Remembering Contractors Overseas

[Anonymous]

While private contractors have been part of warfare and peace keeping for centuries people seem to look down on them and think because men and women fight for financial gain they’re some how not patriotic or the conflict isn’t noble.

The Duke of Wellington (German mercs at Waterloo), Alexander the Great (Bactrian troops supplemented his ranks) used soldiers for hire,and even the Jews with Moses were elite infantry mercenaries in the employment of the Pharaoh on the frontier before the nervous monarch transferred them to his building project in fear they might return home (seemed things still didn’t work out for him).

I’ve had the opportunity to work with contractors state side, and some have fought and bled in place like Iraq and Afghanistan. They’re in every way professional and honorable soldiers, and we should keep them in mind along with regular military personnel in this holiday season. Sure some are there for the paycheck, but many more believe in the cause.

Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries

These, in the day when heaven was falling,

The hour when earth’s foundations fled,

Followed their mercenary calling,

And took their wages, and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;

They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;

What God abandoned, these defended,

And saved the sum of things for pay.

A.E. Housman

[Author]

Posts