Yves Debay: Mercenary and Writer

Born in Élisabethville, in the Belgian Congo, 1954, Yves Debay would go on to leave the Congo in his later teens and enlist in the Belgian military. Yves primarily learned reconnaissance training and would eventually receive training in armored warfare. After 2 years of training he would be promoted to the role of a tank commander. Not too long after, he would hear about the ongoing conflict happening in Rhodesia and enlist as a mercenary soldier, not uncommon during the Bush War.

Yves headed back to Africa to join the Rhodesian Army as a foreign volunteer as soon as he could. Finally he could put his training to good use, and was placed in the Rhodesian Armoured Car Regiment. He would stay and fight the course of the Bush War up until the end of Rhodesia. Yves made a move down to South Africa to enlist in the 44 Parachute Brigade. Yves would see action throughout the course of the South African Border War, enough to make him hang up his rifle and instead pick up a pen and camera.

Debay became one of the founders of the magazine “Raids” in 1986 and worked for the French-language magazine for over 20 years covering both military and war issues. Debay wrote several books and published multiple photo journals of the soldiers and conflicts he experienced. His war correspondence took him to Afghanistan during the Soviet Invasion, both Iraq wars, the Lebanese Civil War, the War in the Balkans, Libya and Syria.

By the time Yves founded his own publication “Assault” in 2005, he had seen almost every major armed conflict in the past 30 plus years. Yves, the man who had lived through it all, met his untimely fate in Aleppo, Syria in 2013. The circumstances around his death are murky, an anonymous source told the French news agency Agence France-Presse, ".. it seems like he entered a very dangerous street where the army and pro-regime militia were positioned" before he was killed by a sniper.

The source claimed to have deposited his body in Bab al-Salama, a border checkpoint for Northern Syria and Turkey. Debay was considered one of the most experienced war correspondents at the time of his death, French President François Hollande issued an official statement, "France condemns this heinous act and expresses to the family and friends of Yves Debay its condolences, sympathy and solidarity... France pays tribute to Yves Debay and other journalists who, in Syria, pay with their lives for their commitment to freedom of information."