John Alan Coey

Who was John Alan Coey?

John Alan Coey was an American-born soldier who served in the Rhodesian Army as one of "the Crippled Eagles", a loosely-organised group of U.S. expatriates fighting for the unrecognised government of Rhodesia during that country's Bush War. A devout Christian and fervent anti-communist—historian Gerald Horne described him as a white supremacist of the political ultra-right—he was the first American fatality of the war. He moved to Rhodesia to join its army in 1972, the day after graduating from college in his home town of Columbus, Ohio, and served until he was killed in action in 1975. He kept a journal throughout his service that was posthumously published as A Martyr Speaks.

Coey received United States Marine Corps officer training during his studies and was on track to receive a commission when he requested discharge and left for Rhodesia, believing that the U.S. government had been infiltrated by a "revolutionary conspiracy of internationalists, collectivists and communists" and that fighting for Rhodesia would allow him to better defend Western interests.