John Alan Coey

John Alan Coey was a U.S. Marine who served in the Rhodesian Army as one of the "Crippled Eagles", a loosely organised group of U.S. expatriates fighting for the unrecognized government of Rhodesia during that country's Bush War. A devout Christian, vitriolic anti-communist, 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.