thousand related? Are the three hundred the remains of the decimated ten thousand? If so, they're tough dudes. They were tough dudes. That was a great movie. That's stupid disfigured guy gave him up? Yeah, and oh the abs did you know? In that movie? They they wanted to recreate what these guys probably looked like. So when they were training, they didn't use any equipment.

They did things like roll tires up hills, did like real like earthy um, like the Strongman competition very much. It carried like concrete beer kegs and stuff, right, and like pickup tractor trailers like the beer cakes what a waste of beer. Seriously. So yeah, so that was back in what four oh one BC, right, and since then

we've pretty much used mercenaries almost uninterrupted. Yeah, they made a pretty big splash, I guess you could say in the Hundred Years War, which lasted longer than a hundred years, But they did. But I mean, they're not gonna say, what the hundred and sixteen year War that doesn't have the same ring between the English and the French from s to fourteen fifty three. Well, that's the problem with the long War is that your armies are going to be decimated precisely, so you have to turn to the

you know, the paid for higher guys. Well, not only that, the standing political army didn't really appear until I think the seventeenth century. So back back in this time, all these disparate landowning earls and dukes and princes, Um, they had their own private armies and they were all for pay. But um a lot of them were drawn from their own countrymen. But yeah, you make an excellent point. When you have a hundred year war, you're gonna go through

a lot of your countrymen. That's just kind of one of the aspects of war. So yeah. Um. In the Hundred Year War, a guy named Edward of Woodstock who's known as the Black Prince, which, by the way, from now on, I want you to call me the Black Prince. I was gonna call you Josh of Woodstock. Not for many years, buddy. Um. He made use of mercenaries in what how do you pronounce this, chuck, I'm gonna go with cheval sha yes, which basically means burned, pillage, loot

and rape. Yes, And that's our war. I think fans of Blazing Saddles might know that better as the number six. That was where they go riding into town whipping in a wamping every living thing. Yeah, yeah, that's what they say in Blazing Saddles. Then they also had a number six dance later on, which was a really great line dance. Maybe so, probably not. I think it's a little more

bloody and horrifying. Yeah. Um. And then the the Hundred Years War ends, and I guess the use of mercenaries kind of dried up for a little while, right, Yeah, So my earlier comment about them being used uninterrupted was totally baseless. Well, I bet you there were some mercenaries used here and there, just not as widely. Right, Let's talk about some famous mercenaries there, Chuck, Okay, like the Swiss Guard. I think that's pretty tough. Yeah. They made

the point in here. William made the point in here that sometimes a soldier would get a specialty, a combat specialty, so they would be sought out because of a particular war or a battle they might be in. And the Swiss Guard was such because they were masters of the pike. Right, and they're still around. There's a pretty cool photo of them, um, and they are holding their pikes and they look Yeah, it's it's it's pretty awesome. It sounds like a euphemism.

They're holding their pikes. Yeah, I'm not gonna go there. What about the other one? You speak German? I found out Chuck speaks Germans and Chuck, how do you pronounce this one? And you're gonna ask this and I practiced it. I'm gonna go with lan. Okay, that's better than what I was gonna And you know I do speak German, but that's a really tough one. Even if you are German, I'm gonna can you can you say say hello to my little friends Zach to mankind and freunden. Yeah, checks

of Beverly Hills Chuawa fame by the way. So yes, those German soldiers actually also used the pike, and but they also used guns, which was kind of new in the fifteenth and sixteenth century, right, muskets, arquebus, arquebus. Yeah,

so those guys made a pretty big impression. One of the reasons why they were I guess heavily sought after was because unlike the Swiss Guard, they I mean they specialized in different weapons, but they had like different aspects of their companies, Like you know, somebody would use the must get, somebody else would use a pike, somebody else would use a sword. So they were like everything you

needed all in one right. And actually, did you know that, um, in the Revolutionary War there were tons and tons of mercenaries, not until this and I'm surprised I have not made a film about it yet because William and he even has this uh sourced said that during the Revolutionary War Americans probably fought more Germans than they did English British. Is that true? Is that possible? I could see that. Yeah, it's crazy. You never hear about that. And uh, the

one of those um. One of those mercenaries, German mercenaries, I think they're called hessians um, turned out to be the headless Horseman. Oh yeah, yeah, well they could Bud. It could Bud's foe. Oh yeah, that's right, sorry, it

could was the he was the nerve act manager. So yeah. One, Like we said, standing armies kind of became popular in the sixteenth century and never really the popularity never waned much, unlike the twist um they so you know, political standing armies have been around for a while, right, you mean

the dance a twists um. So as a result, mercenaries have kind of fallen to the wayside until um, World War two, Yeah, which kind of changed everything and a lot of a lot of World War two was a probably the most landmark event in the last I don't know, since the Magna Carta. Maybe everything changed after that. You know,

Germans got volunteers actually, so technically they weren't mercenaries. We'll go over in a minute what the Geneva Convention actually says as a mercenary, but I think the Germans actually had volunteers from other country but Fry will just call them free willie free willies. So yeah, was in World War Two. Actually they were um. Yeah, and since they were volunteers and they weren't paid, they weren't technically mercenaries, but they fulfill a lot of the other stuff, a

lot of the other criteria. Um. So then yeah, after World War Two, UM, part of the Geneva Convention, this agreement among all the warring nations and the allies on the Rules of War UM, mercenaries and their use and their definition is very much addressed, right, Yes, in the first Protocol of nineteen seventy seven. Should we go with

the criteria. Yes. In order to be considered a mercenary, Josh, you must be specially recruited to take part in the conflict, but not a member of the armed forces of the state that recruited you. Right, that's kind of a big one. Like the German volunteers and World War Two, they're from other countries. Exactly. You need to actively engage in hostilities, otherwise, I guess you probably wouldn't be very good mercenary. If not,

you're just some guy standing on the sideline. Exactly. Uh, you were motivated by private gain and your p its substantially more than the ordinary armed forces of that state. Soldier of fortune. Yeah, we'll get into that too, though it's not quite as lucrative when you factor in some other things. You know, I was kind of surprised about that. And um, what else is that the last one? Yeah, no, Chuck, that pretty much does wrap it up. I think you

covered all the big points, um. And even earlier than that, mercenaries were kind of put on the fringes um, right after World War Two when the original Geneva Convention was established, because they created the definition for a lawful combatant. Yes, basically what we think of as a soldier, somebody who belongs to a nation that's important to that's a war right, because if you're a lawful combatant, Um, you can engage in offensive conflict, yeah, with with people in other countries.

You protect people, and if you're caught, you are expected to be treated as a prisoner of war. If you're a mercenary, you're way far out there on the edge. Yeah, you're kind of on your own, like you can be tried for murder and half towards whatever. Um. And remember I think in September two thousand seven, Blackwater, very very famous UM outfit. I thot you're talking about the DeBie brother song No black Water. No, No, we're not talking

about that one different guys. Um, yeah, you know Blackwater? Right. Actually I responded to someone asked to do something on black Water, and I responded, yeah, maybe we should do one of the Dubie Brothers as a whole. And he didn't get the joke at all. He wrote back and said, no, that's weird that you thought that I was really talking about black Water. Well that's weird you didn't get the joke, right, Yeah, Um you remember. Okay, so you are aware of black Water? Okay.

And they I think that right after this they changed their name to Blackwater Worldwide and now there's z x E. Yeah, they keep changing their name with very horrible travesty. But um, you know a lot of people call them them mercenaries. They're now called private military contractors, but basically they supply soldiers of fortune, right, yeah, for secure mainly. And um that we remember in two thousand seven there was this horrible thing that went down in Baghdad where I think

seventeen Iraqi civilians were killed. Um when when black Water um contractors opened fire, Yeah, got real trigger happy, and I think they found that fourteen of those deaths were unjustified. Yeah, they broke the deadly forced rules, right, and Iraq was chomping at the bit to prosecute these guys. And I believe the US stepped in and protected them, but I mean they it was very possible for them to be

prosecuted because they weren't lawful combatants. Well, the US uses a lot of these UH contractors, as it turns out, because I saw the U n Pastor resolution in the late eighties outlawing this kind of mercenary, but the US conveniently has still not signed that document because what we want to hire the mercenaries because they What happened is, and William makes a great point, is with UH the

different rules of warfare. Now you have lots of weapons systems and UM soldiers that are trained to man these systems and operate these systems. So what happens is they're spread a little thin with UM some of these day to day duties like UH security of like high ranking civil servants, that kind of thing, right, which the military would usually take care of. Right. UM. Anytime you see hummed cars, I you'll see a couple of white guys who wear Oakley sunglasses and have beards with um, I

guess uh Heckler and cock um guns. And they are I think former Delta Force, but now they work for Z. They're not smiling, no, but they provide security. And they can do that lawfully. You can provide security. You can provide um a defensive security where you're not engaging in any offense whatsoever. Um supposedly, right, and then you're a lawful or your your a mercenary under the Geneva Convention, the guidelines and the protocol and all that. Right, I

gotta staff for you. Okay. It's said that the US likes to use these these soldiers of fortune. There's uh, there's no hard numbers, but they suggest that more than a hundred and eighty thousand of these contractors are working in Iraq alone, and that all together, all over the world,

that they outnumber the United States military in total. Yeah, and we've spent about a hundred billion dollars in the Iraq war on these mercenaries, which I think something like a quarter or a third of the total that we had spent. Yeah, when this article was written, I think in late two thousand and eight, right, which of course is smaller now. So Chuck. You know, Africa has been a big site for mercenaries and it still continues to be.

That's what I hear. There's pretty much anytime there's a revolution, a coup attempt, something like that, and anybody has some cash, they hire outside mercenaries, right yeah. Uh. And there's a guy named Simon man Do you remember this, Yeah, back in two thousand four. In March two thousand four, man Um was the head of two companies UM that were private military companies, contractors, but basically mercenary outfits. Right, yeah, sand Line International. And I love the name of this one,

Executive outcomes, right. I don't know what that means, yeah, but it sounds so shady. Yeah, it does. Executive Like you can just see like their their company headquarters, executive outcome. It's like one of those offices that you wander into to ask, like to use the bathroom, and they never like, what is this place? What do you guys do here? And you just escorted out. When you wake up and on the park bench and take a lump on your head,

you have like ink on your fingers. Right, So well, man Um in March two thousand four led a group um of mercenaries from South Africa and I guess his company um to Equatorial Guinea and he didn't make it. He got picked up in Zimbabwe at they were going to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea. UM the president Teyodoro Obang A right nice and uh they got picked up and held and apparently he was just recently pardoned by President Obang and released in November. UM and he's

out and he is naming names. The story that he tells now he's back in Great Britain is that Mark Thatcher, Sir Mark Thatcher, whose last name he might recognize. His mom was the PM for a while UM and as some other people from around the world had an interest in the oil fields at Equatorial Guinea and hired allegedly hired time and man to overthrow the government so they could move in uh and get these oil revenues or control these oil fields. And he was condemned pretty roundly.

Man was but he was fully pardoned by Obang. He was. Yeah, it was in prison for five and a half years, but he did have to shut down executive outcomes apparently, right. Yeah, and sand Lie, Yeah, they're they're probably opened up under another name. Though probably probably not. But if you think about thinking about how people think of Blackwater or UM. You know, Simon Man, no one cared. He was in prison for five and a half years, like and the reason why is because he was a soldier of fortune.

These are mercenaries, you know, and people just don't think of them very highly. True. You can we name some of these other companies? Yeah, sure, just because I thought it was kind of funny some of them. And if I had a mercenary company, I don't know what I would name it, but it would probably not be the Olive group that was one of them. Yeah, And triple canopy, that's that's probably a military term. And what's another goal on this? One's good kroll k R O L L Government. Yeah,

that probably stands for something. UM. The one that got that I think stands out above all the rest is Global risk Strategies. I can see us if you go to Guatemala calling on Global Risk Strategies to come get us out. You know, I'd love to have that number. Actually, maybe we should look that up. So, Chuck, let's talk about another famous group of mercenaries that aren't necessarily and a look down upon UM. The French Foreign Legion. You know, the guys with the white Caps with the with them.

Do you remember in the eighties, like when did you break dance? No? Do you remember those hats though? They were like baseball caps, but then they had the flapping back yeah, yeah, yeah, they were kind of based on the engineers hats and what's up with that? Who knows?

Weird time. They're always leading the way fashion forward. Alright, So these guys with the white Caps, right, yes, the French Legion are technically you could call them mercenaries, although they they can't eventually gain French citizenship through joining the Foreign leagus right after three years and they have to sign up for five year tour of duty, five year contract.

And the French Foreign Legion was established in eighteen thirty one because when the French Revolution happened in July of eighteen thirty apparently this opened the floodgates for people I guess seeking their fortune in the newly free France for French republic Um. And so the French said, well, you know what, let's put all these ragamuffins and no good knicks to good use, and they started the French Foreign Legions. So if you came in if you wanted to become

a Frenchman. Uh, and I guess you're an able bodied man. They said, sure, you can become a friendman. Sign up five years, we'll put you in the foreign legion. After three years you can become a citizen. After the fifth year you can come back and do whatever you like. And many were no good knicks actually in the early days.

And still it's Mike joining the circus or you know, sometimes we have some no good knicks that joined up in the army at eighteen because they're you know, parole officer says that might be a good move for him, and the army will shape them up and turn them into good citizens hopefully or vengeance killers. So can we talk more about the legionnaires. I think we should. Yeah, okay, Well, they get um recruited and they get a proof of preselection and that means you get a little medical check

up and what they call a quote confirmation of motivation. Right, they want to make actually do want to do this? Or you're aware that you're signing up for five years to go be in the military, right, And once you pass through that stage, you go to another set of like more thorough questioning and medical uh checkups, and then you go to basic training for fifteen weeks a little country town in the south of France. And at the end of that they introduce you to your you know,

your comrades and your military life. They teach you French ideal you can speak a little French at the end of this. And then at the end you get your cape blanc, which is that goofy looking white at right, And it isn't it? It is? And it kind of stands out it's not very practical. No, and uh, there's a picture of a modern foreign legionnaire, French foreign legionnaire, and he does he's wearing like a beret and camo and all that stuff. So I think it's kind of

like their dress. Sure thing. Um, but so okay, so you have gone through basic training, you're a legionnaire now. Um, apparently there's eight thousand of them at any given point in time right now. They hail from a hundred and thirty six different countries, strangely including France itself. How does that work? I don't know. We'll have to find out. Yeah. Um, so the uh, they after you get through basic training

and you're you're now a legionnaire. They send you to I guess one of eleven regiments all over the world, Chad Ivory Coast, Afghanistan, all over the place, some places you don't really want to be. I would imagine you want to get a Chad. No, I got another staff for you. Eighteen thirty one, Josh. Since then, more than thirty five thousand legionnaires have been killed in combat. Right,

it's a lot. Yeah. I think part of the reason we mentioned that legionnaires aren't necessarily looked down upon, even though they are pretty much a mercenary group, because they do get paid and they don't they're not doing it for ideology. But I think the fact that you sign up for five years, you can attain citizenship through this, and you're serving a specific nation kind of ads like kind of a military tinge to it, you know what I mean. Well, they're no more as soldiers instead of contractors.

Let's talk about the contractors there, chuck. Yeah, these guys are typically ex military or former police officers. Um, the batter the better, you know, like Green Berets as Delta Force. This is who you want in your PMC. Yeah, Like Simon Mann was a x S a S guy. Right, So these these dudes are brought in, they are paid UM it says six hundred, seven hundred dollars a day, sometimes up to a thousand dollars a day for their work.

Not bad, it's substantial. But what we're saying earlier is, and this is kind of funny, is they typically don't get benefits, which surprised me. I thought any company would want to get a benefit pay together. But no, you can't get a break as e mercencey risk. So you gotta pay for your own benefits. You have to cover your own taxes and all that. Yeah, and how much is life insurance if you're a soldier of fortune? I

have no idea, but it's astronomical. So at the end of the day, once you take out all the money for all those things and for you know, milk and sugar, they're probably not paid a whole lot more than a regular military personnel. Probably not maybe who I think if you went to work for Blackwater something, you can probably

make a pretty decent amount of cash. Um. There's some other things that UM private military companies and contractors do that aren't necessarily war based, and there are actually kind of cool. Um, there is a group that train UH guides who combat poachers in the Congo um to prevent the extinction of things like the black rhino. That's pretty cool. Private security for corporations obviously, when de Beers is poking around Africa, and Exxon and VP or the Beers definitely

needs the security. They're traveling around the country in hostile areas, so they need the best of the best. And like you said, um, guarding high risk dignitaries like common cars, eye that kind of thing. Um. And then apparently they also are used in counter drug operations. Yeah. I didn't realize that. I didn't either. I mean, hey, the A

can't do it all right, Yeah, good point. Yeah, So especially now in the use of private military contractors really exploded in the nineties and they become, like you said, so far entrenched in our military. That is, there's almost no separating and we become so dependent on them. And they also don't necessarily engage exclusively in um, you know, gun toting missions, like they could cook they the same company can can sing, cooks, drivers, like all all this

stuff that frees up our soldiers. Yeah. I didn't even think about that. But there are some risks, some definite downsides to using mercenaries, right, Yeah, I would say that the one that stood out to me the most is what you really want in a situation like war is loyalty above all out, definitely, And when you're hiring a mercenary there after the buck and they're not necessarily even from your country, so you can't really count on that nationalism, right,

that ideology that motivates you to go, you know kill. Yeah, that's that's the biggest issue. I would say. There's actually a famous story from the fourteenth century about the Almo Gavaris. Yeah, Almogavaris. Yeah, that's good. The how you say, almogo veris finish frontiersman, Right, Some Byzantine leaders hired these guys to defend uh Byzantium

right against the Turks. Yeah, and they did successfully, and then they turned on the Byzantines and um basically just walloped them, did a what number six, number six, number six on them for the next two years, So I didn't work out too well. Yeah, you're the the very people you hire to defend. You can say, you know what, let's um, let's just go ahead and take everything you got afterward, you know, it's much like hiring a hit man. Ah. Yeah,

I really really trained former mill terry hit man. Right. Um. There's also uh that if you're in a military detachment, a standing military detachment, right, political army. Um, there's a lot of like you said, loyalty to the state, but there's also a lot of um, interpersonal loyalty among soldiers that doesn't necessarily happen with um with mercenaries, So there can be a communication breakdown. They're not sharing intelligence, that

kind of imagine. They look out for each other. And that's about it, right and whoever, probably they were hired to protect specifically. But all bets are off at the end of the day when you got a mercenary. I think that's pretty much the key takeaway here, Chuck. All bets are off when buddy that was that that's in this in the fine print when you write that initial contract, Chuck. We talked about this article. I think we covered most of it, but there's a bunch more information that we

didn't get in this fine article by William Harris. And if you want to learn more about mercenaries is type that war into the handy search bar at how stuff works dot com, which leads us, of course, to listener mail. Yes, Josh, I'm gonna call this one from Anya from Boston, just simple and this is about a near death experience. And we we got a few of these, but I liked Anya's just listen to your podcast on inde ease if you couldn't tell from the subject. I had one that

I find interesting. I had one myself. I can't remember it, but my mom told me what I said about it. At the time, I was three years old and was stick in the hospital. I can't remember why now, but my lungs were mostly solid. Not a good way to be born. Or I guess, yeah, she had the people one that way. It's like breathing through butter. Yeah. Uh. Suddenly she flatlined and she lived through it, and she

woke up. Her mom said she had a dream, or that the girl had a dream where I was standing at the entrance to the hospital and a big yellow school bus pulled up. There was no driver, and when I tried to get on the bus, a little ball girl about a year older than me told me I could not get on the bus because I was too young. Just a note. I had no idea of what even a school bus was at this point in time, because I've been living in England, so that is my near

death experience. She tried to board. It sounds like a bus to heaven, and the little gatekeeper said you're too young, You're not ready to go, so go back. She goent back. So look out for bald school girls. You know you're dead when you encounter one of those. And that's one from Boston. Well, thanks a lot, and yeah, we did get a lot of pretty cool emails. Thanks to everybody who sent in and shared their near death experience with us.

Somewhere just off the charts chilling indeed. Yeah. Um, if you have any kind of story you want to share with Chucker I. If you are a soldier of fortune, somebody for hire. Uh, if you are a line cook in a chain restaurant, we want to hear from you. Send us an email to stuff Podcasts at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page. H Brought to you

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