'Say the word, pal, and nothing will come back but me and the field order book.'

Frederick C. Painton was an air-story specialist before becoming more of an espionage writer until World War II, when he became a war correspondent. It's unusual to find him writing a Foreign Legion story, and in fact "Gold Galons" (Adventure, March 1937) isn't much of a story. It features two Americans who joined the Legion to get off the proverbial beach, one becoming a corporal, the other making sergeant and aspiring to officer's training school at St. Cyr. Corporal Lacey and Sergeant Connery remain buddies, though their different career tracks and the impact on their friendship might have made a story in its own right. The story here, however, is the threat to Connery's advancement presented by a onetime romantic rival, Lieutenant Latour. The American beat up the Frenchman off duty after Latour tried to flog the woman who had been his but had become Connery's. At first, heading into a battle, all seems professional between the two men as Latour gives Connery the coordinates for an artillery barrage. Something goes wrong, however, and Connery discovers Latour's error when he sees that he's firing on his own men. Of course, Latour insists that the error is all Connery's. "You species of merde -- you have killed twelve of my men and wounded twenty," the lieutenant protests, promising to have Connery court-martialed. The American's only hope is getting hold of Latour's field-message book, which he believes will vindicate him by showing that Latour gave him the wrong coordinates in the first place. Lacey basically offers to frag Latour to get the book, -- see the header -- but Connery demurs. After the next engagement the sergeant faces a dilemma when he discovers that both Latour and Lacey have been wounded. There's a bit of sloppy writing her that the editor missed, since Connery appears to discover twice over that Latour has been wounded. In any event the enemy is closing in with bad intentions for the wounded, and Connery can't carry both men to safety. He has to choose between his buddy and his superior officer, with Latour promising to clear Connery's name by admitting his error, even though someone has stolen the precious book. In the end, he decides that Lacey is more badly wounded and more in need of help. Taking his buddy to the medic, he leaves Latour to a cruel fate at the hands of Chlueh tribesmen, and throws away his only chance of redemption in the absence of the field-message book. It turns out, of course, that he made the right choice after all, for in the between Latour's wounding and Lacey's, the American corporal "glommed" the book off the Frenchman. Painton writes well as a matter of style, but his story is resolved too neatly for its own good. It's a story that probably could have been told in any military setting, and making it a Legion story only exposes its inferiority to the good stuff put out by the likes of Surdez, Newsom, Carse, etc. Painton was better off sticking to the genres he did well, and for the most part, with exceptions like this, he did so.

THE PULP CALENDAR: September 12

The folks at Ace of Aces Books have made part of this 1936 Argosy available for our reading pleasure. Their website has a nice little collection of aviation stories by Frederick C. Painton, including this issue's cover story, "Transpacific Plunder." an entertaining mix of Chinese hijackers, American gangsters and Japanese intrigue bedeviling a two-fisted American pilot. Painton plays off Yellow Peril stereotypes before presenting us with the more streamlined and honorable Chinese antagonist you see on the cover.

In his mind's eye had been built a picture of Chang Tze as a fat, grave Chinese with impassive yellow face,inscrutable slit eyes — in short, a Fu Manchu! What he saw was a slim, debonair oriental of perhaps thirty, with close- clipped stiff black hair parted in the center; a high forehead above a long, narrow face of slightly saffron tint; and a body nearly six feet tall and powerfully made. Even Tony had to admit that Chang Tze was a lot of man.

You can read the rest by downloading the .pdf from this link. The rest of the issue features serials by George Bruce (The Speed King is about baseball, not auto racing), L. G. Blochman (featuring series character Leonidas Prike, a detective based in India) and Johnston McCulley (wrapping up his "Zorro-land" adventure Don Peon.) There's a novelette by Maj. R. E. Dupuy and short stories by Charles T. Jackson (possibly a Mase McKay adventure?), James P. Olsen and John R. Phillips. I can vouch for the Painton story and in 1936 you probably can trust Argosy for the rest of the issue.

THE PULP CALENDAR: September 3

You're looking at Dan Harden, a two-fisted insurance claims investigator for the International Surety Company whose work takes him around the world. His first appearance that I know of is "Coronation Interlude," a novelette in the October 23, 1937 Argosy. By July 9, 1938's "Pharaoh Had a Tomb," he merits an Argosy cover. His last appearance that I know of is in February 1941. This cover for "The Road to Damascus" promises exotic adventure, but the Middle East setting amounts to little more than local color. Harden is sent to Jerusalem to investigate a kidnapping that proves to have been a dognapping, and gradually uncovers an English widow's plot to shut her stepdaughter out of an inheritance with the help of the bubonic plague. The local color takes the form of a supporting cast headed by "Hussein the Magnificent," a local fixer who pumps the other locals for information while pumping Harden for the last few pounds he needs for passage to Paris, where he plans to become a rug merchant. A typical pulp hero, Harden himself is blood-brother to a prominent sheik, a relationship he can play like a trump card in a sticky situation on the title road. Painton does a decent job shifting the tone of his story from broad humor -- Harden and his wife are eager to leave home in Paris for anywhere when her obnoxious relatives turn up -- to outright horror when Harden discovers the poor stepdaughter in a plague-ridden, rat-infested archaeological dig. Pretty good overall.

"Road to Damascus" is the only story I've read from this issue, though the main reason I have the magazine is the concluding installment of Donald Barr Chidsey's serial Midas of the Mountains.This is typical of me. I buy one thing, and then I buy another and the last thing ends up closer to the bottom of the to-read pile. The Pulp Calendar has actually been useful in getting me to read some early purchases that I've neglected. I also look forward to Arden X. Pangborn's "A Cell For Wong Soo," because Chinatown stories fascinate me. Pangborn's series about Wong Soo and his father Wong Sun began earlier in 1938 and continued into early 1940. Old-timer James Francis Dwyer has a short story, "The Devil's Mushroom," which is unusual for Argosy in this period for having an extra illustration besides the usual title-page piece. There are also stories by Howard Marsh and Robert Neal Leath, while Bennett Foster continues the western serial Cut Loose Your Wolf and Frances Shelley Wees continues her mystery Lost House. Argosy's decline has already begun -- its page count fell from 144 to 128 earlier in 1938 -- but the content doesn't really show it that much yet.