Legion Pulp: Mud

This month’s pulp fiction story is “Mud” from J. D. Newsom which appeared in the 30 December 1925 issue of Adventure.  I reads like many of the popular stories and novels of this time period that depicted the brutal trench combat of the First World War.  This is an early J. D. Newsom work–about three years into his writing career.  He had already written a couple stories featuring the French Foreign Legion and would eventually make this sub-genre a specialty of his.   The story here, a “complete novelette” if you will, is about two English speaking members of the Legion who are at odds with their Germanic Sergeant who is only too happy to escort them to the rear for summary courts martial and perhaps the firing squad.  Of course, quite a few things happen during that walk back from the front.  (Note: Not my scan–thank “sas” & “jvh” for their superb work)

Mud

Hodgepodge for August 2016

Another month of summer gone.  Before we know it there will be frost on the roofs, piles of leaves in the street, pumpkins on the porches and a delightful chill in the air.  Here are this month’s collected tidbits of Foreign Legion related news, videos, articles, and whatnot.

1. Pulp Magazine Replicas.  I’m starting to warm up to the various pulp reprints that are available–especially those with stories of the Foreign Legion.  I found a couple more publications from Adventure House that were available on Amazon.  They are not cheap but they are definitely cheaper than a brittle copy of the original pulp.  Here are two more that feature at least one Legion story.

2. In the Jungle with the French Foreign Legion.  Wide angle docu-video of the French Foreign Legion’s 3rd REI jungle training course (the C.E.F.E. or Centre d’entraînement à la forêt équatoriale) in French Guiana.  Here.  The insignia for the center is pretty beautiful (imho).

3. French Foreign Legion Africa 2015. Here is a video featuring the Foreign Legion operations in northern Africa (Operation Berkhane).  Link.

4. Foreign Legion in Indochina.  Here is a cluster of photographs showing the Foreign Legion in Indochina.  These were posted by “manhhai” on Flickr and are captioned with credits to Robert Capa.  Capa was an incredible photojournalist who covered the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, Sicily and the D-Day Landing at Omaha Beach during WWII, 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and finally the French efforts in Indochina to defeat the communists there.  He died on a jungle trail on 24 May 1954 while on assignment for Life Magazine after stepping on a landmine.

INDOCHINA. First Indo-Chinese War. Nam Dinh. French General COGNY visits the Foreign Legion. May, 1954.

INDOCHINA. First Indo-Chinese War. Nam Dinh. French General COGNY visits the Foreign Legion. May, 1954.

General COGNY visits the Foreign Legion at Nam Dinh. May 1954.

INDOCHINA. First Indo-Chinese War. Nam Dinh. French General COGNY (on the right) headquarter with French Colonel Paul VANUXEN (on the left). May, 1954.

icp 872 Hanoi, May 23rd, 1954. Members of the French Foreign Legion watching children cross the street.

French legionaires near their base at Nam Dinh under the Command of General Robert COIGNY. May 1954.

5. Susan Travers.  Another article from LiveLeak.  This is an interview of the “Only Woman in the French Foreign Legion–Susan Travers.  Of course there is her book (picture below: Tomorrow to Be Brave: A Memoir of the Only Woman Ever to Serve in the French Foreign Legion) but this is an interesting interview that helps us get to know Travers just a bit more and maybe entice you to read the book.  Travers passed away in 2003.

Vendetta in the Desert

I was not sure if this story should be posted under fiction or fact.  It is a bit far fetched and was written by the imaginative Geoffrey Bocca (who also wrote a nonfiction work on the Foreign Legion titled La Legion! in 1964) so I was saving it for the monthly pulp fiction post.  But, since the story came from the April 1960 issue of True, The Man’s Magazine, I admitted that it must be 100% factual so here it is.  Another reason to like this story is the incredible artwork by the illustrator Tom Lovell.  I imagine the illustration budgets for these men’s adventure magazines was four times what they paid for the fiction.  (Lovell also did those incredible illustrations for National Geographic that featured Vikings and other historical people and events.  You can see more of his work here and then of course there is Google Images). 

Vendetta in the Desert

 

Legion Pulp: The Missing Men

Here is another Robert Carse Foreign Legion story that wound up in a mystery pulp instead of the usual fiction pulps like Argosy, Short Story or Adventure.  In this case, The Missing Men appeared in the March 1937 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly.  Carse frequently merges elements from American crime themes and plops them down into the North African desert.  In this case Sergeant Fields, a former New York homicide detective is sent on a special desert command and a secret mission to find the whereabouts of four missing legionnaires.

The Missing Men

Hodgepodge for July 2016

Well the month of July was pretty slow going for this blog–having skipped several weeks of posting for most of June as well.  I did find one article and several collections of photographs related to the Foreign Legion this month…

1. A Canadian in the French Foreign Legion.  An older article on the Foreign Legion found on the website VICE describing the misadventure of Dave from Ottawa.  After you read the article be sure to read the comments posted at the bottom that blow huge holes in the story.

2. Flickr Albums.  I go to Flickr frequently–quite often just to browse and enjoy looking at pictures and graphics.  Using the German word “fremdenlegion” and the French “Légion Etrangère”, I was able to find some interesting pictures that had previously escaped my attention.  Here is a list of albums you might enjoy viewing.

Indochine – Juillet 1951 à Octobre 1954.  Link. 95 photos taken during the Indochina War, provided by Bernard Majza.  From the description: “Photos taken during the Indochina war, people being represented are for most of 76/3 regiment of the Foreign Legion. July 1951 to October 1954.”  This is quite a nice collection of pictures depicting legionnaires in their bush hats and odd mixes of American, British, and French uniforms and equipment.  I wish they were a bit higher resolution and without the watermark but, oh, well.

Olivier Falcoz – Albums.  From this page you can see the collected work of former legionnaire Olivier Falcoz.  Towards the bottom are four picture collections devoted to the Foreign Legion. Le Centre d’Entraînement en Forêt Equatoriale (CEFE), Ivory Coast, Former Yugoslavia, Djibouti 13 DBLE.

University of Caen.  A small album depicting some events related to a visit to North Africa (Algeria) by a certain M. Noullens whom I take to be an Ambassador or similar government official.  A couple of good pictures of the Foreign Legion and colonial troops in review.

Légion Etrangère en Algerie.  Here is another small album of Legionnaires in Algeria (and Djibouti) provided by Wulf Lammerer.

La Légion Etrangère 1936-1942.  This is the best photo album I found on Flickr since I came across that of Fremdenlegionär Leutener.  It was posted by Marc Bruyneel and shows 72 pictures of his father in the Foreign Legion.  His father was Belgian and served in the Legion from 1936 to 1942 when he left and joined those forces gathering to liberate Europe from the Germans.

High Adventure #148: Adventure Fiction by F. Van Wyck Mason

“It’s not often I find a newly published book that I like–but when I do they are about the French Foreign Legion.”  This book is doubly exciting because if features the classic Foreign Legion as found in classic pulp fiction.  High Adventure is a long running bi-monthly publication of pulp reprints produced by the pulp fiction curators at Adventure House.   This book is issue #148 and it contains tree stories written by F. Van Wyck Mason that appeared in Adventure Trails and Wide World Adventures.  Both of those magazine titles are very hard to find in their original form and are expensive to purchase so it is well worth the $12.95 (plus shipping) for 117 pages of action-packed desert adventure.

The three titles selected for this issue star Yank and ‘Ector, two Foreign Legion pals that often find themselves caught between the Legion and their Bedouin enemies.  The picture below is the Introduction to this issue written by John Gunnison that tells you a bit more about the author and the pulps he wrote in.

The Jest of Caid MacGregor [Adventure Trails]
A story of Yank and ‘Ector, and of the death jest of a torture-thirsty Caid.
The Doubting of Legionnaire Terris [Adventure Trails]
Yank and ‘Ector, deserters, fight through to warn the Poste.
The Stone of Tanit-Astarte [Wide World Adventures]
Yank, ‘Ector and one “ex-gentleman” fight treachery and gold-lust to the bitter deathNOTE:  I have no financial ties or affiliation with any publishing house or author.  If I like a book and feature it positively on this blog it is solely because it relates to the Foreign Legion theme and I like it and feel that I should share it with readers.

Some Satire

— La France sera fière de vous, caporal…votre nom?
— Chè nè gombrends bas.

— France will be proud of you, corporal … your name?
— I do not understand (with thick accent).

The French have a long tradition of satire.  Some would say it is part of the French DNA–a collective and individual impulse towards amusement by mocking and poking fun of authority figures, making dark commentary on current events  or simply making light of the human comedy/tragedy where we all exist.  Graphic and written satire certainly exists in many other countries but for volume and quality none do it as well as the French.  Charlie Hebdo immediately comes to mind.

This cartoon is a perfect example of French Satire.  It is a simple one panel cartoon depicting an exchange between a senior French Army officer and a lowly corporal in the Foreign Legion.  The officer is offering praise on behalf of France but the poor legionnaire does not understand French.  As good satire the subtle meaning of this graphic goes far beyond the immediate joke.  It could be taken as a critique that questions the very existence of the Foreign Legion and asks “do the foreigners of the Legion even realize why they are fighting for France?” and  “do they even care?” or “why do we have men who don’t understand French fighting on France’s behalf?”.  It may have been meant to be ironic, in that the heroic corporal can’t understand the very officer who has chosen to convey the gratitude of France in her own language.  It’s also tragic when words can’t convey the gratefulness of France to many of those foreigners who lay their lives on line on her behalf.  One can infer many different meanings into this picture.

…or maybe it’s just a semi-funny cartoon (a woodcut no less) by Felix Vallotton.

Legion Pulp: Military Prisoner

The pulp fiction story for July is from the 29 September 1934 of Argosy.  It is written by the master of French Foreign Legion stories–Georges Surdez. It involves a tragic case of a man, cursed by drink, who winds up in French military imprisonment and reappears years later in the Rif Campaign.

Military Prisoner

COMMENT:  My sympathies for the family, relatives and friends of the latest victims of terrorism.

Another terrorist attack, in beautiful Nice, France —-31 days after the Orlando massacre, 114 days after the attack in Brussels and 244 days after the Paris attacks.  The murders at Charlie Hebdo occurred only a year and a half ago yet it seems like ancient history.  The perpetrators of these crimes are animals–sick followers of a suicide cult and it is about time the world wakes up and realizes we are at war with them.  Why the western countries tolerate ISIS, a piss-ant gang of about 30,000 dead-end losers, for so long amazes me.  Who will lead the free world and amass a grand military coalition to wipe Daesh off the planet?  The socialist Hollande?  The socialists Obama or Clinton? The appeaser Frau Merkel?  The pajama boy Trudeau? Will it be the UK PM Teresa May alongside a President Trump?  Good Lord….we sure live in a crazy world.

France’s Foreign Legion

Here is a short article found in the November 1931 issue of The U.S. Army Recruiting News (an obscure publication to say the least).  It was written by Captain R. Ernest Dupuy, of the U.S. Army Field Artillery, and is based on his recollections of a visit to the First Foreign Legion Regiment at Sidi Bel Abbes in 1928 and his more recent (1931) visits to the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Regiments in Morocco.  He touches on all the usual points writers make about the Foreign Legion and likewise attempts to debunk some myths in the process.

France’s Foreign Legion

The article is too short and I wondered if Dupuy might have written something longer about the Legion in another format or publication.  Sure enough, I remembered that he was also a fiction writer and penned a factoid about Camerone Day for Blue Book magazine in 1935 that I posted here.  I also found a letter written to Life Magazine in 1951 making a correction to a photo caption that misidentified colonial soldiers as Legionnaires.  Captain Dupuy was a retired Colonel by 1951.  He did write several books and among them was Perish By the Sword which was about the Czechoslovakian Legion in WWI, but nothing lengthy on the French Foreign Legion.  It should be noted that his son, Trevor, was also a career military officer and prolific author of military history.

Taking a Break…

I’m going to step away from my keyboard for a bit.  My father passed away today after a recent struggle with congestive heart failure, a broken hip and other ailments.  He was 89 years old, a WWII U.S. Navy veteran and the most wonderful Dad one could ask for.  It’s a bit hard right now to carry on with blogging so I’m going to take a break….I’ll be back as soon as I’m able.  I’m sure you can understand.