Maj. Thomas Michael “Mad Mike” Hoare and four units of mercenaries stormed Stanleyville, the rebel capital in the Republic of the Congo, on November 24, 1964 – but they were too late. Hoare had been born in India to Irish parents in 1919, but was educated in England, where, during the school holidays, he was left at school in the care of a teacher who’d fought in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, and who regaled Hoare with stories from that time.