This month’s pulpy fiction is from Adventure Magazine (Volume 90, No. 5; 01 Jan 1935) and is written by J. D. Newsom. It features a fairly common formula of a gangster fleeing to the Legion to avoid the police. This time, American Barney Walsh’s girlfriend recommends that he flee to the Legion to avoid arrest. Nothing to worry about since all you do is fight in the Legion. This novellete is 52 pages long and is a very good read. I think it is one of Newsom’s best stories of the Legion. (This issue of Adventure also has a really outstanding cover so I scanned a high res picture just for that reason.)
On a side note: I initially thought that this story was the genesis for the B-movie called We’re in the Legion Now which features two American gangsters fleeing a crime boss and joining the Legion. However there is another J. D. Newsom story entitled The Rest Cure which came out in Adventure (April 1934) which I think contains the plot for that movie. In fact one of the duo, Spike I believe, says that he is looking forward to a Rest Cure in the sunny desert of North Africa.
The .pdf is about 8.4 MB.
Mon Legionnaire 