A former South African Air Force pilot who saw action throughout the region from the 1970s, Neall Ellis is the best-known mercenary combat aviator alive. Apart from flying Alouette helicopter gunships in Angola, he has fought in the Balkan War (for Islamic forces), flew Mi-8s for Executive Outcomes, and thereafter an Mi-8 fondly dubbed "Bokkie" for Colonel Tim Spicer in Sierra Leone. For the past two years, as a "civilian contractor," Ellis has been flying helicopter support missions in Afghanistan, where, he reckons, he has had more close shaves than in his entire previous four-decade career; twice he turned the enemy back from the gates of Freetown, effectively preventing the rebels from overrunning Sierra Leone's capital. Nellis (as his friends call him) was also the first mercenary to work hand-in-glove with British ground and air assets in a modern guerrilla war. This book describes the full career of this storied aerial warrior, from the bush and jungles of Africa to the forests of the Balkans and the merciless mountains of today's Afghanistan.
Along the way the reader encounters a multi-ethnic array of enemies ranging from ideological to cold-blooded to pure evil, as well as well as examples of incredible heroism for hire.
- ISBN10 1869197038
- ISBN13 9781869197032
- Publish Date 8 February 2012 (first published 19 January 2012)
- Publish Status Unknown
- Publish Country ZA
- Imprint Protea Boekhuis
- Format Paperback
- Pages 356
- Language English