[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

Rick Blaine is the classic example of a "mercenary" who only fights for the side he believes in, but pretends to be in it only for the money.

Mercs in that time period were rarer then at many times when most people fought for ideology or nationalism. And most powers were well organized and had enough population to use their own resources. There were places a merc could find work such as with a Tuchan. Spies are often mercs of course and often don't care or even know what side they are on. And out in the boondocks of course it was known for an officer to hire locals for some project of his. George Macdonald Fraser remembers one time when he had to haul a rocket launcher that a commando out in the wild had put an order for. When he got there he found that the guy had built himself a little private army by hiring Burmese and was waiting on the riverbank for Japanese barges to pass(that's what he wanted the rocket launcher for). Many of the SS seem to have been mercenaries as well.