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.