Spurred on by the question, I found this which I was previously unaware of and found it interesting:
Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie knew his country was poor and underdeveloped. He needed expert foreign help. Forty foreigners ignored League of Nations resolutions on non-intervention and came to Addis Ababa to fight. Another sixty joined medical units or found other roles. The international press corps gathered in Addis Ababa wrote them up as heroes.
A few mercenaries were honest. A few were competent. The rest was a crazy gang of playboys, Nazis, and black crusaders who could barely shoot straight.....
The loudest voice among the foreigners was a pilot who strode around with his chin at a forty-five degree angle to the rest of the world and called himself The Black Eagle. Hubert Fauntleroy Julian was born to a family of well-off plantation managers in Trinidad. Athletic, good-looking, and insufferably arrogant, Julian learned to fly in Canada then made a splash in New York with a series of parachute jumps.
A Dapper Hubert Julian, the Black Eagle of Harlem, on His Way to New York After Being Expelled from Ethiopia (Nationaal Archief)In 1930 Haile Selassie hired the black pilot to perform at his coronation. Julian repaid the honour by flying the emperor’s private plane into a tree. He got kicked out of the country and spent the next few years barnstorming and smuggling bootleg liquor. He returned to Ethiopia in 1935 when Italian tanks began massing on the borders. Haile Selassie couldn’t afford to lose any more planes and gave him a job training soldiers. Julian enthusiastically accepted.....
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Haile Selassie;s Mercenaries
