Many of the pulps had military-themed covers during World War II, such as this one by Rafael De Soto, and some of the stories in this issue of ARGOSY are war-related, too, judging by their titles: "Armchair Admiral No. 2" by Fletcher Pratt, "WACS, Macs and Warlocks" by Theodore Roscoe, "Always Victorious" by Jacland Marmur, "Red Sun Over Bengal" by Kenneth Perkins, "Flight to Nowhere" by Leslie T. White, "Hell Afloat" by Eustace L. Adams, and "Somali Contraband" by E. Hoffmann Price. I don't own this issue, so I can't check those stories to make sure they're actually war yarns, but they sound like it. I'm old enough to remember when Memorial Day was on May 31, no matter what day of the week it fell on, but I don't want to be too much of a curmudgeon and complain about how they've gone to moving holidays around.
I don't think this cover is as good as many others by Herbert Morton Stoops, but this is an important issue of BLUE BOOK anyway. It's the last one that was a true pulp. Trimmed, maybe, but still a pulp. The next issue it went to the larger quarto size. As usual with BLUE BOOK, H. Bedford-Jones is well-represented in the Table of Contents with three stories, one under his own name and one each as by Gordon Keyne and Michael Gallister. Also contributing to this issue are Richard Wormser, Georges Surdez, Lemuel de Bra, Robert R. Mill, Raymond S. Spears, Jacland Marmur, and little-known writers John Upton Terrell, George Agnew Chamberlain, Charles Wellington Furlong, and George Weston. With Bedford-Jones anchoring their stable, BLUE BOOK always had good authors in its pages.
By the spring of 1942, most of Herbert Morton Stoops' covers on BLUE BOOK were war-themed, not surprisingly, and so was a lot of the content. This issue has a great line-up of authors including H. Bedford-Jones, Richard Sale, Georges Surdez, Frederick Painton, Richard Howells Watkins, Jacland Marmur, a Tiny David story by Robert R. Mill, and a Free Lances of Diplomacy story by Clarence Herbert New. BLUE BOOK really packed in the great reading.
I always wanted a pith helmet when I was a kid, probably because of all the jungle adventure movies I'd watched on TV. I never got one, which was almost certainly a good thing, as I'm not sure how well it would have gone over in the small Texas town where I was already something of a weirdo. And there's no way I would have looked as tough and dashing as the guy on the cover of this issue of SHORT STORIES. The art is by William Reusswig. The lead novel by Eustace L. Adams sounds like a good one, and Adams was a reliably entertaining author of adventure fiction. Also on hand were Karl Detzer, Conrad Richter, Bill Adams, Jacland Marmur, Charles Green, Cliff Farrell, and Garnett Radcliffe. Those names don't mean much now, with the possible exception of Conrad Richter, but they were top-notch pulp authors. (You know, you can buy pith helmets on Amazon . . . I'm just sayin' . . . Nah, I probably shouldn't.)
