One Man Army

A selection of articles about idealists, crooks, and the kind of men who believed that they were right and everyone else was wrong. From LA's junkie punks to Buddhist warlords and bank-robbing cops. Sign up for a lost cause.

BOOKS - 1 x Article

Have Gun Will Travel

In the late 1980s Rob Krott quit the US army to find adventure. Within a few years the Harvard graduate was fighting alongside a ragged collection of international misfits in Croatia as the country struggled for independence from post-Communist Yugoslavia. Krott discovered fast that mercenaries don't make much money but he found himself hooked on the adrenaline rush that comes from toting an AK-47 around a warzone ...

CRIME - 1 x Article

Whiter Than White

Andre Stander was a bank robber, a jailbird, and a Captain in the South African Police at the height of apartheid. In the late 1970s he robbed banks in his lunchtime and investigated crimes in the afternoon. Stander’s double life collapsed when he was sent to prison in 1980 but after three years he escaped and launched a new crime wave with a gang recruited behind bars. CHRISTOPHER OTHEN looks at the life and death of a criminal who always thought he was the smartest kęrel in the room.

HISTORY - 1 x Article

Urga, February 1921

During the Russian Civil War Baron von Ungern-Sternberg earned a reputation in Siberia as a sadistic warlord whose excesses did more harm to his own side than to his Communist enemies. When the anti-Bolshevik forces collapsed in 1920 the Baron took his men over the border to Chinese-controlled Mongolia. CHRISTOPHER OTHEN looks at the Baron's capture of the Mongolian capital Urga, the first – and last –step of a crazed attempt to build a Buddhist Empire stretching from Mongolia to Portugal.

MUSIC - 1 x Article

What We Do Is Secret

A junkie singer, a fatal overdose, and a high school brainwashing programme. Los Angeles' Germs were the hottest punk band of the late seventies thanks to the charisma of their suicidal singer Darby Crash. Unable to decide if he wanted to be a music biz legend or a cult leader Crash fell apart under the pressure of his heroin fuelled lifestyle. CHRISTOPHER OTHEN examines how a fan of Charles Manson and L Ron Hubbard briefly became the most influential figure in the LA underground.

ADMIN - 1 x Article

Site Timeline

The page for dates, contact information, and an easy-on-the-eye list of the Bright Review articles.