"Also, these were hardly the ordinary sort of folk that you get to mix with at your local Wal-Mart. The average merc is a breed apart. His life of choice is most times infused with a relentless and sometimes reckless desire for a scrap. And then, once its over, many of these professionals simply dont fit in with society back home. Others become loners. Inherently, the majority are suspicious creatures, but then thats perhaps symptomatic of most of the military, especially where it involves the press. In essence, the mercenary types that Ive encountered in a score of wars over the past four decades have not been all that different from any regular U.S. Army, British Parachute Regiment or United Nations soldier from countries all over. Sitting in with a planning group at the U.S. Army Operational HQ at Somalia in the early 1990s was not very different from being with a crowd of Her Majestys Royal Marines at an Order Group at Lungi Airport ten years earlier."
A mercenary is a private individual who joins an armed conflict for personal profit, is otherwise an outsider to the conflict, and is not a member of any other official military. Mercenaries fight for money or other forms of payment rather than for political interests.
"For the mercenary is a simplistic fellow. Not for him the strutting parades of West Point, the medals on the steps of the White House or perhaps a place at Arlington. He simply says: Pay me my wage and Ill kill the bastards for you. And if he dies, they will bury him quickly and quietly in the red soil of Africa and we will never know."
"The need for soldiers of fortune has and will change little. Their organization into corporate-owned private military companies is a major evolution, but mercenaries will exist wherever warfare exists."
"They go by many names- mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, wild geese, hired guns, legionnaires, contract killers, hirelings, condottieri, contractors, and corporate warriors- these men who have fought for money and plunder rather than cause or patriotism. Soldiers of fortune have always played significant roles in warfare, they are present on the battlefields of today, and they certainly will be a part of whatever combat occurs in the future."
"Mercenaries! That were paid to come over here to make us crawl, and to wipe us out. Weve just sent a message to the British cabinet that will echo and reverberate around the world! If they bring their savagery over here, we will meet it with a savagery of our own!"
"Giving birth to such markets is just one of the many ways that contractors encourage dangerous policymaking. Unlike the Pentagon or CIA, private military companies do not report to Congress, circumventing democratic accountability of the armed forces."
"Mercenaries?" I ventured. "Agh! Mercenaries!" Bob exclaimed, like I had stabbed him. "Now thats the worst thing you can be. Worse than a prostitute. Your life is the most valuable thing you got. Die for your own freedom, thats great, but kill and die for a buck? He looked at me again, shooting more wisdom out of his violently pointing finger. "Never do anything just for money!"