About Soldiers of Misfortune

Soldiers of Misfortune is about the history of mercenaries, adventurers and soldiers of fortune. In short sketches I will try to narrate their story over the ages, from the first traces in ancient times until today.
Thereby I'll try to avoid the usual heroizations and demonizations and try to look instead on the normal men behind all this ideological smokescreen.

Despite all the Hollywood mystifications warfare is a very hard and primitive trade, which offers little glory. Reality maybe therefore more with the old Chinese Proverb: "Don't waste good iron for nails or good men for soldiers".

So "Soldiers of Misfortune" will neither be about heroic exploits nor about evil rogues and scoundrels, but rather about losers, broken dreams, simpleminded unfortunate people, which in my humble opinion should be much more worth a shot than the usual boring stuff.

Texts by:

Frank Westenfelder
Barcelona (Spain)

Frank Westenfelder specialised in old travelogues mostly by soldiers and adventurers. After various articles about the subject he published in 2011 a book in German about the history of merenaries from the middle ages to the present.