The Foreign Legion pulp story for this month is from Argosy All Story Weekly of 08 Jun 1929. It was written by F. V. W. Mason (aka, Francis Van Wyck Mason or Van Wyck Mason) who was a prolific pulp author and novelist who sometimes wrote an odd tale or two of the French Foreign Legion. This story was serialized in two parts–the second appeared in the subsequent. 15 June, issue of Argosy. I’ll post the second part of this on 15 April. This story also appeared complete in the first issue (August 1940) of the short lived pulp entitled Foreign Legion Adventures.
The Word of Adjutant Kent features a flawed hero in the form of Legionnaire Roger Kent–a dipsomaniac, a failed American officer and a man facing his personal demons as well as hordes of Arab marauders and slavers in a forsaken pestilence ridden desert outpost on the far southern fringes of the Sahara. He is given one last chance to redeem himself or face his final punishment at the hands of a firing squad.