One group rescues an alive, though sick, Limbani from a heavily guarded prison, while another group takes over a small, nearby airfield to await pick-up.

On Christmas Day, the fifty-man mercenary group parachute into Zembala by a HALO jump. With training complete, Janders exacts a promise from Faulkner to watch over his only son, Emile, should he not survive.īecause of an unexpected development, Faulkner is given only a day's notice to launch the mission.

The mercenaries fly to Swaziland, where they are whipped into shape. Fynn also brings in Pieter Coetzee, a former soldier in the South African Defence Force who wishes only to return home and buy a farm. Shawn Fynn, a former Irish Guards officer and pilot. Rafer Janders, a skilled tactician, and Lt. President Limbani is held in a remote prison in Zembala, guarded by a regiment of General Ndofa's troops known as the 'Simbas'.įaulkner accepts the assignment and begins recruiting forty-nine mercenaries, including officers he had worked with previously: Capt. The latter proposes an operation to rescue Julius Limbani, the imprisoned President of a southern African nation who is due for execution by General Ndofa. The novel was based upon rumours and speculation following the 1968 landing of a mysterious aeroplane in Rhodesia, which was said to have been loaded with mercenaries and 'an African president' believed to have been a dying Moïse Tshombe.Īllen Faulkner, a former British Army colonel turned mercenary, arrives in London to meet merchant banker Sir Edward Matheson. Carney's novel was subsequently published by Corgi Books under the same title as the film. The film was named The Wild Geese after the Wild Goose flag and shoulder patch used by Michael 'Mad Mike' Hoare's Five Commando, ANC, which in turn was inspired by a 17th-century Irish mercenary army (see Flight of the Wild Geese). The screenplay by Reginald Rose was based on an unpublished novel titled The Thin White Line by Daniel Carney. The producer and director would later make The Sea Wolves starring several cast members from this film. It was the result of a long-held ambition of its producer Euan Lloyd to make an all-star adventure film similar to The Guns of Navarone or Where Eagles Dare. The screenplay concerns a group of mercenaries in Africa. McLaglen and starring Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Richard Harris, and Hardy Krüger.

The Wild Geese is a 1978 British-Swiss war film directed by Andrew V.

$3.5 million on first week (US/Canada rentals).

One wild moment plot