The Idler, Tuesday, February 4, 2020

He made his

ton against

all the odds

COLONEL Mike Hoare, the legendary mercenary soldier, died in his sleep in Durban the other night, aged 100. A quiet end to a turbulent life that included:

·       Successfully fighting the Japanese in the jungles of the Far East during World War II.

·       Successfully fighting a communist-backed insurgency in the Congo.

·       An abortive attempt to invade the Seychelles Islands and topple the government.

·       A spell in prison for hijacking an Air India plane to escape from the Seychelles.

Given that career, for him to have reached the age of 100 is simply remarkable.

Mike Hoare, who ended World War II with the rank of major, epitomised the British gentleman officer – reserved, well-mannered, good-humoured but with steel beneath the surface. He was nothing like the freebooting, roughneck stereotype of the mercenary soldier (And there have been plenty of those in Africa).

How then did he come to being paid to fight other people's wars? Money for blood? It's a question people legitimately ask.

I think we need to look at the background. Hoare was meant to go to Sandhurst military academy to become a career army officer. Circumstances caused him instead to take up chartered accountancy. Rather a difference.

Then World War II rescued him from accountancy. Excitement. A return to accountancy? Tourist safaris in Africa were more appealing. Then the Cold War beckoned.

Reading Hoare's own books, I've no doubt that he saw fighting communism in the Congo as a parallel, in terms of legitimacy and morality, to fighting the Axis forces in World War II.

Similarly when he went to the Seychelles. In his eyes it would have been to topple a Soviet-leaning regime that had got into power by way of a coup against the elected government.

You could argue that he was Quixotic. You could say it's an over-simplification.  But I think the background explains much of the enigma about the gentlemanly, unassuming Colonel Mike Hoare.

 

 

Bookmarks

WHAT odd things people use as bookmarks. The library at the University of Liverpool, in England, had a book returned to it with a cheese slice – still in its plastic wrapper – inside as a bookmark.

A librarian mentioned it on Twitter and, according to Huffington Post, got a flood of response from other libraries about the world.

Bookmarks they had discovered in returned books included: a rasher of crispy bacon; a condom (still in its wrapper); a slice of toast (buttered); and £85 in notes (on different occasions and from different book borrowers).

There were also quite a lot of puns about the cheese slice bookmark:

·       If they weren't reading The Grate Gatsby I'll be bitterly disappointed.

·       If only students would handle books more caerphilly.

·       You gouda brie kidding!

·       Someone's misplaced their library curds.

Shhhhhh! Quiet please! This is a library, don't you know?.

 

 

Ice hockey

 

FORMER ice hockey star Beau Lintner is looking for information about the game in South Africa to assist a Swedish journalist who is writing a history of it here between 1939 and 1979.

Beau has already supplied the writer, Peter Gouda, with contacts now scattered about the world, but what they also need is online press records of ice hockey for Transvaal, Natal, Eastern Province and Western Province.

Can anyone out there help? Beau can be contacted at rylski@wirelessza.co.za

 

Tailpiece

 

A SCOTSMAN got arrested for making nuisance telephone calls. He kept reversing the charges.

 

Last word

 

 

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously. - Hubert H Humphrey