Soldiers of Misfortune

 

 

cover artist for both issues is Rudolph Belarski. 

For the last two weeks, I've been reviewing stories that appeared in a particular issue of Astounding. I've had a PDF of that issue saved on my tablet for sometime with the intention of reviewing a specific story in it. I'd actually forgotten about it for a time, but finally got around to reviewing not one, but two tales waiting between its covers.

This reminded me that I had several other pulp magazines saved on my tablet for the exact same reason--there's a story in each one I want to review. But the trouble with electronic copies of either books or magazines is that its easy to forget you have them. Well, by golly, I won't forget again! Too much is at stake!

Actually, not much of anything is at stake. But I want to get those stories reviewed before I forget about them once again. So, I'll be catching up on story reviews from the Golden days of the pulp magazines over the course of the next month or so, mixing in occasional other subjects as well.

"Soldiers of Misfortune," by J.D. Newsom, first appeared in the June 1, 1935 issue of Argosy. In fact, it was the cover story. It was reprinted in the October 1940 issue of Foreign Legion Adventures with the same interior illustrations. I've reviewed Newsom's excellent Foreign Legion tales several times before. They are uniformily excellent, but this time Newsom really hits it out of the park.

Kirby Norton is an American sailor on a merchant ship who, during a stopover at Marseille, got really drunk and enlisted in the Legion. He ends up in North Africa. Norton doesn't want to be in the Legion. He wants to go home to New York City. But his enlistement is for five years.

The first half of the novella is a sort of dark comedy, as Norton comes up with a plan to get kicked out of the Legion by pretending not to understand French at all. He actually does, but that's beside the point. He acts as if he can't learn a single word of French, no matter how often that word is screamed at him or how obviously the intent of the order is acted out for him. He ends up getting punished, but he figures he can endure this if the end result is being discharged.

But the Legion refuses to give up on him. He befriends a clerk named Cordelier, who promises to hook him up with a man that can provide him with a false passport and arrangements to get back to the U.S.  This, of course, will cost money. Cordelier takes Norton for every cent the American has, then forgets about him.

This leads to a wonderfully described, knock-down, drag-em-out fist fight. That, in turn, leads to Norton spending 18 months in prison before being assigned to a unit helping put down a rebellion in Southeast Asia. 

At this point, the story shifts in tone. The heat, the leaches, the fear, the bloody death of fellow soldiers, the exhausting effort to carve through even a few yards of foliage... all of this is brought to life by Newsom in just a few paragraphs. 

During the confusion of a battle, with a large part of Norton's unit accidentally cut down by one of its own machine guns, Norton once again meets Cordelier. He's tempted to shoot, but can't bring himself to do so. Cordelier doesn't feel the same way. Now a sergeant, he sends Norton out into no-man's-land to deliver a message to another unit. Then Cordelier tries to pot his old enemy with a rifle.

All this leads to Norton finally deserting, befriending the leader of the resistance and joining that cause. Here, Newsom deals with the evils of colonialism in very straightforward terms. But he also gives us a very cynical take on freedom fighters, the politics of resistance and human nature in general. As the story builds to a climax, Newsom learns that he can't trust anyone and that even the people he's been fighting for--the "good guys"--might be willing to sell him out if they can benefit from doing so.

Newsom, of course, wasn't trying to predict the future of Southeast Asia. But it fits in well with the theme of this story that, in real life, resistance against colonialism eventually led to the establishment of a ruthless dictatorship by people who started as freedom fighters. I'm writing this post on the day before July 4 and I have to say that reading "Soldiers of Misfortune" really makes me appreciate our Founding Fathers. Flawed as they were, they really strived to create a free society. That doesn't happen very often. 

You can read "Soldiers of Misfortune" online HERE. 

A Bit of Red Ribbon

 

cover art by Hubert Rogers

I've written about J.D. Newsom's Foreign Legion stories a number of times now. I read another one last night and, as usual, enjoyed it enormously. I have yet to run across a Newsom story I didn't like.

"A Bit of Red Ribbon" was first published in Adventure's June 15, 1931 issue. In it, we meet meek, henpecked John Jefferson Forbes-Smith, who has been waiting in the rain for an hour and a half for his wife to come out of a store.  She had said "I shan't be a minute," but Forbes-Smith is used to her minutes stretching into hours.

In a rare fit of mild rebellion, he goes into a bar. He intends to order a coffee, but he's soon downing whiskey sours with a new friend. 

When he wakes up the next morning, he's been arrested for public drunkenness. He is wearing different cloths and carrying the ID of a man named Smith who joined the Foreign Legion the day before. The cops won't believe his story and ship him off to the Legion.

So poor henpecked Forbes-Smith soon finds himself in North Africa, being drilled until he's exhausted and punished whenever he tries to point out that he doesn't belong in the Legion. He soon decides that he can't ever go home anyways--his wife would reject him because of the shame he would be bringing to her. 

At the same time, he does toughen up a little. So, when he spots his wife in a nearby town--certainly there in search of him--he immediately volunteers to accompany a column marching into battle. His sergeant agrees to let him go: "I don't blame you. I'd rather take my chance [in battle] any day rather than face some women!"

Newsom strikes a fine balance in this story. There's a dark humor underlaying Forbes-Smith's plight, but Newsom's description of life in the Legion, the desert heat and--eventually--the chaos of battle are all vivid and without irony. Forbes-Smith's character growth is realistic. Some men, after all, are manned-up by military life. But, though Forbes-Smith does man up, he does so in fits and starts, with the deliberate intension of getting killed when he volunteers for combat. It's a realistic depiction of gradual character growth that meshes well with Newsom's realistic description of desert combat and serving in the Foreign Legion. 

So when Forbes-Smith has a chance to perform a dangerous mission, he may prove to himself that he's more of a man than he thought.

You can read the story for yourself HERE.

Mud, Cold and Terror

 

cover by H. C. Murphy

I've now written often enough about J.D. Newsom's Foriegn Legion stories, I wish I'd given these posts a clever series name. 

A few months ago, I declared Newsom's 1935 tale "Grenades for the Colonel" my favorite. But now I may change my mind. "Mud," published in the December 30, 1925 issue of Adventure, is fantastic.

Most of Newsom's Legion stories are set in North Africa, though at least one  ("Soldiers of Misfortune") shifted its setting to Southeast Asia for the second half of that story. "Mud," though, is set in the trenches during the Great War.

Two privates, Withers (British) and Curialo (American) are serving in the trenches, a cold, rat-infested environment in which you are ALWAYS knee deep in mud. Their sergeant--a martinet named Verbuken--orders them to move out into No Man's Land during the night and repair some gaps in the barbed wire. While at this job, they spot a German crawling towards them. They jump the guy, knock him out and bring him back. Unfortunately for the two privates, the "German" they captured turns out to be Sgt. Verbukon.

This opening sequence sets up the tone of the story. There is humor here--the fight with Verbokun includes some near-slapstick elements in which Withers getting his ear snagged on barbed wire and then accidentally slams Curialo several times with a mallet while trying to knock out the "German." 

But there is still the sense of danger--the terror inherent in being out in the pitch-black night and not knowing from when and where the enemy might come--and the constant cold, sticky, thick presence of mud everywhere.

The next morning, the two privates are sent back under guard for court martial. Along the way, a sudden artillery barrage kills their escort and the two are suddenly facing a German breakthrough. From here, the humor drops off (though never completely disappears) as Withers and Curialo find themselves in a bombed-out village, using a machine gun and hand grenades to hold off the Germans. When night falls, after a French counter attack fails, they decide to sneak back to their lines. Along the way, they meet (of course) Sgt. Verbokun. The three have to ditch their clothes to swim a canal. This leaves them near-helpless from freezing while there are still Germans they have to bypass to get to safety.

Newsom's vivid prose puts us right at the side of the Legionaries. Here are some prime examples of that prose:

It was unreal and fantom-like, a ghostly imitation of maneuvers carried out a hundred times on the burning sands of the Sidi Bel Abbes parade ground. It had gone on since the beginning of time and would go on forever — the noise and the rush of the bullets and the staggering impact of shells, and the race across upheaved ground where dead men lay with their heads thrown back in muddy pools, or curled up as if they slept and were cold, or flung out spread-eagled and gutted, grinning at the sky where the black shrapnel burst.

and

From their point of vantage Curialo and Withers saw a fresh counter attack start from the wood on the hill crest and reach the calvary, where it withered and was blown away by machine gun fire. Another fine followed on the heels of the first, and a third came close behind. At one point they reached the houses, broke through, swarmed down the street. For a minute they were everywhere, running swiftly and throwing bombs with the splendid poise of Greek gods, and dying in ungainly, squirming lumps on manure heaps in stinking yards.

and

Bayonet in hand Curialo staggered along the road neither knowing nor caring whether he went up it or down it so long as he got somewhere, either among Germans who would be good enough to kill him, or among his own people who would put him to bed. In either case he would get a long rest. The others followed close at his heels. Whenever they heard the warning scream of a shell they broke into a shambling run.

"Mud"  is an intense, vivid war story--one of the best I've ever read. Withers and Curialo are wonderful protagonists--in fact, Newsome used them in several stories, both before and after "Mud.". You can read "Mud" for yourself HERE. 

All You Do Is Fight

 

cover art by Walter Baumhofer

A few months ago, I reviewed one of the many Foreign Legion stories by J.D. Newsom that appeared in Adventure magazine. I enjoyed the tale enormously--it worked in terms of characterization, well-described action and overall atmosphere. So I tracked down some more Newsom stories and created my own little anthology by combining PDF copies into a single document. If I ever need to run off and join the Legion, I just need to bring my tablet with me and I'll have all the information I need to get by.

Newsom made the cover of the January 1935 issue of Adventure with the excellent novella "All You Do Is Fight."

Newsom's Legion tales often followed a similar pattern, in which someone is forced to join the Legion and ends up doing something heroic by the finale. But the variety of characters he gives us and his ability to make those characters seem real allows each story to work well on its own. In "All You Do Is Fight," the protagonist is an American gangster named Barney Walsh. He's in Paris with a fair amount of money and thinks of himself as retired. But his old comrades from the mob don't approve of this and he only barely avoids an assassination attempt.

So he joins the Legion to get away from any hitmen who may come looking for him, using Barney as his last name. But he's an unusual recruit in several ways. Primarily, he has a lot of cash on him. While on the train to the Legion training center, he treats himself to dinner and booze in the first-class dining car.

He might have gotten away with this if he hadn't ended up picking a fight with a lieutenant. 

The remote desert outpost at which both men are assigned is a mess, with an inefficient commanding officer and out-of-control non-coms who are crushing morale. So when Barney is assigned to a small patrol led by the lieutenant, he plans on deserting along with a couple of friends. But when they are attacked by an overwhelming force and the lieutenant proves to be a good leader, Barney opts to stick around awhile. 

The finale is a bloody Last Stand that is truly exciting.

My summary leaves out a number of fun character moments and there is a strong theme about the difference between effective discipline and mere brutality, all of which adds to the overall quality of the novella, "All You Do Is Fight" is high-quality storytelling from start to finish.

You can find this issue of Adventure online HERE.

Duty and the Foreign Legion

cover art by Gerard C. Delano

 

It's been a few years since we've looked at one of J.D. Newsom's always-good Foreign Legion stories. (Click HERE and HERE for those reviews.)

As I read more of Newsom's action-packed tales, I'm impressed by their variety. The settings for these stories is always colonial North Africa and the main character is always a Legionnaire. But Newsom manages to generate unique plots and characterizations each time.

In "Duty," (published in the April 1, 1931 issue of Adventure) is told in the first person, as if we are being told the story in a bar over drinks. It's an effective storytelling technique--with my favorite example of this being L. Sprague de Camp's "A Gun for Dinosaur."

This time, the storyteller is a Legionnaire sergeant-major, who is explaining that, when he first joined after fleeing the United States, he was a disciplinary problem. In fact, he ended up getting sent to a camp called Ras-al-Gazer, where all the untrainable riff-raff end up... where the officer in charge and his non-coms treat you with unending brutality in the vain hope of instilling a sense of discipline. Looking back, our narrator realized the place served no useful purpose--"Discipline without justice is a joke," he states. But at the time, he was stuck there.

So was a soldier named Vaillard, a former professor of political science who had abandoned his wife, child and career and eventually found himself stationed at Ras-al-Gazer as another useless incorrigable. But Vaillard has plans. And when those plans involve murdering the commanding officer and stealing a pistol, the other prisoners are unwillingly drawn into a mutiny.

This leads to a stand-off. Vaillard and the mutineers are trapped in their barracks, but they have hostages. Vaillard is certain they'll be allowed to go free and march for the nearest border. But then a young officer comes into the barracks to confront the mutineers. This officer has a connection to Vaillard that changes the situation drastically.

The story is very tense, with the standoff between the mutineers and the soldiers being told very effectively. But its the characters of Vaillard and the young officer who really make the story work, with their specific relationship amping up the tension to 11. Essentially, the story becomes an examination of egotism vs. duty vs. family. And Newsom brings this tale to an effective end.

You can read the story online HERE. 

A Nasty Officer and a Nasty Revenge

cover art by A.L. Ripley

Read/Watch 'em In Order #179

It's the most annoying thing in the world. I'm married to a wonderful, nigh-perfect wife--I have a job I enjoy and attend a church I love. But all the same, my life is empty and miserable because I can't find a list of stories by J.D. Newsom that feature Foreign Legionnaires Withers and Curialo. I reviewed one of them a little while back and enjoyed them as protagonists. My understanding is that Newsom used them again in several more stories and I would like to read them all. But I can't find a list of these specific stories ANYWHERE. My life is indeed empty and meaningless.

 The next story in the January 10, 1926 issue of Adventure gives me some small comfort in that it is a Withers and Curialo tale. 

Newsom's uniformly excellent Foreign Legion yarns can sometimes be intense, sometimes tragic and sometimes humorous, with a mixture of brutality and nobility combined with an often cynical commentary on politics and human nature.

"Mumps," is set in Morocco and leans heavily on humor. Withers is serving at the aide/valet to an officer named Trudaine. It's not a fun job, because Trudaine is an abusive and mean-spirited man. When he catches Withers writing some unkind things to him in a letter to a girl, Withers knows he's destined to be sent to a punishment regiment. Things are always tough in the Legion, but the punishment unit is particularly brutal. 

Trudaine comes down with the mumps, giving Withers a temporary reprieve. It's Withers' friend Curialo who comes up with a solution--a nasty prank to play on a nasty man. A fellow soldier named Krause bears a superficial resemblance to Trudaine AND he also has reason to dislike the officer. So what if Krause went into town while impersonating Trudaine and act in a way that would bring disgrace to Trudaine. Trudaine would then be relieved of command before he could reassign Withers. 

It's a great plan. Or it would be a great plan if Krause doesn't get too carried away with his role.

"Mumps" is a quick and funny tale. It's interesting to compare it to "Mud," the World War 1-era story I reviewed last October, in which there was still funny banter between the two protagonists, but the action was edge-of-your-seat stuff. Withers and Curialo are great characters in part because they fit nicely into Legion stories whether the emphasis is humor or action. 

I just wish I could find a complete list of their stories. It's hardly a state secret. It's gotta be somewhere.

Grenades for the Colonel

 

cover art by Paul Stahr

This might be my favorite J.D. Newsom Foreign Legion story.

"Grenades for the Colonel" was published in the February 16, 1935 issue of Argosy. In French-controlled Moracco, a chiefton named Mulay is rebelling. Colonel Dubosquet is given the job of crushing the rebellion. The battle sequence that follows includes this evocative paragraph:

"The Colonel was on top of him all the way. Not the colonel in person, naturally, but his men. There is a slight difference. He carried out his orders to the letter: regardless of cost, he hammered Mulay, and in his wake wooden crosses made from ammunition boxes and packing crates bloomed by the wayside. Crosses surmounted by the sweaty, blood-smeared caps of the dead of half-a-dozen regiments. Crosses sacred to the memory of Jean-Baptiste Durand of the Signal Corps; sacred to the memory of Fritz Sturmer of the Foreign Legion; sacred to the eternal memory of some poor devil, slumped down among the boulders on a nameless hillside, coughing up his life blood through a hole in his throat; sacred to the everlasting memory of all those whom the jackels will disinter when silence comes again, and the stars shine, and the battle has rolled on to the next ridge. Crosses lopsided in the windblown sand: firewood for the next migratory tribe drifting down the valley..."

Eventually, Mulay and his bodyguard of 500 warriors appear to be cornered. They make a run for it, galloping past a Foreign Legion company. That company has lost all its officers and was commanded by an American sergeant named Kilburn. They kill half of Mulay's men, but their flank is open because a troop of Senegalese soldiers hadn't moved up to their assigned position. Mulay escapes.

Colonel Dubosquet lays the blame on the Legionnaires. Kilburn is busted to private and the entire unit spends a year as prisoners in all but name, building a road through rough terrain. They are guarded by the Senegalese, which produces a lot of anomosity between the two units. This evenually leads to a riot, which gets the Legionnaires imprisoned--once again guarded by the Senegalese.

In the meantime, an Intelligence officer is trying to convince the colonel that Mulay is back and is talking the Senegalese troops into mutiny. But Colonel Dubosquet won't listen. He's rebuilt Mulay's home town and is having a party--with officials from Morocco and France--to show off his accomplishments. He has complete faith that none of his troops will cause trouble.

Not surprisingly, his troops cause trouble. But Kilburn and his men have staged a jailbreak and... well, that might be a good thing for the French.

The climatic battle scene is a match in intensity to the beginning. Strong characters, a great plot, an authority figure just BEGGING for a comuppance, and an occasional dollop of humor make this story a winner. Newsom's Foreign Legion tales are all great, but this one might indeed be my favorite.

Click HERE to read it for yourself. 

Let's Visit With the Foreign Legion

J.D. Newsom was an interesting guy. Born in China, raised in France and educated at Cambridge, he served with the British Army during the First World War and the American Navy during World War II. He also wrote a number of novels and short stories about the French Foreign Legion.

"The Medal," for instance, was published in the December 15, 1927 issue of Adventure. Full of dry humor as well as gritty action, it is a story that really draws you into plot and keeps you there.

The protagonist is an American named Alexander Sutton who marries a French girl while serving in the American Army during the Great War. And we learn, from reading about Sutton's woes, that its not a good idea to marry a woman when you don't share enough of a common language to make your situation clear to her. The poor girl thought she was marrying a rich man, not a man who one day hoped to be rich.

Sutton's family disapproves of the wife, who is herself expressing disapproval loudly and often. Eventually, Sutton mugs a guy to get enough money to take her back to France, where she promptly dumps him.

Sutton is nearly penniless and stranded in a French village, wondering what to do next, when a small Frenchman tries to pick his pocket of his few remaining francs. This, oddly, leads to a friendship between the two men and a mutual decision to join the Legion. Soon, Sutton finds himself serving in French-controlled North Africa, where he discovers that he can handle the physical hardships, but his French friend never, ever STOPS TALKING!

Here, Newsom actually manages to sneak in some sharp remarks about both the inherent absurdity of colonialism and the fact that those leading rebellions against European rulers don't necessarily care about the best interests of the local population. This lasts just a few paragraphs, but it both effectively comments on these issues and sets up the background for the action that soon follows. It's an impressive bit of writing.

And plenty of action does follow, with French forces getting ambushed, Sutton's talkative friend disgracing himself and later getting an opportunity to redeem himself, and Sutton himself discovering that--despite the incredible hardships and dangers--he has found a home in the Legion.

And even when the action gets intense, the story never loses its dry sense of humor. Sutton's relationship with his French sometimes-friend is fun and a brief sequence in which this friend gets Sutton stuck with taking an officer's dog for walks is wonderful.

You can read the story online HERE.

Two Enemies Become... Less Bitter Enemies?

 

cover art by Hubert Rogers

I've reviews a couple of J.D. Newsom's Foreign Legion stories in the past (HERE and HERE) and I find that I simply can't get enough of them. It's amazing how much good story-telling Newsom drew out of the same "down-and-out guy or criminal joins the Legion and fights in North Africa" premise. He was able to vary the characterizations and the battle sequences enough to always keep his next story enthralling.

"An Enemy of Society" was published in the February 1, 1929 issue of Adventure. The protagonist this time is yet another American on the run from the law after killing a man in the States. His name is Bill Mason and he is definitely no friend of society. Legion discipline doesn't really take with him--he gets drunk a lot and tends to get into trouble.

This annoys the other American in his unit. Thomas Haywood was the first mate on a freighter until his perpetual drunkenness led to him wrecking the ship. Unable to face his family after this, he abandoned them and joined the Legion. 

But Haywood has (mostly) given up drinking and--with a burst of self-righteousness--he tries to get Mason to do the same. But Mason has no desire to be reformed. The two end up hating each other. And, while Haywood reacts well to Legion discipline and makes corporal, Mason ends up doing two years of hard labor for disobeying orders and attacking Haywood.

After his prison term, Mason ends up back in Haywood's unit. He now has plans to kill the man, but their unit ends up in combat before he can bring this desire to fruition.

The story can be found online HERE, so I won't spoil the ending. It's kind of predicatable that one of them would save the other during the fighting, but where things lead from there is a bit of a surprise. In terms of plot, the resolution may be just a little bit contrived. But in terms of characterization, all the right notes are hit and the final paragraphs have a real emotional impact.

The Death Watch

 

cover art by Rudolph Belarski

A couple of months ago, I reviewed one of J.D. Newsom's excellent Foreign Legion stories. That particular story had been published in the October 1940 issue of Foriegn Legion Adventures. I've been periodically reading through the other stories in that issue and ran across yet another really good one.

"The Death Watch," by Theodore Roscoe, is narrated by a retired legionaire named Corday, who recounts a particular adventure he shared with a comrade years earlier.

That comrade was not your typical legionaire. He was small and Corday tells us he looked like a wax doll. He was nicknamed "Jack the Goat," because of the goatee he sported and was regularly bullied by others in his unit.

The bullying stopped when the unit attacks a hill occupied by Arab bandits. Jack not only performs bravely under fire, he also gets five Arabs to surrender. Cut off from the other legionaires, Jack uses the body of the Arab chief as a shield and somehow makes the dead man talk--ordering the others to give up.

Jack doesn't provide an explanation for this, though I don't think that I'm spoiling anything when I reveal one of the twists at the end of the story. If you don't realize Jack is a ventriloquist the moment this happens, you aren't really trying.

Corday and Jack are later part of a small Legion unit being shipped to Somalia to put down a rebellion there. They are put aboard a rusty steamer along with a large unit of colonial troops. These troops prove to be unhappy and perhaps prone to rebel. Soon, the officer in charge of the Legionaires has been murdered.

A new officer is brought aboard-- a man strong on discipline but who makes the mistake of bringing his pretty wife on board as well. It's here that the racial attitudes of 1940 come into play--when the colonial troops do mutiny, one of the reasons given is that the black men immediately want to rape the white girl. Also, the legionaires had been contempteous of the black troops from the get-go. I don't know if the author shared this attitude (because good art is often produced by flawed people) or if he's simply giving his characters the mindsets they would have had. Also, to keep it all in proper story context, the troops were acting rebelious before the woman came aboard AND rampaging mutinous soldiers (even if you sympathize with their reasons for rebelling) don't have a great record with women, regardless of respective skin colors.

But if you are a fan of old pulp fiction, as am I, you know that you'll run across racial bigotry from time to time and either enjoy the story in proper context or walk away. This is a story worth sticking with, because the action scenes are great. Both the battle on the hilltop early in the story and the fighting on the ship are exciting set-pieces.

On the ship, Corday, Jack and the girl are soon the only survivers other than the mutineers. The crew has run out on them, taking the only lifeboat with them. They have a machine gun set up on the bridge and are desperately holding off the mutineers. 

It's Jack that comes up with a plan. They are close to shore and know of a Legion platoon that's supposed to be nearby. Jack will hold the bridge and protect the girl. Corday will swim ashore (a long and dangerous swim), try to contact the platoon, find a boat and come back.

It takes Corday many hours to get ashore and, by the time he has found the platoon and they commandeer a boat, over two days have passed. They have to then search for the ship in foggy weather.

When they finally find the ship, Jack is still holding out. Using skills as a puppeteer and ventriloquist, he's turned his dead comrades into apparently "alive" soldiers.

That's a bit of a spoiler, but as I said, if you don't figure out that Jack has relevant show-biz skills during that initial action scene, you simply aren't paying attention to what you are reading. If I were to take points away from this story, it would be that this twist and a twist involving the identity of the girl are immediately predictable. But the overall ambiance of the story--the superbly described action and the high tension inherent in Corday's journey to find reinforcements--is great.

You can find this one online HERE. 

Desperate Plan after Desperate Plan

 

cover art by Rudolph Belarski

I've been reading through a PDF copy of the October 1940 issue of Foreign Legion Adventures, the second and also the last issue of this title, which depended largely on reprints. I've already covered a couple of the stories HERE and HERE.

Well, there's one more story inside this issue that's worth talking about. "Renegade Caid," a novella by F. Van Wyck Mason, was originally published in Argosy in 1930. Though it doesn't quite measure up to J.D. Newsom's "Soldiers of Misfortune" (the best story in the issue), it's still a slam-bang adventure, full of non-stop and brutal action.

Legion sergeant and former Texas Ranger Lemuel Frost is leading three other men on a recon patrol. While they out on the desert, their outpost is attacked and wiped out. The only survivor is Frost's best friend, who has been tortured and dies soon after being found among the dead.

The attackers were led by a Russian with a lot of combat experience. He used to be known as Prince Michailov who fought for the tsar, then sold out his troops to the communists, then sold out the communists. Now he's in North Africa, using a Muslim title and calling up troops for a violent jihad against Europeans. His troops are well-armed and well-disciplined, making him very, very dangerous.

Frost and his three men are the only ones who know about him, also finding out that he plans to raid another Legion outpost on the way to looting a supply depot and then attacking Christian natives who are gathered at a fair like lambs brought for slaughter.

Frost has an unfortunate (but historically accurate) tendency to use the N-word when referring to any non-white, but there's no doubting either his courage or his determination to avenge the death of his friend. He and his men ride their camels nearly to death to reach that second outpost. But the officer there has a grudge against Frost and fails to take his warning seriously. Frost's patrol rides on and the outpost is overwhelmed by Michailov's forces minutes later.

There's still a chance. The supply depot is at the other end of a narrow pass through some mountains. It can be easily defended if Frost's patrol can get there first. But their camel's are exhausted; they are hotly pursued; and there's more enemy troops in front of them.

Frost fights and improvises, tricking two groups of Michaelov's men into fighting each other. The Legionnaires arrive at the depot, only to find there's just four men stationed there with only a little bit of ammunition for their two machine guns. There's several boxes of dynamite, but no wire or detonators.

Frost must improvise again. There might yet be a way to stop Michaelov, but this might also mean asking a friend to die. When THAT plan doesn't quite work, Frost sees one last suicidal chance to turn the tide. 

"The Renegade Caid" takes a few pages of exposition to get things rolling, but then it gallops from page to page at a lightning pace as the Legionnaires gallop desperately from one seemingly hopeless situation to another. It's a great example of the sort of blood-and-guts adventure storytelling that the pulp magazines were often so good at. 

The story is available online HERE.