Cool Person Of The Week Is A Mercenary

I know that most people will not understand why I would choose this person as a "cool" person of the week, but there are reasons beyond testosterone! This man was one of the people who play "beyond" the rules for country and for self. They often have a romantic appeal, like Che Gueverra for the leftists! This was a man who fought the "demons" of this world to try and make it a better place. I must admit that i have changed alot from the person who was a "America Right or Wrong" person a few months ago, but I shall still revere "some" who fought the good fight to make it better for all of us; in particular during the BAD old days of the cold "hot" war in minor nations around the world. There was a time when the good guys and the bad guys could be told apart, and Bob Denard was one of the good guys!!

Bob Denard, a mercenary who staged coups, battled communism and fought for French interests and his own across Africa for more than three decades, has died, his sister said Sunday. He was 78. Denard died Saturday in the Paris area, said his sister, Georgette Garnier. She declined to say how he died, but he had suffered from Alzheimer's disease and cardiovascular problems. A fervent anti-communist who had worked for several dictators and monarchs, Denard was among a group of postcolonial French mercenaries known as "les affreux", the horrible ones. He claimed he had the backing of Paris, but was never given official support.

Bob Denard, 77, contributed to bloody conflicts across Africa for nearly 40 years, but the French mercenary is best known for his interventions in the Comoros Islands, one of which has led to his conviction in a French court. He once described himself as "a soldier never an assassin", and has claimed he was acting in the interests of France or other European powers, though he was once accused of plotting to assassinate a French prime minister.


He is sometimes portrayed as a pirate figure, and his career is certainly nothing if not colourful. In 1968 he and several hundred fighters tried to invade Katanga - now part of the Democratic Republic of Congo - by bicycle, and in 1995 he arrived with 30 men in inflatable boats for the coup attempt on the Comoros.

He has got all sorts of different names. When he was in the Comoros, he took on an Arabic name and he converted to Islam." Denard was born Gilbert Bourgeaud in Bordeaux in 1929. After a spell with the French navy in Indochina, he joined the police in the French colony of Morocco where he was convicted of an assassination plot against Prime Minister Pierre Mendes-France. After serving 14 months in jail, he was cleared of any wrongdoing and released. After returning to France temporarily, he came back to Africa as a mercenary:
he fought for the secessionist government of Katanga in 1961-63; he would return a few years later to what is now DR Congo in order to fight against leftist rebels, then for secessionists again
he went to northern Yemen in 1963 to train royalist tribesmen fighting the government
from 1968 he was employed by the government of Gabon
in 1977 he played his role in the failed coup attempt in Benin
As for the Comoros, a small, impoverished state, he is said to have overthrown its government four times between 1975 and 1995, and lived there for a decade. In 1999, he was acquitted in France of killing Comoran President Ahmed Abdullah in 1989. "Everyone seems to agree that when he first successfully overthrew the government of the Comoros, he was almost certainly supported by the French government," says Adam Roberts. There was a rumour that he had sailed in a fishing boat all the way from France, all the way down the west coast of Africa, through the Atlantic and around the coast of South Africa and up to the Comoros. In fact it looks much more likely that he came in a fishing boat just from somewhere very close to the Comoros in the French-run part of the Indian Ocean. The French certainly didn't disapprove of what he was doing early on. His later trials came probably because they had stopped approving it."
In his book The Wonga Coup, Adam Roberts looks at other mercenaries who tried unsuccessfully to mount a coup in Equatorial Guinea in 2004. In his experience of investigating mercenaries, he says there are two main motivations: It is the adrenalin they are seeking as much as the money. Many mercenaries, who are usually ex-soldiers, do it because it's what they know and it's what they enjoy.
Whatever drove Denard, who is now said to be suffering from Alzheimer's disease, few in Africa are likely to remember him with fondness. Mercenaries have just intensified Africa's wars, says Adam Roberts. They have fought for all sides and they have made the wars ever worse - whether they were being paid their wages by governments or rebels.
Here is more of Denard: Bob Denard, the French mercenary notorious for his involvement in African coups since the 1970s, is to go on trial early next year for his attempt to overthrow the Comoros government 10 years ago, officials said Monday. Denard and 26 other defendants will be brought before a Paris court on charges of criminal association with intent to organise a crime over their sequestration of the Comoros' then president Said Mohamed Djohar during the failed coup bid that took place September 27-October 4, 1995. The veteran combatant, now 76, led 30 mercenaries on board four inflatable dinghies that landed on the shores of the archipelago.
Djohar was taken hostage and held in army barracks while Denard and his group declared a transitional government under the leadership of opposition figures.
But France, acting under a cooperation treaty with the Comoros, dispatched troops that quashed the coup, freed Djohar and arrested the mercenaries. Denard has emerged relatively unscathed from past brushes with the French law over his paramilitary activities -- sometimes because he acted with Paris's tacit approval. And in 1993 he received a suspended five-year prison term for an attempted overthrow in Benin in 1977.
In 1976 he backed a coup to depose Abdullah after Abdullah declared independence from France, and two years later he overthrew Ali Soilih whom he had helped install in his place. Soilih was killed "while trying to escape," he said. Denard then backed the restoration of Abdullah in 1978 and took up duties as the chief of the presidential guard. His last acknowledged coup attempt in the Comoros was in 1997.
Since winning independence from France in 1975, the Comoros have suffered through 20 coups or attempted putsches that have severely affected potential foreign investment, trade and business opportunities. Denard, who was married to a Comoran woman and who limps from an old leg wound, fought in African, Middle East and the Vietnam conflicts as a soldier before turning to his freelance ways, which have also taken him to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen, Biafra in Nigeria, and Angola. Born plain Gilbert Bourgeaud, he became the archtypical 'dog of war' for his escapades around Africa, several of which he claimed were carried out under contract from Belgium, France, Gabon and Morocco.

Just as John Wayne died and left several fo us depressed, this interesting "mercenary" has left this world, that he did so muc to change, and to change for what he thought was the "right" thing!!

Take care and I shall try and have a "cool" person of the week, who is not a Killer, next week!! Thanks for reading this, and I am sorry that many of us young kids wanted to BE "mercenaries" when we grew up, and people like this were "romantic" "knights of old" type people. We belived that One Person Could Make A Difference, just like Michael Knight and Knightrider of the 80's...I am so not politically correct on many areas!! Take Care!!




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