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Africa remained under the colonial influence of France, but it had become destabilised by the bloody war which had been
raging in the Belgian Congo since the early sixties. Josh knew a fair bit of the history. He was too good a soldier not to take an interest, but he cared very little as to who would win. He had
been able to see at the outset that this conflict was all about possession, not politics and certainly not principles despite all the high flown language and the international debate.
    When Josh and Moira had disembarked in Durban after their emigration voyage, he had seen newspaper advertisements which sought trained and battle experienced soldiers to sign on as mercenaries.
The logic of a short term engagement was compelling. They did really need some capital to take over the farm and to plan for the future.
    So within weeks of arriving to settle in South Africa, Josh was on the move again and back into soldiering, but now as a mercenary in the Belgian Congo, a member of the force working to
re-establish the charismatic Moishe Tshombe. Trollope signed on with the English speaking 5th Commando led by the legendary Mike Hoare and stayed with him through most of the Simba war until
Hoare’s retirement in December 1964. By then, Josh reckoned that he had put by enough in savings and was more than ready to move on to his new life on the farm with Moira and her father in
the background to help.
    But then came the baby. A few days of unexpected leave started the bulge which was just showing on Moira by the time of his contract termination. When he returned home to the farm, there was
news that the baby was fit and strong in the womb, but the final stages were expected to be testing. Moira was going to need expert and expensive help to deliver the infant so they must invest much
of their nest egg in the best medical care they could find and worry about replacing the money later.
    And worry he did. Josh was preoccupied when he went into a bar in Pretoria during the Christmas period and bumped into a friend from way back in his British Army days. Barry Bingham was
established as a soldier of fortune, and as it happened, looking for help. He had little difficulty in talking Josh into one last tour which was to be with the private army of a character who
called himself General Moses Samson. This self appointed general, whose birth name was never discovered, was recruiting a dozen white officers to manage the efforts of a rabble which he referred to
as a battalion, and his objective was brigandry, pure and simple. Josh was to come to tax himself for being so quick to commit, but he was seduced by the lure of enormous money for a short and
dirty contract. There was neither time nor opportunity for Josh to meet Moses Samson in advance. He simply relied on the version of events as set out by his old mate Barry Bingham and although Josh
was mindful of Barry and had taken several pinches of salt with his story, it still remained a long way wide of the mark of reality.
    Samson claimed to be the leader of a recessionary tribal group occupying a small wedge of territory in the extreme south of the Central African Republic, seeking independence from the colonial
government installed in the capital city of Bangui. In truth, Samson was after much more than this. He aimed to annex a small corner in the north west of the vast country which was then the Belgian
Congo. Samson was not the only privateer to see the opportunities to be afforded under the convenient cloak of civil war and he was at least as cunning as any who tried. His target patch of ground
was something of the size of Switzerland and it was not so much the land which took his fancy as the valuable minerals beneath it, especially the iron ore which the French had been extracting from
two mines in this region for the past decade.
    Profiting from the unsettled politics of the day, Samson had approached the East Germans who, fronting for Moscow, had been prepared