Short Story Genre Survey, Part 4

 

This week, we look at a war story.

Sports

Adventure

Mystery

Horror

Science Fiction

Fantasy

Western

War

It is shameful that William Chamberlain's fiction (war-themed and Westerns) are out of print. The guy was good. A career military officer who retired as a general in 1946, he often wrote what he knew. Much of his military fiction is told from the point-of-view of an officer--usually a commanding officer--and dealt with matters of leadership and responsibility. At the same time, he didn't forget about the grunts, making sure he humanized the noncoms and privates as well.

"Hard-Luck Regiment" is a solid example of how good he is. Originally published in the September 22, 1951 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, it was later reprinted in the 1964's More Combat Stories of World War II and Korea, the second of two anthologies collecting Chamberlain's short fiction. This book was reprinted as a paperback in 1969 under the title The Zone of Sudden Death.

It's January 1945 and American troops are advancing into the Huertgen Forest, a real-life campaign that turned into a bloodbath. Maj. Clay Daggett--new to combat--has just become the executive officer of a battalion in the 26th Regiment, which has a reputation for hard luck.

The reputation seems to be well-earned. The regiment captures a couple of towns, but takes heavy losses and one of the towns is retaken. The regiment's commander, Dan Sharkey, wants to counterattack, figuring that this unexpected move and the morning fog will mean the Germans will be caught with their pants down.

Daggett, who now commands a battalion because the original C.O. was killed, thinks this plan is nuts. When orders arrive ordering the regiment to retreat and promoting Sharkey to general, Daggett is relieved. No suicide attack now.

But Sharkey has been with the regiment since the Great War. He knows what they can do. He knows the hard-luck reputation comes from the regiment getting hard missions--but also accomplishing those missions. Daggett thinks he's making a horrible decision, but he doesn't know the regiment like Sharkey.

It's a strong story, setting up the premise effectively, giving us supporting characters among the enlisted men so we never forget what's at stake, and introducing themes about inspirational leadership into the tale. The combat sequence is short, but effective. Not everyone we've met will be alive at the end and the success of the mission is very uncertain for a time, but we learn a thing or two about leading men from the front.

"Hard-Luck Regiment" is typical of the quality of Chamberlain's work. He really does need to be brought back into print.

Game For Heroes

 

With World War 2 approaching its end, one-eyed commando Owen Morgan is tasked with a mission. He's to scout out one of the Nazi-occupied Channel Islands--an island on which he grew up--because it was feared that the Nazis on the island would not surrender once Germany fell.

An American commando team accompanies him, assigned to sabotage any ships in the island's harbor. Things go awry and both Owen and the commandos are captured.

From here, things get really interesting. Owen actually befriends a German sergeant named Steiner, a hard-core veteran of the Russian front, but who is not a Nazi but a decent human being. But the commander of the Germans on the island is a fanatical Nazi named Radl, who holds the loyalty of a unit of SS troops. It's Radl who refuses to accept the news that Hitler is dead when this is reported over the radio.

The book is obviously setting up a clash between the prisoners & good Germans vs the SS troops. But before that, in an incredibly intense action scene, Allies and Germans must team up to take a life boat out into a near-hurricane storm to save the crew of a German ship hung up on some rocks.

This leads directly into the equally intense climax, in which the Allies and good Germans do indeed have a final battle against Radl and the SS.

It's a book that kept me up until 1 am last night because I didn't want to put it down. Great action, great characters, with themes of friendship and courage running throughout.

This was written in 1970 under Higgins' James Graham pen-name, a few years before "The Eagles as Landed" put him on the bestseller list. It's interesting to note that he reused several character names (Steiner and Radl) for major characters in "The Eagle as Landed" and also reused a minor plot point. (The Steiners in both books briefly serve in a unit that has men riding a modified torpedo that carries a second torpedo to be launched at Allied shipping.) Higgins also used the idea of Allies and Germans teaming up to save lives as a major plot point in his later novel "Storm Warning." And his World War II novels often explore the idea that not every German fighting in World War 2 was evil.

Higgins was writing adventure novels, not dissertations on morality, but I always kind of wished he had explored the idea of good Germans a little further. Usually, Higgins admirable German characters are brave soldiers serving their country. A discussion of about the right/wrong of serving one's country when that country is ruled by a despotic maniac bent on racial genocide would have been interesting. To be fair, Higgins does deal with the evils of Nazism quite powerfully, but his good Germans are still on the front lines shooting at the Allies. This doesn't make them less effective as characters in Higgins' novel and the author's general point about not condemning every German is valid. But I'm always reminded of the character of Eric Koenig from Marvel Comics. Eric was a German who fought with the Allies as a member of Nick Fury's Howling Commandoes. In his view, overthrowing the Nazis was the best way to serve Germany.

But then, if Higgins spent too much time delving into moral philosphies, there wouldn't have been room for his great action scenes. Game for Heroes is intense and unputdownable.

The Glasshouse Gang #4

 

The Dead Commando (1975) is the final and definitely the most breathlessly-paced of the Glasshouse Gang series. The war in North Africa will soon be coming to an end as the British prepare to attack the Germans at El Alamein. John Offer & his motley gang of deserters and crooks are once again offered temporary immunity from arrest if they carry out a dangerous mission behind enemy lines. They use this immunity to bust a comrade out of a British military prison, but still plan to carry out the mission. John Offer is a crook, but he's honest in his own way.

 

This leads to virtually non-stop action. Circumstances lead to the Gang being beseiged in a fortress they captured from the Italians. There seems to be no escape, but they escape nonetheless. They are accidentally strafed by the RAF, then nearly caught by Germans commanded by an officer who has been pursuing the Gang across the previous two novels. Two of Offer's men are captured, so naturally a rescue must be attempted. Offer's nemesis knows this and plans a trap. Offer knows his nemesis knows, but the nemesis knows that Offer knows he knows. Nonetheless, Offer springs the trap to get to his men, then must improvise wildly as events play out in unusual ways. This all leads to an unexpected but very satisfying conclusion to the series.

 

The action is almost literally non-stop, full of excitement and tension. Try to find time to read The Dead Commando in one sitting, because there's no good stopping point.

 

The Glasshouse Gang series says goodbye with what I consider to be the best of the four novels.

Glasshouse Gang #3

 

Benghazi Breakout (1966) is the third of the four Glasshouse Gang books. Be wary of the current ebook reprints, which incorrectly lists it as second.

 

 John Offer and his Glasshouse Gang, though officially deserters and criminals, are once again given temporary immunity from arrest in exchange for carrying out a mission. In this case, that mission would be to enter the German-held city of Benghazi and rescue two captured British Generals.

 

History tells us the Gang will not be successful--the generals are real-life characters and were not rescued before being taken to a POW camp in Italy. (Brief Pause to Brag: My first published work was an article on one of those generals: Richard O'Connor. O'Connor eventually escaped on his own in 1943.)

 

But the Gang has another reason for going to Benghazi. A couple of their comrades--captured during the oil depot raid in the last book--are being held there by the SS. Offer is determined to free them.

 

This is the premise for another fast-paced and intensely exciting entry in this unusual series. Offer has developed into a great lead protagonist. Despite his status as a crook and some sociopathic attitudes, he is smart; able to improvise bold tactics; and intensely loyal to the men he leads. The same thematic tension that ran through the previous books remains—is the series anti-authoritarian or is it simply critical of the abuse of authority?

 

Anyway, not everything he does goes as planned. Even after his men are rescued, events leave Offer cut off from the Gang, accompanied only by a man who wants to kill him and pursued across the desert by a relentless German officer who also wants to see him dead. This, in turn, leads to an exciting conclusion to the novel.

Glasshouse Gang #2

 

WARNING: The current ebook reprints of the Glasshouse Gang books lists Desert Marauders (1976) as Book 4 in the series. This is incorrect. It is Book 2 and literally picks up the action where Book 1 leaves off.

 

But the publisher messing up the series order doesn't distract from the quality of the book. Set in North Africa during World War 2, it recounts the adventures of Captain John Offer and his Glasshouse Gang Commando Unit. Except Offer isn't really a captain and the G.G.C.U. isn't a real unit. Instead, it's a ploy used by Offer and his men (all deserters and former residents of brutal military prisons called Glasshouses) to avoid being captured by the authorities.

 

But it turns out Offer is a really good tactical field commander and--when forced to do so--his men can do real harm to the enemy.

 

The book is filled with superb action set pieces as they finish an escape from the German army started at the end of the last novel and, later, find themselves shooting up a German airbase when they run across it by accident during a rain storm.

 

By this time, they've acquired an arch-enemy in the German army and the British army has figured out who they are. But Offer is given temporary immunity from prosecution if he and his men can pull off an apparently suicidal raid on Rommel's oil depot, deep in German territory.

 

This leads to an extended climatic action sequence that is literally edge-of-your-seat stuff.

 

Like the first novel, there's an interesting thematic tension existing just underneath the action. Offer and his men despise the British army because of the brutal treatment they were subject too in the Glasshouse. But to survive the war and stay free, Offer has to recreate a system of military authority within the G.G.C.U.--replicating what he has supposedly rejected. And, when the British finally tumble to what he's doing, a particular major general doesn't react with the same arrogant authority Offer usually sees from the Top Brass. Instead, the general respects what Offer has accomplished and, though he's quite straightforward about his willingness to sacrifice Offer's men on what is probably a suicide mission, he does so out of strict military necessity.

 

So is the series anti-authoritarian or simply critical of abuse among otherwise necessary authority figures? Is Offer a criminal (stealing vehicles, supplies and payrolls without a qualm) or does his skill, courage and the loyalty he shows towards his men lift him up into something more?

 

In the end, it doesn't matter. Desert Marauders works primarily as a cracking good wartime adventure novels. Thematic issues underlying it make for worthwhile discussions, but we come to the novel mostly to watch stuff get blown up.

The Glasshouse Gang #1

 

I stumbled upon a four book series written in the late 1960s pretty much by accident about a year ago. And, by golly, it was a really fun series.

The Glasshouse Gang (1967), by Gordon Landsborough, kicked off a four-book series with an interesting premise. The main characters begin as inmates in the Glasshouse, a British military prison located in Egypt during World War 2. The prison is a brutal place, with the inmates treated in a violently sadistic manner. When former officer John Offer gets out after a term for theft, he wants revenge.

 

With other former inmates, he forms what comes to be called the Glasshouse Gang Commando Unit. They track down and beat up several of their former guards and eventually even stage a raid on the prison itself, exacting vengeance on the prison's commanding officer and recruiting more members.

 

In the meantime, Offer has shown his intelligence and audacity by hiding the G.G.C.U. in plain site, setting up tents and supplying themselves via night-time raids on depots and pay centers. They thus blend in with the myriad other British units in the area.

 

Eventually, the military police get suspicious and the gang shifts location out into the desert, where several of the gang are captured by Germans. A rescue mission is necessary, leading to a very exciting climax involving a machine-gun equipped truck being chased by a number of machine-gun equipped German vehicles.

 

John Offer is an interesting protagonist. There are sociopathic aspects to his personality, but he's also a good leader, able to plan missions and improvise under pressure. The book draws on the same anti-authoritarian vibes that classic WWII movies such as "The Dirty Dozen" and "Kelly's Heroes" used so effectively. There's a counterpoint to this, though, as Offer also has to depend on giving structure and order to his gang of thugs so he can ensure their freedom and survival. There's a real tension there--Offer earns the respect of most of the men, but a number of hardcases don't take orders willingly. This becomes an increasingly important plot point as the story progresses and brings an interesting sense of irony to the book's anti-authoritarian attitude.

But, though the novel does have some depth in both theme and character, it exists mostly for the action. And, as the series progresses through three more novels, that action gradually becomes more intense and more exciting. Over the next few months, we'll take periodic looks at the rest of the series. 

Battle Ensign

 

A couple of years ago, I wrote about a novel set in the Second World War, recounting the adventures of a PT boat. It was written by Australian author and navy vet J.E. Macdonnell, who wrote something like a gazillion books about his country's navy during the war. As far as I know, the PT boat book and two others from that specific series were the only ones republished in the U.S. Perhaps Macdonnell deliberately featured an American protagonist to break into the U.S. market. 

His other books are hard to find in the States. Or at least they were. They are beginning to appear as ebooks. I recently read the first two--Stand by to Ram and Target Unidentified (both published in 1957)--and loved them. So I moved on to the third book--Battle Ensign.

The first two featured Commander Bruce Sainsbury as the protagonist. Sainsbury is the commander of the Australian destroyer Scimitar and he soon proves himself to be really, really good at his job. This job entails, at one point, ramming a much larger Japanese ship that was about to blow the Scimitar out of the water. 

Battle Ensign (1958) introduces a new protagonist, gunnery officer Peter Bentley. Newly arrived aboard the Scimitar, he soon clashes with the ship's new executive officer, but he soon realizes that Sainsbury is a highly skilled commander.

The Scimitar is assigned to an American fleet. On the way to join them, they are attacked by what they identify as a land-based Japanese bomber. But the Americans dismiss this. It must have been a carrier-based plane. After all, the only nearby islands are said to be deserted.

Well, a massive air attack by the Japanese sinks a couple of capital ships, so the American admiral changes his mind. The Scimitar volunteers to put search the islands, find the airfield and call in help to destroy it.

But Bentley, who will be accompaning the landing party, suggests that they might bring some TNT with them and perhaps do a little sabotage on their own if they find the airfield.  Bentley picks men he knows he can trust, but then the ship's exec--someone whose courage and competency Bentley has reason to doubt--is put in command of the mission. 

The chapter detailing the air attack on the American fleet is fantastic, but Scimitar's subsequent trip through a typhoon is even more intense. And then the mission on the island to locate and sabotage the airfield is even MORE intense that that. Aside from the great action, themes of courage, loyalty and redemption add to the strong emotions that run through the book's climax. 

Peter Bentley would continue on as protagonist of his own series, eventually getting command of his own destroyer. I'm looking forward to reading that series.

Teaming with the Enemy to Save a Child--Wash and Repeat.

 

SPOILER WARNING: There is absolutely no way to talk about these two parallel episodes of Combat! and The Rat Patrol without giving away the endings. If you haven't seen them, I recommend you watch them before you continue reading here. As of this writing, The Rat Patrol can be watched for free on Pluto TV. I'm afraid you might have to dig around to find the Combat! episode. 

Anyway, Combat's "A Cry in the Ruins" aired on March 23, 1965 and it is arguably the best episode in one of the best TV series ever aired. The story is by A. Martin Zweiback, who then co-wrote the teleplay with Edward J. Lasko. It is superbly directed by cast member Vic Morrow. Morrow played Sgt. Saunders, but doesn't appear in character in the episode.

Lt. Hanley (Rick Jason) is leading a recon patrol through a French village that has been pretty thoroughly shelled. They meet a French woman who cries that her baby is trapped in a cellar. But before they can help her dig out the child, the shelling begins again. The Americans have to run for it and lose track of the woman.

When the shelling is over, they see that a German squad has arrived and is helping the woman dig out the cellar. Hanley wants to quietly withdraw and "leave the Germans to their good intentions." But one of the Germans spots them. The two squads start shooting out, but the shooting dies down when the woman begins to scream "For the love of God, help my baby!"

Now what? There's a war on. The Germans and the Americans are supposed to be killing each other. But can they simply ignore the pleas of the desperate mother?

After some negotiation, it's decided for the two sides to put up their weapons and dig for the child. This doesn't go smoothly. At one point, a fist fight breaks out and the soldiers nearly go for their guns before Hanley can calm them down. Then, when they find the cellar entrance, a badly wounded German captain shows up with a submachine gun, demanding the truce end and the currently unarmed Americans surrender.

In the end, mercy triumphs over war and the rescue effort continues. But when they get down into the cellar, then can't find a baby. In fact, they learn there never was a baby. The poor woman's baby had been killed several years ago and now, whenever there is shelling, she runs out into the ruins and to desperately try to save her long-dead child.

The two squads pick up their weapons without talking to each other and simpy walk off in different directions.

It's a wonderful ending to a perfectly told story. It's an exploration of basic humanity, with talented character actors showing just the right emotions both through their expressions and their dialogue to make the story work. A lot of little touches add to it. The German officer, played by William Smithers, gives a great performance. But the other German soldiers, even though each has no more than a line or two of German dialogue each, are effectively personalized themselves in subtle ways, such as idiosyncratic differences in their uniforms or the scar that one of them has running down his face. Everyone here is a human being--trained to kill their enemy but willing to put that aside to save an innocent life.

The ironic ending adds to the theme simply by avoiding a possibly corny happy ending and adding an appropriate dose of tragedy that humanizes everything even more.

Two years later, on September 7, 1967, The Rat Patrol aired the episode "The Truce at Aburah Raid." It's written by--yes--Edward J. Lasko, one of the writers involved in "A Cry in the Ruins." It seems that Lasko returned to the "enemies teaming up to save a child" idea one more time.

To be fair, though, Lasko does craft a relatively original story around the same idea. This time, there's no question that the child exists--we can see her lying on a ledge halfway down a well. She falls in when the Rat Patrol, with their arch-enemy Captain Dietrich hard on their heels, barrel into a small oasis. The girl tumbles into the well while trying to get out of their way.

Once again, in response to the cries of a mother, the Germans and the Americans have to figure out how to trust each other long enough to save a child.

And once again, the arrival of Germans not in on the original truce threatens to upset that truce. The Rat Patrol, though, was a show that depended more on action and less on character and thematic depth than did Combat! I don't mean to knock the show by pointing that out. The Rat Patrol is what it is--an action show that had to tell a story in a half-hour and include a lot of gunfire and explosions in that story. It was very good at that.

So, in this case, even though the child is saved, the truce breaks down. The Rat Patrol, though apparently helpless, manage to get the drop on the Germans. The only survivor on the German side is Captain Dietrich, who never loses his job no matter how many times the Allied commando team wipes out his command and accomplishes his mission.

So there you have it. Two different World War 2-themed episodes, both written (or co-written) by the same guy--that use the same basic plot. And I'm not being critical of Lasko. As I said, he gives both episodes their own unique twist. And the two shows are so different that it's not really fair to compare them.

But, by golly, I'm going to compare them anyways. Though The Rat Patrol was an entertaining show in its own right, "The Truce at Aburah Raid" doesn't hold a candle to "A Cry in the Ruins." 

Well, Obviously I HAD to Buy It!

 

Occasionally, Angela will make fun of my tendency to buy used paperbacks even though I have a shelf-full of them I haven't read yet. What she doesn't get is that there is sometimes no choice. There is literally no free will involved.

Old paperbacks sometimes sneak up on you unexpectedly. 

See if this doesn't make sense:

I was reading a history book about an armored division fighting near the end of WWII. That made me think of a movie I'd seen on TV years ago also set at the end of the war, in which Allied commanders rescue some rocket scientists from the Nazis and have to dodge both German and Russian soldiers while getting to safety.

I couldn't remember the title and spend 20 minutes googling different things, throwing off my search results because I mistakenly remembered Rod Taylor in the lead role rather than Stuart Whitman.

I finally find the Wikipedia entry for the movie, which tells me there was a novelization written by Michael Avallone, under the pen name Max Walker. Well, Avallone was a great writer who was often contracted to do novelizations or TV tie-in novels.

Naturally, I HAD to immediately track down and buy a used copy of this on Amazon. I think we can all agree that there was no choice in the matter. Why Angela doesn't understand this is beyond me.

Paperbacks. They get you no matter where you are and what you are doing. They're insidious. There is no escaping them.

Anyway, how was the book?

"The Last Escape" is, as I said, set near the end of World War 2. It involves an American O.S.S. agent and some British commandoes rescuing German rocket scientists from an S.S. facility, dodging both pursuing Germans and a determined Russian tank commander as they make their way to American lines. It's a neat premise and the story itself is well-executed, with some exciting (if not terribly realistic) action sequences peppered throughhout the tale. The commandos end up having to take the family of the scientists along with them, forcing them to use extra vehicles and raising the concerns of whether they have enough gasoline to take them to safety.

They also have to worry about a possible traitor in their midst, which adds to the tension.

There's a couple of scenes with appreciable emotional impact. One comes when an Allied agent gives his life by yelling "TRAP!" even though he knows he'll be killed. Another is the reaction of the Russian tank commander when he apparently has the escaping scientist trapped and makes a spur-of-the-moment decision based on simply humanity rather than military necessity.

The action scenes include: snatching the scientists from the Nazi base during an air raid; fighting their way out of an ambush when they try to contact Allied agents who turn out to have been captured; raiding a German supply cache for the gas they need; and the final chase to American lines, pursued by both the main bad guy (a cruel S.S. officer) and the Russians. All the action has a sort of "Rat Patrol" feel to them--fun and exciting without being plausible--but they are effective scenes within the context of the story being told. "The Last Escape" is meant to be a fun adventure story, filled with action and basic but sound characterizations. Neither the movie (which I found on YouTube) nor the book are classics. But both accomplish their goal in being entertaining.

There are two or three places in the book that had a "this is a first draft" feel to them with slightly awkward sentence construction. I suspect that Avallone wrote it under a short deadline. But overall, the book tells the story well and those few moments of awkardness aren't enough to spoil the experience. 

[I've learned that this was indeed a rush job. I've been told by author Stephen Mertz: 

Michael Avallone was an early mentor & a dear friend. I recall him once telling me that this was indeed a rush job; the contracted writer proved unable to deliver so Popular Library called in MA who in those days was known as "The Fastest Typewriter in the East."

Since the movie is indeed on YouTube, I guess I'm now obligated to review it in next week's post. 

Helpless Target

 

cover art tentatively credited to Dick Giordano

Charlton Comics' Attack ran for seven issue in 1958 and 1959. These issues were numbered 54 through 60, so it probably picked up the numbering sequence of a cancelled title, though I don't know what that previous title was.

Attack specialized in short (usually 5-page) stories that told their tales quickly and economically. "Helpless Target!" for instance, was published in Attack #55 (December 1958). With a script tentatively credited to Joe Gill and art by Bill Molno, it's one of a half-dozen tales crammed into the 36-page book.

A large landing craft (L.S.T.--Landing Ship, Tank) has just dropped off troops on the Philippines during the 1944 invasion. But they are having engine trouble and drop behind their convoy.

This is bad, because there are Japanese ships in the area and an L.S.T. is very lightly armed with only a few anti-aircraft guns. They wouldn't stand a chance against a destroyer or a submarine.

The captain takes cover along shore a small island. While scouting ashore, they run into some army troops.

This is a weapons company, equipped with rocket launchers mounted on halftracks. They were landed here by accident and have been holding off nearby Japanese troops while hoping someone finds them.

The army guys and their rocket launchers are loaded aboard the L.S.T., which has managed some makeshift repairs. But soon after leaving the island, they run smack into a Japanese destroyer.

The short page count of the story has some disadvantages. For instance, we never get a panel giving us a proper shot of the half-tracks in all their rocket-launching glory. Instead, we just get a few sort-of close-ups of the vehicles or the launchers. But the above panel, showing us the L.S.T. from the point-of-view of the enemy ship, framed in that space between the lifeboat and the davit, is really nice.

The L.S.T. would be virtually helpless in normal circumstances. But this isn't a normal circumstance. Those army rocket launchers take their shot, score a hit and sink a ship.

Like most stories in Attack, "Helpless Target!" is a succinct, well-told yarn that jumps into the plot quickly and resolves it just as quickly. This is obviously a neccessity for a 5-page story, but it uses that restriction to good advantage.

You can read this issue online HERE.

Next week, we'll visit again with Turok, Son of Stone.

Tramp in Armor

 

I first read Colin Forbes' 1969 novel Tramp in Armour two or three decades ago and loved it. I'm pretty sure I remember reading it a second time in 2005, on my first trip to South Sudan. In those pre-Kindle days and with a 30 pound limit on luggage (we fly into Sudan on a small putt-putt plane), I was only able to bring a few paperbacks for the trip and had to ration them carefully. 

Anyway, my paperback disappeared some time ago, but I recently ran across another copy and enjoyed reading it yet again.

In May 1940, a British tank is trapped in a railway tunnel in Belgium for several days right after the Germans attack. When they dig themselves out, they find themselves many miles behind enemy lines.

This is the basic premise of Tramp in Armour, an unlikely plot made possible because the German tanks blitzing across France have outrun their infantry and there are few actual occupation troops between "Bert" (the British tank) and the front lines near Dunkirk. Still, getting back to the Allied lines is not without danger. A series of mini-adventures keep the tension high and present us with a number of truly edge-of-your-seat action scenes. The tank has to hide under a bridge while a German armored column drives right over them; they have to deal with a "helpful" Belgium civilian who may not be who he claims to be; French looters take a potshot at them; a wounded crewman needs a doctor, and so on. Every time they fight or plan their way out of one dangerous situation, something else dangerous pops up almost immediately. The story's pace is one for which the word "breathless" was created.

It's great stuff, with the non-stop prose going fast enough to hide most of the more unrealistic parts. The main character--Sgt. Barnes--is an excellent soldier able to improvise constantly, but he's also very human, subject to exhaustion and mistakes. 

There are a series of coincidences near the end that might stretch credulity too far. First, they kill an officer in a staff car that just happens to carry vital information with him (though, to be fair, the author footnotes that something similar happened in real life.) Second, the crew is joined by a downed RAF pilot who happens to be an demolitions expert. Third, they just happened to find some abandoned explosives. 

But, since this leads to a fantastic final battle in which Barnes rigs the tank to become a bomb aimed at a vital German ammunition dump, I'm willing to forgive what might otherwise be one coincidence too many. Also, by this time, the crew has gone through so much and accomplished so much by the skin of their teeth, that (dramatically speaking) they have earned a little good luck.

Sadly, Tramp in Armour appears to be out-of-print at the moment. Keep an eye peeled for a used paperback. It'll be worth your money.

AAAHHH! I READ IT IN THE WRONG ORDER!

 

I love PT Boats, taking an inexplicable geeky joy in them. In fact, I've written about books featuring PT boats a number of times. (HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE) 

I recently scored a copy of the 1968 novel South Pacific Fury, by James Macdonnell, which also recounts the adventures of a PT boat. This short, fast-paced and truly exciting book stars Walt Kenyon, commander of PT 44. A few hair raising encounters with the Japanese (a bombing run by an enemy plane and an encounter with a destroyer) jump starts the story with a bang (actually, a number of bangs). After that, Kenyon is given the mission of picking up a coastwatcher from an enemy-held island. The Japanese have tumbled to the coastwatcher's presence and are hot on his trail. Also, he has important information that he wasn't able to transmit before his radio went on the fritz.

From there, the book switches from chapter-to-chapter between Kenyon's point-of-view and that of the coastwatcher, whose name is Cook. It's a standard but always effective narrative technique, expanding the action beyond the deck of the small boat and giving us a succession of cliffhanger moments.

The action set pieces are first class. The 44 boat runs into enemy activity and has some engine trouble at an inconvenient time. Cook, in the meantime, deals with an infected bayonet wound in his thigh while barely avoiding both the Japanese and a venomous snake.  But even though the PT boat and the coastwatcher haven't yet rendezvoused or even made radio contact with one another, they still manage to work together. At the same time, Kenyon finds himself in a position that might require him to act with mindnumbing recklessness in order to both complete his mission and survive.

I loved this book and it does tell a complete story in of itself. But as I read it, there seemed to be a call back or two to previous adventures. After doing a bit of research, it seems likely that this book is a sequel to a 1967 novel titled Convert. At the very least, that novel is about someone who takes command of a PT boat after being transfered from a larger ship--which is also Kenyon's back story.

So I have, in all likelihood, read this out of order. That means I may receive a stern letter of reprimand from the International Society for Determining the Order in Which to Read Your Books. We all know what that means.

Oh, well. Hopefully, I'll be allowed to maintain my blog from my prison cell. I wonder if Angela will wait for me while I'm in stir.

Saving Churchill

 

cover art by Jack Kirby

Invaders #4 (January 1976) picks up right where the previous issue left off. In fact, a few pages in, after Captain America and the two Torches commandeer a plane, we get a handy map that recaps the situation.

I love maps.

Last issue, we learned that a traitorous Atlantian, called U-Man, had been given super powers by the Nazis and was planning on ambushing Winston Churchill. Namor and Bucky were heading to the ambush location in Namor's plane. The other three Invaders, without time to wait for red tape, steal a dive bomber and head out in the same direction.

In the meantime, the U-Man arrives along with a few minions near the battleship H.M.S. Duke, which is awaiting Churchill's arrival. He captures a patrol boat, aboard which is Betty Dean, Namor's one friend among the surface people. 

U-Man turns out to be something less than a tactical genius. He recognizes her value as a hostage, but makes her a prisoner in the cabin of the boat right next to a working radio. She alerts the Allies to what is going on just as Churchill's plane is landing. That plane immediately begins to take off again.

U-Man manages to board the plane before it can gain altitude. Namor arrives and the two Atlantians begin to duke it out atop that plane. Remember that there's also a battleship nearby. There's some Atlantian minions handy and there's no reason to think the Nazis don't have one or more U-boats nearby. The rest of the Invaders are just arriving. We are all set for an epic fight scene in an unusual setting with enough super-humans, humans and weaponry to make it interesting. Roy Thomas and Frank Robbins can really go to town here.

But this doesn't happen. I am a big fan of Roy Thomas' writing, but someone makes a terrible editorial decision here to use this issue to plug another comic book. Skull the Slayer, about a group of people thrown into the distant past by a time warp in the Bermuda Triangle, had debuted a few months earlier. 

And the U-Man vs. Invaders fight is also set in the Bermuda Triangle, where it is interrupted by a time warp. The Torches save Churchill's plane from being sucked into the past and the good guys and bad guys end up seperated. Just like that, the fight is over. What was potentially one of the greatest comic book fights ever is nipped in the bud by the decision to cross-market a completely unrelated title. 

I don't know whose idea this was. Roy Thomas edited The Invaders as well as wrote it. Len Wein had edited the first issue of Skull the Slayer, but by this time Marv Wolfman had taken over. And (if I've got my editor-in-chief timeline correct), Wolfman had recently taken over from Wein as editor-in-chief at Marvel, who had in turn taken over that job from Thomas a year or two earlier. 

But whomever it was decided to stop a fight that could have easily been continued into the next issue and would have unquestionably been wonderful--well, I'm still mad at that guy 45 years later. I'm not knocking Skull the Slayer--that book had a disjointed story arc because it kept switching writers, but it was still fun. But a random shout-out to it in a World War II-themed book made no sense at all and gave the Invaders story a weak ending. 

Next week, we'll jump back to the Old West to look at another story from Dell's Indian Chief. 

Invader Fights Invader!

 

cover art by Jack Kirby

Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, doesn't think much of us surface people. How deep-seated this hatred is pretty much depends on the writer of any particular comic book, but in general he just doesn't like us.

But during World War II, after the Nazis attacked Altantis, he quick understandably and quite appropriately decided that he really, really hated the Nazis and he would be willing to work with the Allied nations to defeat Hitler.

All the same, Namor still has a quick temper and will occasionally strike out on his own. 

That's the premise of The Invaders #3 (November 1975), written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Frank Robbins. The team is returning to the U.S. after a mission in Europe when they spot a ship being torpedoed by a U-boat. The U-boat crew soon discovers that it's a bad idea to attack Allied shipping when a team of superheroes is nearby.

The U-boat commander is captured alive and the good guys discover he's carrying a coded message. So it's off to Washington to get it de-coded.

This doesn't take long and the Invaders learn that a super-powered being called U-Man, who is apparently an Atlantian with enchanced size and strength, has been assigned to kill Winston Churchill. The Prime Minister has been in the U.S. meeting with Roosevelt. The Nazis plan to tag him during his trip home. And he's already left.

The idea that one of his people might have turned traitor ticks off Namor and he immediately decides that he needs to deal with the U-Man on his own. Sadly, Namor isn't good at reasonably explaining his intentions, so the situation soon deteriorates into a brawl over the streets of Washington. At least it's not New York this time. Even as early as 1942, New Yorkers must have been getting tired of super-hero battles taking so frequently over their city.

Roy Thomas tosses in an interesting twist here. Captain America's sidekick Bucky sympathizes with Namor and takes his side in the ensuing fight, spraying Toro with a fire extinguisher before punching out his fellow sidekick. This nearly results in Captain America and a stunned Human Torch falling to their deaths, but Bucky sticks to his guns regardless. He's able to join Namor on the Atlantian plane/sub the Invaders have been using for transport. The two fly off alone to battle the Nazi supervillain.

The remaining Invaders get ready to follow, ready to battle both Nazis and Namor.

It's a strong story, coming up with a situation that, combined with Namor's temper, believably pits the heroes against one another. (Though the situation did devolve into a brawl too quickly--probably because Thomas only had so many pages in which to tell the story.) The other Invaders are shown as being sympathetic to Namor, but (except for Bucky) they realize they can't let personal feelings put their mission at risk. And for Bucky--well, the first page of this issue shows him bonding with Namor as the Atlantian instructs him how to fly the plane, providing a proper motivation for his decision to side with Namor. 

All this leads into the next issue, which we'll look at next week.

Back to 1942 (Again!)--Part 2

Cover art by Jack Kirby and John Romita

Last week, we looked at 1976's Marvel Two-in-One #1, in which Ben Grimm traveled back to 1942 to recover some time-lost Vibranium and thus prevent the Nazis from winning World War II.

In that issue, Ben didn't get a chance to punch many Nazis, with the Liberty Legion (made up of various relatively obscure Golden Age heroes) handling most of the action. But as the story spills over into Marvel Two-in-One #20 (October 1976), writer Roy Thomas and artist Sal Buscema toss Ben right into the middle of the action.

Using a flag pole as a catapult, Ben has boarded a giant flyng swastika that was attacking New York City. And may I just take a moment to say that I love being able to type that sentence. A Comic Book Universe is a wonderful thing.

The Liberty Legion had been fighting various Nazi super-villains that had been recently introduced in The Invaders. Roy Thomas continues this trend as Ben discovers the Nazi disembodied brain known as the Brain Drain (also part of the Invaders' Rogue's Gallery) is controlling the giant flying swastika.

I love that sentence as well. I have a good life.

Before the action really gets started, though, we are treated to a couple of pages recapping the events of the recent annual. This has been a chronic problem with this story arc--the FF Annual, Two-in-One Annual and this issue all get bogged down in relatively lengthy information dumps needed to bring the readers up to speed. There's also a painfully contrived moment in which the Nazi villain Skyshark publicly and nonsensically announces that he's carrying the Vibranium on his person. But, just as with the two annuals, the pacing eventually picks up and the story becomes enjoyable.

MTIO #20 is pretty much just a non-stop brawl. The swastika lands at a secret base and Brain Drain's allies put in an appearance, bringing together enough raw power between them to give Ben a pretty tough fight.

Sal Buscema knew how to effectively choreograph a superhero fight and we have a lot of fun watching Ben trade punches with the bad guys. Ben handles himself well and comes close to winning, but he's simply outnumbered. Fortunately, the Liberty Legion arrives.

The conclusion of the fight continues the fun, as the Liberty Legion uses their powers together in tactically interesting ways to finish off the villains. Brain Drain and Skyshark get away, but the remaining Nazis are captured, the Vibranium is recovered and New York City is saved. Ben returns to the present to find out that history has unfolded correctly.

I do wish that Ben's two-issue trip into the past had allowed him more time to directly team-up with the Liberty Legion members. Part of the fun of the FF Annual that kicked off this story arc was getting to see modern heroes interact with Golden Age heroes. Here, Ben is either on the sidelines or unconscious when the Liberty Legion is around.

But the story is a good one regardless, with Nazis getting beaten up and obscure heroes getting their moments in the sun.

Next week, Bruce Wayne produces a movie, solves a murder and gets into an aerial dogfight in what will be the first of three reviews of stories featuring World War I aircraft.

Back to 1942--AGAIN (Part 1)

cover art by Jack Kirby

Marvel Two-in-One Annual #1 (1976) follows up on the story from that year's Fantastic Four Annual, in which the FF had to travel back to 1942 and recover some Vibranium to keep the Nazis from winning the war. But they only managed to recover half of the rare and powerful element.

I have a pet peeve about stories crossing over between titles, which I talked about when I reviewed the FF Annual a couple of weeks ago. I was giving these titles a pass, because--though both involve traveling back to 1942 to recover missing Vibranium--they are independent enough of each other to read and enjoy seperately. 

I still feel that is true, but its connection to the FF Annual does get this issue off to a really slow start. A number of pages are needed to recap the events of the earlier book, which is followed by Ben Grimm playing 20 Questions with the Watcher, who wants to help Ben preserve history but won't overtly violate his non-interference oath by actually speaking. All he can do is smile or frown slightly when Ben asks questions.

Even in the context of a Comic Book Universe, this is a little silly. The Watcher is still interfering--he's still violating his oath--he's just doing it without talking. Maybe according to Watcher Law this gives him a legal loophole, but it's still a goofy way of getting in exposition and setting up the plot.

Anyway, Ben eventually realizes that the Vibranium was split in half when it fell back in time, so the other half still needs to be found. And it needs to be found quickly, because New York City (starting with the most recently constructed buildings) starts to vanish. Ben hasn't seen Back to the Future, which won't be made for another ten years, but he still realizes that history is being altered and he needs to do something about it fast.

Sal Buscema's art is fun to look at, though, and writer Roy Thomas does use the exposition to remind us that Ben is a really smart guy, not just a bruiser who likes to clobber stuff.

Anyway, Ben eventually uses the time machine to travel back to 1942 and the story rapidly gets more interesting. A nice touch here is having Ben meet a young John Romita and befriend him. 

But his new friend will have to wait. A flight of Nazi dive bombers attack New York, which confuses Ben since he knows that the Germans don't have any aircraft carriers. How did the planes get to the United States?

A couple of recent issues of Marvel Premiere (which did cross over directly with the Invaders--GRRRRRR!!!) had introduced the Liberty Legion to the Marvel Universe. This is a group of obscure Golden Age characters who band together to protect the home front while the Invaders are taking the war to occupied Europe. They show up again to take care of the Nazi planes, though the Nazi leader--a brutal pilot named Sky Shark who made a name for himself by strafing civilians--gets away.

Ben doesn't get to do much here, since he's stuck on the ground while the fighting is going on in the air. Also, the Liberty Legion is understandable suspicious of his story that he's from the future. In fact, Ben gets left behind again while the Legion divides into sub teams to fight superpowered Nazi sabateurs.

This bad guys are all villains who had been introduced in recent issues of The Invaders. So Roy Thomas is once again being a Triple Threat: he's indulging in his love of Golden Age characters, using this story to promote characters from other books, and telling a fun story.

That last one is the important part. Using one book to promote another is perfectly legitimate, as long as the story being told is still entertaining.

This one isn't quite as good as the FF Annual, because Ben (one of the Marvel U's best characters) gets left on the sidelines for pretty much the entire tale. But he gets his chance to join in on the last page, when a giant flying swastika attacks the city. He uses a flagpole as a makeshift catapult to fling himself up towards the strange craft and into the next regular issue of Marvel Two-in-One. We'll look at that issue next week.