Soldier of Fortune Magazine The Journal of Professional Adventurers
An ambush in the swamps, a lone scout’s night of chaos, and a jungle con that fooled the FARC.
What can a small force do when an enemy has the advantage? Soldier of Fortune looks at three ways to meet the challenge.
Francis Marion: How the ‘Swamp Fox’ Mastered Guerrilla Warfare
Francis Marion did not have a professional army. He had farmers, hunters and tradesmen carrying old muskets and squirrel rifles. Between 1780 and 1782 he used them against British regulars and Loyalist militias in the swamps of South Carolina. His men lured patrols onto narrow causeways and boggy ground, struck from cover, and were gone before the enemy could form up. In one raid, 17 militiamen took 22 regulars prisoner and freed 150 Patriot captives. The British finally sent Banastre Tarleton, already smarting from his defeat at Cowpens, to destroy him. A 25-mile chase through the swamp followed.
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Leo Major, the One-Eyed Ghost of Zwolle
Leo Major was a 23-year-old Canadian scout and sniper who had lost an eye to a phosphorus grenade in Normandy. Just after midnight on April 14, 1945, he and a fellow scout slipped into the Dutch city of Zwolle to size up the German garrison before a bombardment planned for that morning. Less than an hour in, a sentry killed his friend. Major kept going, alone. By dawn, the Germans in the city had formed a firm view of what they were up against, and it was wrong.
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Operation Jaque: The Great Jungle Con That Fooled the FARC
A young Colombian Army sergeant spent months listening to FARC radio traffic and came up with an idea. He wanted to stop chasing the guerrillas through the jungle and take over their communications instead. As part of the plan, two civilian secretaries trained for 10 days to sound like FARC radio operators. The Army set up a fake aid group with an office, a website and staff to answer the phones, and repainted two old Mi-17 helicopters white and red. The target was a guerrilla commander holding 15 hostages, among them a senator who had been running for president and three Americans. The handover at a jungle clearing did not go quite as scripted.
