Rafał Gan-Ganowicz: Polish Mercenary

 Rafał Gan-Ganowicz was born in Wawer-Warsaw, Poland, in 1932. Rafał's life would soon get turned upside down in the worst of ways when the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Rafał lost his mother during the first part of the invasion. His father moved the remainder of his family to the Warsaw district of Żoliborz until the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

Rafał's father, a former member of the French Foreign Legion, was killed, and Raphael was an orphan at the age of 12. Nazis captured Rafał and hauled him off to a concentration camp, but luckily he escaped and hid until the Red Army arrived in 1945. Rafał soon held the same disgust and hatred toward the communist Red Army that he did for the fascist German Army. His disdain grew as he witnessed Poles routinely executed and seeing squads of Soviets going out for days to hunt down any Polish Army remnants.

Rafał swore his life to eradicate communism and vowed to travel wherever necessary to fight. Rafał received Commando training in France with the Free Polish Armed Forces. Once fit, Operation Rollback, to paradrop the Commandos into Poland and liberate it from Soviet hands was supposed to occur in 1956 though it ended up never taking place due to the failed insurrection in Hungary. Rafał stayed in France and worked as a highschool teacher until he heard about the communist Simba Rebellion happening in the Congo and promptly headed to Africa.

Once established, Rafał led his mercenary battalion in the eastern portion of the Congo. He took part in the defense of Stanleyville and later operated between Katanga & Kivu. Lucky for him, his troops were mostly Katangans and a handful of Western NCOs and officers. He led his small battalion and defeated the deadly revolutionaries of the Chinese trained Pierre Mulele.

Rafał continued to fight and even captured the Soviet trained leader Mkundu in the process. Ultimately Rafał’s mercenaries, at the head of Tshombe's troops, even routed Che Guevarra, and forced him and his Cuban advisors to flee the Congo. Rafał sought to bring as much peace to the Congo as he could after the Simbas had largely been defeated. 

Next he tackled the "People's Crocodiles" a group of cannibalistic warlords that kidnapped and ate the peaceful fishermen of M'Wabu by the Lualaba River. The cannibals even decorated their camp-site with the heads of their victims. Rafał made it a point to hunt down each of the murderers and execute every single one of them with extreme prejudice.