Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Foreign Legion Adventures, October 1940

FOREIGN LEGION ADVENTURES was a short-lived reprint pulp from Munsey. This is the second and final issue. I don't know who did the cover art. Obviously, these stories are all Foreign Legion yarns, and some of the big names in the genre are here: Theodore Roscoe, F. Van Wyck Mason, and J.D. Newsom. There's also a story by Houston Day, a fairly prolific pulpster I'm not familiar with. All the stories in this issue originally appeared in various 1930s issues of ARGOSY. I don't know whether ARGOSY or ADVENTURE published more Foreign Legion stories. The number of them in each magazine is probably pretty close. And all the ones I've read have been very good.

Outlaws of the Legion - David Hardy

I enjoyed David Hardy’s CODE OF THE LEGION so much I went ahead and read his other French Foreign Legion yarn, OUTLAWS OF THE LEGION, and I think I liked it even more. This one finds a group of Legionaires, including a Texas gunfighter (shades of El Borak!), leaving their post and raiding a sheikh’s stronghold to rescue a beautiful dancing girl and avenge a friend’s death. As always, Hardy does a fine job with the setting and the history and packs plenty of gritty action into the tale he’s telling. This is pure pulp in the best way, with echoes not only of Theodore Roscoe and Georges Surdez but also Robert E. Howard and Talbot Mundy. I hope Hardy keeps writing these, because they’re some of the best stories I’ve read recently. Highly recommended.

Code of the Legion - David Hardy

French Foreign Legion stories were a staple of the general fiction pulps such as ARGOSY, ADVENTURE, BLUE BOOK, and SHORT STORIES. But as popular as they were during that era, nobody writes them anymore.

Nobody, that is, except David Hardy. And he does a great job of it. CODE OF THE LEGION is a novella about the Legionaires assigned to Post 13, an isolated blockhouse in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, in the early 20^th Century. They’re surrounded by hostile Berber tribesmen, the supply train that they’re depending on is ambushed and wiped out, and they’re facing a mysterious threat inside their own ranks. When the enemy lays siege to the outpost and begins to pick off the Legionaires one or two at a time, it begins to look as if none of them will survive.

Hardy does a fine job with the setting and the history, but mainly CODE OF THE LEGION is an adventure yarn that provides plenty of gritty action and genuine suspense, not to mention a thrilling conclusion. I really enjoyed this novella and give it a high recommendation.