"Peace Waits at Marokee" -- H. Bedford-Jones (ADVENTURE, November 1940)

I hope you'll forgive me, readers (or reader, as the case may be), if I break from my self-appointed schedule of one post per day for a bit; I'm working eleven days straight this week, long hours, to complete a special project at work, and I'm currently eight days in without a break.  This will be followed by a three-day weekend during which time I'll be with my girlfriend, and as such won't be spending much time on the computer.  That being said, today's story is from the pen of H. Bedford-Jones, often called the "King of the Pulps" for his prolific output -- somewhere in the vicinity of 1400 short stories and 80 novels, but who's counting? Set during the Second World War in North Africa, "Peace Waits at Marokee" was originally published in Adventure magazine in November 1940 before being reprinted here, in The Big Book of Adventure Stories.

By some small miracle, gunner Jean Facini escaped death in a fiery plane crash, guiding the plane in to a blind landing, managing to extricate himself from the plane before it burst into flames.  As he watches it burn, another plane - an English bomber - comes to a crashing halt nearby.  Three men tumble out, and introductions are simple: ANZAC pilot Jock Erne, reserved photographer Lance, and Cockney gunner Hawkins.

Bandaging their wounds, the four men decide to set out for the English outpost at Marokee; three days' hike across the burning desert sands, but it's their one hope for survival.  However, what the three Brits don't know is that Facini is a Fifth Columnist; while technically a Frenchman, he's Savoyard French, and would like nothing better for the Savoy to be returned to Italian control.  And he knows that Marokee was taken in a surprise attack by the Italians two days ago...

I don't have a huge amount to say here; not because the story's not good or not interesting (it is, in fact, absolutely gripping) but because I'm not familiar enough with spy fiction during this period to comment knowledgeably about its place in that lineage.

And arguably, while ostensibly a spy story and a war story, there's little emphasis placed on Facini's Fifth Column activities or the war itself; it's a story about men from two sides of a conflict (albeit unbeknownst to most of them that this is the case) forced to put aside their differences and work together against a common enemy - in this case, the desert with all its hazards; heat, dehydration, sunstroke, scorpions, jagged rocks...

Facini is our viewpoint character, and rather than being simply a two-dimensional sneering villain, he's shown to be a relatively complex character that ultimately garners our sympathy and even admiration.  We're given enough to get an idea of what led him to side with the Fascists - dissatisfaction with French rule of his province and a desire, most likely fueled by nostalgia - not his own, as he's depicted as too young a man to remember a time before French possession of Savoy, but perhaps based on wistful reminisces of older family members as well, perhaps, as an idealized unified Italian state as envisioned by Garibaldi at the same time as the French annexation.

Given his output, I'm sure I'll be seeing a lot more from H. Bedford-Jones to come in writing this blog.  I'm looking forward to it.

"Leiningen Versus The Ants" -- Carl Stephenson (ESQUIRE, 1938)

I'm fairly certain "Leiningen Versus the Ants" was anthologized in a textbook I had in some high school English class I took; it's not something that was ever assigned reading in class, but I had a tendency to finish reading assignments early and look for something else to fill the remainder of the class period, and I'm pretty sure I recall reading part of this story.  It has also been adapted to radio a number of times, and was filmed in 1954 as THE NAKED JUNGLE, starring Charlton Heston as the titular Leiningen with Eleanor Parker and William Conrad (who'd voiced Leiningen in two of the radio adaptations).  The story can be read in its entirety here.

Leiningen is the owner of a prosperous plantation in Brazil (what he grows is never specified in the story, though a reference to granaries is made; the film makes it a cocoa plantation) who has received word that an army ant swarm, ten miles long and two miles wide, is heading in the direction of his plantation, eating everything living thing in their path.  Leiningen, an analytical man, refuses to give up all he's worked for in establishing the plantation and sees the ants, not as an "act of God," but as a problem to be solved, and one he'd already put some thought into before establishing his plantation.  Rallying his workers to him, Leiningen makes his stand against the ants.

He opens flood-gates and fills a 12-foot wide moat around the property.  The ants begin throwing leaves into the water to create a pontoon, and when that fails, begin to bridge the water with the drowned bodies of ants pushed into the water to allow the swarm to cross.

Leiningen sprays the swarm with gasoline, both to set them alight and disrupt their chemical sensory organs.  And if he had an infinite amount of gasoline, this might serve to destroy the ants, but they keep coming and coming and eventually he will run out.

Finally, with his men fortified in the plantation house, surrounded by a last-ditch moat of gasoline that has been set on fire, Leiningen conceives of a plan that might rid not only his plantation, but all in the area of the menace of the ants.  But to do so, he's going to have to venture out among the swarm...

"Leiningen Versus the Ants" is a classic story of Man vs. Nature, and makes a pretty evenly-matched fight of it.  As noted above, Leiningen is a rational, analytical man; he plans meticulously and for all possible contingencies, having allowed for periodic outbreaks of army ants in selecting a site upon which to build his plantation and in the design and layout of the property.  All in all, he uses his glorious human brain to its utmost in defense of what he's worked so hard to achieve.

On the other hand, the ants are soulless creatures, driven entirely be instinct and the all-consuming desire to consume, reproduce and survive.  No, scratch that; the ants on display here - gruesome creatures the size of a man's thumb and equipped with both slicing mandibles and a nasty, venomous sting - aren't driven to reproduce; they're workers and warriors, they're driven to ensure the Queen can reproduce.  The ants besieging Leiningen's plantation are essentially robots or zombies in their utter enslavement to the will of the Queen, wherever she may be in the twenty square miles the ants cover.

With their utter implacability and the gruesome manner in which they swiftly devour their prey (not, in general terms, things like cows or deer or people, but larger insects, spiders and scorpions tend to be fair game), army ants are a staple of pulp jungle adventures; a man being skeletonized by hungry ants is referenced in "The Master Magician," earlier in The Big Book of Adventure Stories, and of course they formed the basis of the "gruesome death sequence of Pat Roach's lookalike" in INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL, as much as I, at least, would like to forget that film was ever made.

Speaking of film, as mentioned above Charlton Heston starred as Leiningen in the film adaptation, and truth be told I can't imagine anyone else in the role.  Reading Stephenson's description of Leiningen, all I can picture are Heston's steely eyes and the defiant set of his jaw.  Talk about great casting.