Born in Glasgow Scotland and Fought under Bob Denard at the Battle of Bakavu (Congo). After the town fell he crossed over the border into Rwanda. Where he was interned in a camp along with several 100 other Mercenaries, while the world courts decided what to do with them.
On the 4th April 1968 he was flown out of Rwanda along with all of the other white Mercenaries with their passports stamped “Not Valid in Africa.” Later that same year he appeared in Biafra, fighting under Frenchman Robert Faulques who he'd met up with in the Congo. During his stay in Biafra he met up with and made friends with Rolf Steiner and Frederick Forsyth, leaving the country in 1969.
He also spent a short time in the Sudan with the German Rolf Steiner. Getting out of the Sudan before Steiner’s arrest.
However, he became a house hold name in 1973 when he chartered the 'Albatross' and loaded it with mercenaries to sail to the island of Fernando Po from which Francisco Macias ran Equatorial Guinea as president for life.
The plot was foiled by a British Special Branch informant in Gibraltar. The boat and its invasion force were seized by Spanish police in the Canary Islands after a tip-off from the British embassy in Madrid.
While researching his latest book Adam Roberts came across a previously classified Foreign Office cable in the National Archives that described the 1973 coup attempt. “I took part in the plot in as much as I was chewing the fat and shooting the breeze with the others involved,” Forsyth told him. “But as far as I was concerned any money I gave was for information and I pulled out before the plan was put into practice. (The money he's talking about was a cool quarter of a million US dollars). “Aerial photos of Fernando Po were brought to my flat. But I was not on the boat and did not know it had set sail. Luckily they never reached the island or they would have been slaughtered.” Forsyth has always maintained the money he paid was for information he required for a book he was writing at the time.
Forsyth’s role is confirmed in Robers new book, 'The Wonga Coup', a former Southern Africa correspondent for The Economist.
History does seem to repeat its self a many time over, as is evedent by the 2004 attempt coup by mercenaries to once again try and seize control of Equatorial Guinea. Only this time one of Britains earlier Prime ministers Margaret Thatchers son Mark was involved.
Some people believe that Frederick Forsyth based his character Channon, in his bestseller book “Dogs of War” on Alexandra Gay, but there are others who think that it might have been the Scotsman Taffy Williams whichever both had served in Biafra.
