Michael “Mad Mike” Hoare, a world-famous mercenary, is dead at the age of 100.
He died on Sunday at a care facility in Durban, South Africa, his family said in a statement.
An accountant born to Irish parents in India, Hoare was driven to the mercenary life by an “anti-communist fervor” during the 1960s, subduing Marxist revolts in the Democratic Republic of Congo with a unit of 300 mercenaries.
Hoare’s actions inspired the 1978 fictional war film The Wild Geese, in which Welsh Shakespearean actor Richard Burton portrayed “Mad Mike.”
In 1981, Hoare tried but failed to overthrow Seychelles President France-Albert Rene, a radical socialist. After his team’s weapons were discovered at an airport, he commandeered an Air India plane to fly to South Africa. He was imprisoned for 33 months for air piracy.
Hoare moved to South Africa to begin a new life with his family after serving in the British army during World War II. His son and biographer Chris Hoare reflected on the memory of his father.
“Most people who met Mike described him as a legend and as an officer and a gentleman; only a few realized there was a bit of pirate thrown in,” Chris Hoare said about his father’s love for adventure.
Summing up his father’s life, Hoare said, “He lived to be 100 even though he embraced the philosophy that you can get more out of life by living dangerously — which makes his hundred all the more extraordinary.”
