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Thread on Danny Roxo: The "White Devil of Mozambique"
Danny Roxo was born in Northern Portugal on February 1, 1933. At the age of 18, he moved to Mozambique, a Portuguese colony at the time, and took a job working for a railroad. He quit pretty much immediately to become a big-game hunter, park warden, and wildlife safari guide.
Trading his desk job for a profession where you're literally surrounded by enraged man-eating beasts had its advantages as we will find, Roxo loved his Iife in the savannas of Sub-Saharan Africa. Tracking, hunting, and enjoying the natural beauty of the land, he honed his craft.
As a warden of the land, Roxo for the next 10 or so years, Danny Roxo lived a happy life of a Mozambican Ron Swanson, wandering the wild grasslands of East Africa hunting for his meals, growing a safari business, and enjoying life. He eventually settled down and had six children.
Eventually in 1964 war came to Mozambique, communist insurgents fighting for independence from one of the world's last colonial powers. At this time the established Danny and his family were soon caught right in the middle of a raging warzone, and he was pissed.
When Roxo's poacher enemies morphed into terrifying AK-toting Marxist raiders, Roxo grabbed his elephant gun and sprung into action immediately. He got together his guys – other hunters, wilderness guides, and trackers, and recruited them into a makeshift reconnaissance unit.
His unit went deep into enemy territory, scouted enemy positions, and reported back. He did this while gathering a small but elite cadre of roughly 100 guys, Roxo soon became frustrated because they were gathering all this intel, but the Portuguese weren't doing all that much.
Eventually, Danny said, fuck it and decided he was going to train his team for war, his way. He gathered under his leadership the best hunters, the biggest hotshots, even the terrorists of Niassa province (his home).
Thus, Coluna Infernal, or the "Infernal column" was born.
Thus, Coluna Infernal, or the "Infernal column" was born.
Roxo started with this small cadre of the guys who he'd been working with in the safari business for years – badass hunters and trackers who knew the savannah like their own backyard and could handle a rifle like they'd been born holding onto one.
Equipping his men with captured Soviet weapons and gear wherever he could loot it, Roxo's Column became this kind of weird paramilitary militia that would attack Communist installations, liberate POWs, rescue hostages, destroy supply depots, attack convoys, and kiII HVTs.
When Roxo would defeat an enemy force, he'd offer the enemy an interesting choice – be taken Prisoner, or join him in the Infernal Column. Roxo knew that most of the men he fought were conscripted by force.
-So, rather than send the defeated away, he'd offer to have them join up with him instead. And a lot of them did – which worked out great for him, since not only did they provide valuable intel, it made his unit completely self-sustaining to boot.
Roxo trained his guys hard and built the Infernal Column into the Portuguese military's most feared unit in Africa -- which is impressive considering that they weren't technically part of the Portuguese military. Roxo was a civilian.
By the end he had received two Cruz de Guerras for his service across various campaigns, Communist forces also put a $100k bounty on his head. When the war came to an end in 1974, Roxo claimed that his unit had more confirmed kills than the entire Portuguese Army combined.
In 1974 a coup in Portugal, the Carnation Revolution overthrew the existing ruler, Salazar who'd been in power since the 1920s. People were tired of mini Portuguese Vietnam going down in Africa and when the new regime took over they immediately pulled all Portuguese troops out.
Roxo was more than a little annoyed that he'd been fighting (and winning) a war to defend his homeland for 10 only to see his government bail, and he knew he certainly couldn't stick around and just hope that the Marxist regime would forgive him for killing all their dudes.
PuIIing another stunt, Roxo took his wife, his kids, and aII the Coluna Infernal guys who wanted to come, and he fought his way out of the country towards South Africa, he wasn't finished yet!
It was a long, arduous journey, and when he got to South Africa, all Roxo wanted to do was keep fighting. He enlisted in the South African Defense Force and successfully made it through its grueling Commando training school despite being 41 years old.
