The Wild Geese
Painted illustration on canvas for the film poster in 1978 by painter Arnoldo Putzu
Original sold on sothebys
A small warning
If you've never seen the Wild Geese, I can't do anything but advice you to take two hours of your time and enjoy this very good piece of memorabilia.
I will talk about the film, it's pitch, the military operation that is central to the story, the guns and uniforms they use. You will be spoiled and I think it would be a shame to miss on this surprising movie that has a lot more to offer than just another soldiers for hire piece.
One of the promotion pictures of the movie, that's it, you have the whole atmosphere in there
Picture from antonyearnshaw
The story is rooted in this shady period of our story that saw a number of former soldiers take their kit to Africa and fight in endless conflicts.
After leaving the service, some felt decieved by the political players that sealed their fate in the field and took upon themselves to carry on the fight on their own terms and for their own profits.
"Mad" Mike Hoare, former british Army officer turned commander of the mercenary 5 Commando in Katanga, here during the battle of Baraka in 1965
Picture from telegraph
Central point of the intrigue, some of these infamous mercenaries were even present during the filming, including the casting of Ian Yule, a former paratrooper and real soldier of fortune during the Congo war in "Mad" Mike Hoare's 5 Commando and whom even invited him to meet the director.
Wagner Group mercenaries in Senegal in 2022
Picture from apnews
"Mad" Mike Hoare and director Andrew Maclaglen in 1978 during the filming of the Wild Geese
Picture from pattern-53-enfield
after recruiting, the unit goes to Swaziland for the final training, 50 men in ranks
Seen on imdb
Cinematographical monument from a lost era of military history, the Wild Geese is a mercenary ode to mateship and soldiering that takes on some very serious subjects opposed to some of the lighter atmospheres of the film.
Some cool and unusual guns
Pillar of the story, the crossbow used by Lieutenant Coetzee, south-african Boer played by actor Hardy Krüger
Picture from moviestillsdb
A south-african FAL 50 on the left and a Sterling SMG for the Sergent Major
Still from the film
Even with a communist backup, the fictionnal country and the soldiers of fortune attacking it are mostly equiped with european weaponry, which is highly believable in this context. A lot of the guns are variants of the mythical FN FAL from Belgium and produced under licensing in the UK and the rest is sourced from south-african used weapons.
A real treat for connoisseurs, some are quite rarely seen.
Most of the mercenaries are former british Army and they quite naturally wear standard issue DPM camo, appearing in 1966 in England.
The main thing that differs between them are the berets, red for the "officers" and brown for the grunts. Everyone of them wears a beret badge corresponding to his former posting in the british military, as Tosh and his SAS canvas insigna. Lieutenant Coetzee did not serve in Her Majesty's military but wears a para badge nonetheless.
Spraying the Cyanide, with a Danish Madsen M50 SMG covering
Still form the film
Three of the officers, with badges from left to right: Royal Welsh Fusiliers for Faulkner, Irish Guards for Flynn and Royal Green Jackets for Janders
Still from the film
Left to right: Royal Army Medical Corp, Grenadiers Guard, Lancers, Paras, Black Watch and Royal Scots
Picture from movie-dude
An east-german officer in the control tower at the airport
Still from the film
Military plan
After being approached by a wealthy and very well politically introduced industrial mogul, the former Colonel Faulkner is hired to get inside of an hostile south-african country and extract a disgraced president in the hope of getting him back to his posting.
To come up with an actable plan, he goes after two officers he served with and procedes to interview a bunch of ex-soldiers, most of them already saw combat under his command. Daring operation, they have three hours on the ground to achieve their objectives and get out.
The theory is simple as can be, after a night high altitude jump, they need to take simultaneously two separate objectives, extract the high-value target and get back in the plane just as it lands before getting out.
On Christmas day, they rely heavily on shock and awe to complete the mission without casualties.
It's as classic as it gets, silence the lookouts, break in, take over the prison, locate and extract the target towards the airport and get off from there.
It could have been just that, an overused intrigue with simple tactics but this is where this film really rise up. Adapted from a novel of the same title by rhodesian author Daniel Carney, the story as interesting and unusual twists.
Night jump, in sticks and in the dark for the Wild Geese
image from billstclair
Actor Ian Yule, former para and real mercenary in the Congo war, using a very unusual L1A1 carbine SLR fitted with a 40 rounds mag and a very early red dot optic. The character, Tosh, is a former SAS as his beret insigna shows and the gun might well be his personnal weapon
Picture from twitter
A very reliable FN MAG 58 GPMP in front and a rather surprising SIG STG47 from switzerland
Picture from imfdb
A captured Vickers MG on the right side and a very interesting Samopal VZ25 in the foreground
Picture from imfdb
The uniforms
Soldiers for hire
Inspired by real dogs of war units, the one in the movie is not just taking up on their stories.
Genuine armies, mercenaries outfits fought on every african soil during the troubled time period after a succession of independance wars.
Soldiers of fortune often get this bloodthirsty, greedy and unscrupulous tag attached to their back.
Bloodthirsty they indeed were, but a lot of them carefuly chose the cause they wanted to fight for and they were often paid badly, late or in some cases even got nothing out of it.
A great number of these private armies were only working for their own governments, doing political tasks without involving anything official.
Going on with the plan
Still from the film
A lot of different weaponry is used in during the production, most of them sourced through South-Africa, as it is done in the story.
A few of the hardware that was selected, however plausible in this context, are pretty rare and to this day are a subject of discussion among enthousiasts.
But surely what is an unexpected tactic is the use of the fearsome cyanide, both in vials attached to Lieutenant Coetzee's crossbow darts and as a deadly gas sprayed over the resting guards in the barracks. True war crime, this mass murder of the enlisted doesn't seem to bother the dogs of war at all, dreafully efficient.
The elite "Simbas" unit and their east-german officer wearing outdated british Denison camo
Still from the film
