Seems like a lot of guys picked up tripod-mounted machine guns and waved them around on pulp covers. I know I've seen that sort of cover more than once, probably on another issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES. This issue has a fine group of writers inside, including Hugh B. Cave, G.F. Eliot (billed as Major George F. Eliot in this issue), Leslie T. White, Oscar Schisgall, Jackson Cole (who could well have been Schisgall, since that started out as a personal pseudonym for him, before it became a house-name), and Gunnison Steele (who was always Bennie Gardner). Eliot's not the only one to use his rank, either. There's also a novelette by Lieutenant Seymour Pond.
UPDATE: Annnnd the reason that cover looks familiar to me is that I've posted it before, about four years ago. So this is an accidental rerun. I've been doing this long enough that I need to start checking on that before I schedule the posts.
2 comments:
George Fielding Eliot must have been an interesting fellow. Pulp writer by day and CBS radio military expert by night.
In the late hours of June 5th, 1944, Bob Trout stayed on the air as reports were coming in from German news agencies that the Allied invasion had begun. Fielding came into the studio (I guess he lived nearby) to join the coverage. I listened to the recordings quite a few years back (used to make it an annual DDay event) but I recall Eliot speculating the news might be German lies to get Resistance fighters activated and flushed out. About 90 minutes later, Allied media took the lid off and acknowledged the invasion.
On December 7th, Eliot was even more off base, wondering on air whether the attack on Pearl Harbor was an unauthorized act of the Japanese military as the government was engaged in negotiations and would never do such a thing.
So maybe Eliot’s pulp writer imagination extended to his news coverage.
I didn't know that about Eliot. Thanks! Your theory may well be correct since part of being a writer is trying to think of all the different scenarios that may be possible. Pretty funny that he'd make the wrong call on two such major events, though.
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