Mercenaries in popular culture explained

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.

Books

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 "The Ballad of the Green Berets" 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 generally seen as greedy, unscrupulous and cowardly by the society. Similarly, Glen Cook's The Black Company series focuses on the adventures of an elite mercenary unit.

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

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 War). 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.

Mercenaries or "Mercs" are a recurring characters in "The Chronicles of Riddick" Universe. In this setting, Mercs are often found filling the roles of Bounty Hunters who take out contracts to capture the universe's most dangerous criminals and turn them over to brutal Triple Max Prisons. These Mercs often work alone or in small groups, however they are known to sign on to larger crews depending on their contract. Mercs are contracted through an umbrella organisation known as "The Guild" which legalizes and loosely monitors their activities, however, many Mercs are partial to the practices of kidnapping for profit and stealing prisoners, often using extreme violence. There are vary few limits to which these Mercs will go to accomplish a mission, such as posing as police officers and infiltrating occupied planets just to capture one rogue convict. The recent Xbox 360 game The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena features a large group of "Rogue Mercs" arguably space pirates, who raid passing vessels and transform the occupants into mindless "Ghost Drones" which become a commodity to sell to the warring factions of the galaxy. Bounty Hunter Mercs are sometimes known as "Fake Badges".

Magazines and comics

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

Captain Easy Soldier of Fortune was an American comic from the 1930s to the 1980s.

The manga Hellsing features a band of mercenaries known as The Wild Geese, led by Pip Bernadotte. It is unclear whether the mercenaries are intended to be representing the same group as in the Daniel Carney novel, though this is possible. It is also likely that the group takes its name from The Wild Geese, the Irish who left Ireland following the Treaty of Limerick, since it was the Wild Geese serving France who finally broke the back of the English army at the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745.

The manga Dragon Ball features the Ginyu Force, elite mercenaries hired by Freeza.

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

The manga Inuyasha features The Band of Seven, a band of seven mercenaries that loved to kill and were so strong that warlords feared their strength even as allies, before they were hunted down and beheaded. They were revived ten years later as spectres guarding the main antagonist Naraku in exchange for eternal life from Shikon Jewel shards.

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

The manga and anime series Black Lagoon focuses on a group of mercenaries known as The Lagoon Company and pirates in present-day Southeast Asia.

The Marvel Universe features many mercenary characters as heroes or villains most notably Deadpool (aka Wade Wilson, "The Merc With a Mouth"). Others include Moon Knight, Taskmaster, Agent X, Luke Cage, Silver Sable and Bullseye. Mercenaries can make convenient enemies for superheroes because, plot-wise, they require no further motivation than to have been hired by another enemy.

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

Slade Wilson, AKA Deathstroke is a mercenary in the DC Universe, and is an enemy of Batman and the Teen Titans. He appears in various media such as Teen Titans, Arrow, , , Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, and , among others.

Similarly, Floyd Lawton (Deadshot) is a mercenary sniper and killer in the DC Universe, enemy of Batman, Green Arrow and other characters; ha appears also in animated shows and videogames based on DC chars, as Justice League, Arrow, , Injustice 2, , Suicide Squad and others

Theatre

Films

See also List of war films: Mercenaries in the third world

Television

Music

The song "Mercenary Song" off the album Train A Comin' by Steve Earle is about a pair of mercenaries.

The song "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" by Warren Zevon recounts 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 "the Hero" by the death metal band Amon Amarth is about a (dying) mercenary. Also their 2016 released album "Jomsviking" is about a historic company of Viking mercenaries.

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.

John Cale recorded a song titled "Mercenaries" on his album Sabotage/Live in 1979.

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

British heavy metal band Iron Maiden has a song titled "The Mercenary", on their album Brave New World. The song's lyrics appear to be inspired by the film Predator.

Irish band Thin Lizzy included a song titled "Soldier Of Fortune" on their album Bad Reputation 1977.The soldier of fortune that appears in the lyrics is Costas Georgiou also called Col. Callan who was executed after the Luanda Trial in 1976.

American singer-songwriter Harry Chapin recorded a song entitled "Mercenaries", which first appeared on his 1977 album Dance Band on the Titanic. A live version of the track appears on 1998's The Bottom Line Encore Collection.

Board and card games

In , '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 entropy, darkness, or selfishness. 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 tabletop wargame setting of BattleTech has countless mercenary units in its Inner Sphere fictional setting, as mercenaries have been a prominent element of the BattleTech universe since its initial publication, and certain famous mercenary commands are even among the most celebrated and prestigious military units in the Inner Sphere. Much of the published BattleTech roleplaying game material, and most of the various BattleTech and MechWarrior videogames, are focused on the exploits of mercenary commands, allowing players the freedom to determine their own paths and to move between different government and Great House factions as employers, as an easy way to explore the various areas and cultures of the setting.

Computer and video games

A toast

A mercenary toast: "Vive la mort, vive la guerre, vive le sacré mercenaire" (Long live death, long live war, long live the sacred mercenary) was used in the novel and film The Dogs of War (1980).[1] It is also mentioned in a couple of books.[2] [3] There is a similar toast to the French Foreign Legion which pre-dates the film "Vive la mort, vive la guerre, vive la Légion Etrangère".[4] [5]

See also

Notes and References

  1. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080641/trivia Trivia for The Dogs of War
  2. Frank Mkalawile Chipasula. O Earth, Wait for Me, Ravan Press, 1984,, p. 31.
  3. Walter Wolter, Gefallene Männer: 13 Stories Haffmans, 1997 SBN 3251003542, 9783251003549. p. 116.
  4. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,904160-2,00.html The Last Beau Gesfe
  5. David S Holland, Vietnam, a Memoir, iUniverse, 2006, p. 12