IN THE SHADOW OF BOB DENARD - French Mercenaries from 1960 to 1989

The early 1960s: in the midst of the decolonisation of the Belgian Congo, the secession of Katanga triggered the first concentration of foreign fighters, who flooded in by the hundreds. Among these "dogs of war", the French were the most active. They embarked on a kind of golden age — a succession of raids and coups d'état stretching across the entire continent, which would notably see them take control of the Comoros from 1978 to 1989.

Throughout the Cold War, the "Affreux" (as the press dubbed them) clandestinely served the interests of former colonial powers eager to retain a strong influence in Africa. Their leader, Bob Denard, attracted considerable media attention. For the first time, this book examines the group of 147 French mercenaries as a whole: its origins, its key personalities, its internal divisions, its way of life, its relationship with money, and so on.

Drawing on Bob Denard's private archives, revealed here for the first time, and on numerous testimonies, the author plunges us, far from clichés, into the daily lives of these men who moved from conflict to conflict. Some were fleeing a troubled past; others were devoted family men. Several cultures and generations intersect: the old hands, the "corsairs of the Republic", the "gangsters".

Spearheads of the anti-communist struggle, relays of the shadowy Françafrique networks before being disowned by Paris, alternating between fortune, glory and defeat, the "affreux" found no place in the post-Cold War world: they would soon be replaced by Anglo-Saxon-style private military companies.