Magazine Review: High Adventure #172: The Hell’s Angels Squad edited by John P. Gunnison
This time around, the focus is on the French Foreign Legion stories of Warren Hastings Miller originally published in Blue Book magazine back in the late 1920s. As I’ve discussed before, tales of the Legion were a popular subgenre of pulp stories, because they allowed an international cast, exotic locations and some morally dubious characters. This issue features ten stories set in Morocco and Algeria, starring what will eventually be named the “Hell’s Angel Squad.”
The colorful cast of characters includes Sargent-Major Texas Ike, Corporal Criswell the Michigan giant, Hortet the zouzou who has been a soldier longer than most of his companions have been alive, Mister Dee the Italian count, Anzac Bill the Australian who’s handy with a bullwhip, Rosskoff the Russian “intellectual”, and Jeff the bleu rookie from England. They may have different politics (Dee and Hortet fall out over Mussolini’s African ambitions,) but they’re all loyal to their comrades in the Legion.
The first story in this issue is “Loot”, in which the platoon learns that the native village they’re posted near was built on top of a prosperous Roman trading town and decide to steal the entire settlement to dig for treasure. Sar-Major Ike is initially opposed, but when he discovers the local sheik is a jerk, winds up inadvertently helping the plan.
The final story is “Five Men of the Legion” in which a picked squad of men climbs a precipice to rescue what they think is a corpse of a fellow soldier. It may be easier to get him to the enemy fortress at the top than descend again!
Good: Plenty of action and fine combat scenes. The mountain climbing in “Five Men” is particularly suspenseful.
Less good: Period racism is a recurrent problem in pulp stories. Any fan of such literature knows this, and largely lets it roll off their back. But these stories have a particularly strong whiff of racism, even by the standard of Legion tales. Ike often uses the N-word and more quaint ethnic slurs, and other members of the platoon are not averse to slurs either. It’s repeatedly emphasized that the white men are in Africa to civilize the natives and protect them from themselves and each other.
A rebellious native in one story specifically points out the treatment of Native Americans by their white invaders to Criswell, who fails to understand how the comparison applies. And Texas Ike thinks that the good white people of America “protected” the Negro from their natural enemies. Yikes.
Bad: This issue was shoddily edited, missing portions of three stories, including the ending of “Five Men.” This is disappointing.
Overall, an inferior issue of this magazine. Not recommended.
