Adventure - October 1st, 1935 "He Walked to War"
- Fleets of Fire · Talbot Mundy
- Senor Beeg Shot · W.C. Tuttle
- Beggar My Tailor · Max Brand
- The Feud at Single Shot · Luke Short
- The Devil of the North · Lynn Bogue Hunt
- He Walked to War · L. Ron Hubbard
- Cover art by Walter Baumhofer
Book price: $40 - $100 - $200
In The Camp Fire section in the back of this issue there is a brief autobiography from Ron:
"L. Ron Hubbard joins our Writers' Brigade with his Leatherneck yarn 'He Walked to War'. Hubbard is a tall red-haired chap with a service background, his father being an officer. He introduces himself at the Camp-Fire:"
- Editor
"I was born in Nebraska and three weeks later went to Oklahoma. From there to Missouri, then to Montana. When I was a year old, they say I showed some signs of settling down, but I think this is merely rumor. Changing locals from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic Coast every few months, it was not until I was almost twelve that I first left the United States. And it was not until I was sixteen that I headed for the China Coast."
"In spite of changing schools, I received an education. I have some very poor grade sheets which show that I studied to be a civil engineer in college."
"Civil engineering seemed very handsome at the time. I met the lads in their Stetsons from Crabtown to Timbuctu and they seemed to lead a very colorful existence squinting into their transits. However, too late, I was sent up to Maine by the Geological Survey to find the lost Canadian Border. Much bitten by seven kinds of insects, gummed by the muck of swamps, fed on johnny cake and tarheel, I saw instantly that a civil engineer had to stay far too long in far too few places and so I rapidly forgot my calculus and slip stick and began to plot ways and means to avoid the continuance of my education. I decided on an expedition into the Caribbean."
"It was a crazy idea at best and I knew it, but I went ahead anyway, chartered a fourmasted schooner and embarked with some fifty luckless souls who haven't ceased their cursing yet. Our present generation just doesn't take to salt horse, dried peas, and a couple quarts of water a day."
"But the expedition did the trick. I did not have to return to college. Instead I returned to the West Indies."
"I might remark upon a coincidence which has always amazed me. While in the West Indies I discovered signs of gold on an island and harboring the thought that the Conquistadores might have left some gold behind, I determined to find it."
"But just before my return to the island, I met a very lovely young lady who happened to own a farm in Maryland. She did not particularly want me to go away, but I said that gold was calling and so I went. After half a year or more of intensive search, after wearing my palms thin wielding a sample pick, after assaying a few hundred sacks of ore, I came back, a failure."
"But a month after my return to Maryland, I discovered a vein of honey-comb quartz in the back pasture of my lady's farm. The body of ore was tremendous, the viable vein several yards wide at the narrowest. Under the $20.67 an ounce, it assayed #82.34 a ton, and it is now worth about $145 a ton. However, to mine it takes money and I would have to stay close to Maryland. It's still there."
"Chronological narration, in this short sketch, is impossible. Therefore, permit me to jump about a bit."
"I was once convinced that the future of aviation lies in motor-less flight. Accordingly I started gliding and soaring with the rest of the buzzards, and finally succeeded in establishing a record which has no official existence whatever and no reason, indeed, for existing. I traveled better then eighty miles an hour for twelve minutes in soaring plane, maintaining the same altitude about an airport which is set on a flat plain. Answer: Heat lift from the circling concrete road."
"From there I went into power flight, the high spot of which came on a barnstorming trip through the Mid-West in a five-lunged crate which stagger rather than flew. All on summer, I tried very hard to meet St. Pete, but evidently that gentleman either lost my name from the roll or my luck is far better then I think it is."
"Unfortunately, in my Asiatic wanderings, no one, not even Hindu fortune tellers, thought to inform me that I would some day making my living with a typewriter and so I completely forgot to conduct myself informatively and devoted my time to enjoying life."
"In peiping, for instance, I did not avail myself of photographic impressions I might well have gained. I completely missed the atmosphere of the city, devoting most of my time to British major who happened to be head of the Intelligence out there."
"In Shanghai, I am ashamed to admit that I did not tour the city or surrounding country as I should have. I know more about 131 Bubbling Wells Road and it's wheels than I do about the history of the town."
"In Hong Kong... well, why take up space?"
"Time after time, people accuse me of having been in the Marines. Pushed right up against the wall, I am forced to admit a connection with that very cosmopolitan outfit, however short lived and vague. I was once a top-kicker in the 20th because, as they sing in sin-ho,"
"I walked down the street"
"Without a cent in my jeans,"
"And that is the reason"
"I joined the Marines".
"I am not sure that calling squads east and west fits a man for writing, but it does give him a vocabulary."
"One thing I might mention in connection with the leathernecks, most of the fiction written about them is of an intensely dramatic type, all do and die and Semper Fidelis and the dear old flag".
"To me the Marine Corps is a more go-to-hell outfit than the much lauded French Foreign ever could be. The two are comparable in many ways. God knows what you'll find find in either, from college professors to bellhops. Just why the disappointed lover has to sneak off for North Africa all the time is a riddle. More men have taken refuge in the Corps than in the Legion and, judging from association, leathernecks certainly lead a sufficiently exciting existence."
"I've known the Corps from Quantico to Peiping, from the South Pacific to the West Indies, and i've never seen any flag-waving. The most refreshing part of the U.S.M.C. is that they got their orders and start out and do the job and that's that. Whether that job was to storm the heights of Chapultepec so that United States Army could proceed, or to dislodge a crazy gentleman named John Brown from an arsenal at Harper's Ferry, or to knock off a few Boxers for the glory of England, your marine went and did the job and then retired to blind up his wounds while every one else went on parade."
"Let is suffice. This is more than a thumbnail sketch, bit I hope it's a passport to your interest. I know a lot of you out there, and I haven't heard from you in years. I know I haven't had any address, but I'm certain the editor will forward my mail."
"When I get back from Central America, where I'm going soon, I'll have another yarn to tell."
-L. Ron Hubbard
Adventure - April, 1936 containing a criticism of "He Walked to War" and L. Ron Hubbard's response to the criticism
What may be more interesting is an entry in The Camp-Fire section of the April 1936 Adventure issue. A letter from a Marine who tries to poke holes in the facts of "He Walked to War". This was commonplace in Adventure. The readers of Adventure where an intelligent bunch and in many of the issues one could find quibbles over facts from learned men. It is rumored that the editors of Adventure would also argue over facts. Below is what the Marine had to say and L. Ron Hubbard's response to his letter.
"Here go a couple of Marines shooting at each other. I could presume to settle their differences, but I'm going to be glad to see another yarn as good as 'He Walked to War'"
-Editor
"For twenty years I have been a reader of Adventure - does that entitle me to have a voice of - shale we say - objection - this one time? Anyhow, I feel that I'M more or less qualified in writing you this one time."
"In your October issue there was a story by an individual named L. Ron Hubbard - which concerns Nicaragua chiefly. In his biography in the Camp-Fire, he claims to have been a top kicks aren't made over-night in the Corps and they generally are real soldiers. I venture to state the average top kick has over sixteen years of service. However, that's beside the point. What I object to principally is that a colonel of Marines doesn't talk over a field phone to a line sergeant except in cases of extreme emergency. Transfers are routine, and colonels, even in Nicaragua, aren't particularly interested in them."
"Another thing, who ever heard of a telephone in the Pantasma Valley even when the 11th Regiment was there? Also, does the Pantasma parallel the Honduras border? I thought it was in Jinotega and I can remember a miserable five months in Santa Cruz - that happens to be in the Pantasma. That was a swell post, no trails and the Cocoa river in the front door, two houses in the "town" and rain nine months a year. Just showers, the other three - yeah, I know the Pantasma.
"To get on - 'E.Z.'s' patrol on the line was just function. Five men patrols just weren't in that area! Also every patrol had at least ONE automatic weapon. 'E.Z.' certainly was some shot - how come he waisted two shots at 75 yards with a .45? That's hard to swallow."
"Real Marines didn't call the natives 'Gooks' and believe me you those 'Gooks' had guts! Try'n scare 'em!"
"Once there was a Marine repair patrol that left Ocotal and San Fernando. The time - December 30, 1930, and two hours later the patrol had 100 per cent casualties. That's rather high even for Nicaragua. How about it?"
"In Case Hubbard doesn't know it they just don't fly without 'chutes, especially in Nicaragua."
"As for bead in the "hills" among the natives, tortillas were and are the only bread they use."
"I served in Nicaragua almost four years. Over three of that time I was in Peniente Primero in the Guardia. I've been on duty in Managuua, Granada, Masaya, Leon, Chontales, Rivas, Matagalpos, Jinatega, Esteli, Segavia, Bluefields, Puerto Cabezas, Nepune Mines, Prinzapolka and Tuma. I was one of the survivors of the Jicano mutiny - and have been in eighteen contacts (legitimate). I'm still in the Corps and probably will be 'till it's my time to cash in."
"-Another Top Kicker
Washington D.C."
Here is L. Ron Hubbard's response:
"I am always somewhat amused when a first sergeant lets out a regulation growl. First sergeants most always take matters entirely too seriously."
"Now the former aide to General Butler in China thought the yarn was okay as to detail. He did tell me that the telephone line was somewhat out of place, but in 'He Walked to War' the line ran to Pantasma, not across it."
"The sergeant, as he is down there in Washington, might go up to the Navy Department and look up the records of the 20th regiment. He'll find Lafayette Ronald Hubbard duly warranted a first sergeant. If he's got the nerve, he might also call up Major Moriarity, the great Mo, and find out that I've been kicking around with the Corps ever since I was a pup, officially and otherwise."
"Marines called the goonies goonies, not gooks. The sergeant forgot to follow his text. That is, when Marines didn't call them worse."
"About Easy's patrol, you see he heard about the patrol that left Octotal and had 100 per cent casualties and he wasn't taking any chances. Besides, it wasn't a five man patrol. It was a squad."
"As for flying without 'chutes, I might refer the sergeant to the Department of Commerce. He'll find me listed down there, at present under a permit, but formerly under a license. If the sergeant ever did much flying, he'd fail to appreciate a 'chute. Three Marine pilots I knew personally have a habit of forgetting the things. Regulations to the contrary."
"The sergeant mentions that the natives had no bread in the hills and then says that 'tortillas were and are the only bread they use' So what? Tortillas, may I remind the sergeant, according to his own confession, are doughy bread, listed as bread, called pan as well as tortilla. "A doughy bread was baking on the crude charcoal stove."
"I like top kicks. They're the backbone of the corps, and a Marine first sergeant is far more important then an army top. You know, the skipper always sees his company through the eyes of his first sergeant and upon that first sergeant everything depends. If it weren't for top kicks, the Corps' record would be far less enviable. A first sergeant owes his ability to the fact that he can growl lovely, and after years of practice, growling becomes second nature. I have never seen a first sergeant who wouldn't growl and I never will. They are very jealous of their Corps and have a right to be. After all, they are the Corps."
"Give my best wishes to the sergeant"
"-L. Ron Hubbard"
"Here go a couple of Marines shooting at each other. I could presume to settle their differences, but I'm going to be glad to see another yarn as good as 'He Walked to War'"
-Editor
"For twenty years I have been a reader of Adventure - does that entitle me to have a voice of - shale we say - objection - this one time? Anyhow, I feel that I'M more or less qualified in writing you this one time."
"In your October issue there was a story by an individual named L. Ron Hubbard - which concerns Nicaragua chiefly. In his biography in the Camp-Fire, he claims to have been a top kicks aren't made over-night in the Corps and they generally are real soldiers. I venture to state the average top kick has over sixteen years of service. However, that's beside the point. What I object to principally is that a colonel of Marines doesn't talk over a field phone to a line sergeant except in cases of extreme emergency. Transfers are routine, and colonels, even in Nicaragua, aren't particularly interested in them."
"Another thing, who ever heard of a telephone in the Pantasma Valley even when the 11th Regiment was there? Also, does the Pantasma parallel the Honduras border? I thought it was in Jinotega and I can remember a miserable five months in Santa Cruz - that happens to be in the Pantasma. That was a swell post, no trails and the Cocoa river in the front door, two houses in the "town" and rain nine months a year. Just showers, the other three - yeah, I know the Pantasma.
"To get on - 'E.Z.'s' patrol on the line was just function. Five men patrols just weren't in that area! Also every patrol had at least ONE automatic weapon. 'E.Z.' certainly was some shot - how come he waisted two shots at 75 yards with a .45? That's hard to swallow."
"Real Marines didn't call the natives 'Gooks' and believe me you those 'Gooks' had guts! Try'n scare 'em!"
"Once there was a Marine repair patrol that left Ocotal and San Fernando. The time - December 30, 1930, and two hours later the patrol had 100 per cent casualties. That's rather high even for Nicaragua. How about it?"
"In Case Hubbard doesn't know it they just don't fly without 'chutes, especially in Nicaragua."
"As for bead in the "hills" among the natives, tortillas were and are the only bread they use."
"I served in Nicaragua almost four years. Over three of that time I was in Peniente Primero in the Guardia. I've been on duty in Managuua, Granada, Masaya, Leon, Chontales, Rivas, Matagalpos, Jinatega, Esteli, Segavia, Bluefields, Puerto Cabezas, Nepune Mines, Prinzapolka and Tuma. I was one of the survivors of the Jicano mutiny - and have been in eighteen contacts (legitimate). I'm still in the Corps and probably will be 'till it's my time to cash in."
"-Another Top Kicker
Washington D.C."
Here is L. Ron Hubbard's response:
"I am always somewhat amused when a first sergeant lets out a regulation growl. First sergeants most always take matters entirely too seriously."
"Now the former aide to General Butler in China thought the yarn was okay as to detail. He did tell me that the telephone line was somewhat out of place, but in 'He Walked to War' the line ran to Pantasma, not across it."
"The sergeant, as he is down there in Washington, might go up to the Navy Department and look up the records of the 20th regiment. He'll find Lafayette Ronald Hubbard duly warranted a first sergeant. If he's got the nerve, he might also call up Major Moriarity, the great Mo, and find out that I've been kicking around with the Corps ever since I was a pup, officially and otherwise."
"Marines called the goonies goonies, not gooks. The sergeant forgot to follow his text. That is, when Marines didn't call them worse."
"About Easy's patrol, you see he heard about the patrol that left Octotal and had 100 per cent casualties and he wasn't taking any chances. Besides, it wasn't a five man patrol. It was a squad."
"As for flying without 'chutes, I might refer the sergeant to the Department of Commerce. He'll find me listed down there, at present under a permit, but formerly under a license. If the sergeant ever did much flying, he'd fail to appreciate a 'chute. Three Marine pilots I knew personally have a habit of forgetting the things. Regulations to the contrary."
"The sergeant mentions that the natives had no bread in the hills and then says that 'tortillas were and are the only bread they use' So what? Tortillas, may I remind the sergeant, according to his own confession, are doughy bread, listed as bread, called pan as well as tortilla. "A doughy bread was baking on the crude charcoal stove."
"I like top kicks. They're the backbone of the corps, and a Marine first sergeant is far more important then an army top. You know, the skipper always sees his company through the eyes of his first sergeant and upon that first sergeant everything depends. If it weren't for top kicks, the Corps' record would be far less enviable. A first sergeant owes his ability to the fact that he can growl lovely, and after years of practice, growling becomes second nature. I have never seen a first sergeant who wouldn't growl and I never will. They are very jealous of their Corps and have a right to be. After all, they are the Corps."
"Give my best wishes to the sergeant"
"-L. Ron Hubbard"
Adventure - September, 1936 "Mr. Tidwell Gunner"
- Rustlers' Range · Luke Short
- The Monster of St. Gobain · Ared White
- The Tower of Death · Georges Surdez
- The Rough Log · Jacland Marmur
- Boston Tow · Burke Boyce
- The Law Saves Money · Foster Harris
- Mr. Tidwell Gunner · L. Ron Hubbard
- Cover art by A. M. Simpkin
Book price: $40 - $100 - $200
In the Editors section - The Camp Fire - is this:
"L. Ron Hubbard's story of blood and smoke at all ports. There wasn't much difference then between surgery and butchery, and a man who got a wound was well on the way to die. Hubbard gives us here some side-lights on his research for the story."
- Editor
"Nelson wasn't with British fleet when it sailed for the Mediterranean a while ago. Not in the flesh. But every limey in the fleet was wearing his usual black neckerchief - still in mourning for Nelson after one hundred and thirty years. Their white collar braid represents Nelson's victories of Care St. Vincent, Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar. When one of those limeys comes over the side, he pauses an instant at the top of the gangway - salutes the deck on which Nelson died."
"No, perhaps Nelson wasn't with them, but they were thinking about Nelson. One hundred and thirty years after Trafalgar, the hold of England on the Mediterranean was apparently being menaced by a foreign power. One hundred and thirty-seven years ago, Nelson at the battle of the Nile, held Egypt - and the Mediterranean - for England against France and Napoleon."
"But these days the world of surgery, gunnery, machinery, are at the call of the limey. What a contrast with the first Battle of the Nile!"
I haven't stretched any points in Mister Tidwell's story. Matters were just like that. Surgeons were just like that. Gunnery was just like that. And where the modern gun, with its great bore and range, is loaded in a few seconds, it took Nelson's tars half an hour. And when they were wounded, Mister Tidwell knew what they'd face. Not a clean sick bay, either, antiseptics, skillful surgeons, and trained hospital corpsmen."
"What Nelson did a hundred and thirty or more years ago, in the light of present activities, takes on a miraculous character. Even Nelson suffered at the hands of unskilled surgeon - as his empty sleeve and his scarred forehead and his death testified."
Don't question a schoolmaster's presence on a seventy-four. He was there, one for each ship, to control those King's Letter Boys. They had odd ideas in Nelson's time and a schoolmaster was on of them. And the schoolmaster's battle station was the cockpit, holding down poor wretches while the ex,barbers dissected them."
"As for that cockpit, I can only say that times have changed and so has nomenclature. A cockpit as we know it now is the place you man the helm and gaze rapturously at the dancing blue. How the cockpit of the seventy four was right down there upon the bilge, airless, lightless, but far from odorless. It was the quarters of the midshipmen in peace, the surgeon in war, far removed from the action decks. A square box full of hell."
"Those definitions are very puzzling to me and I wish someone would write in and explain matters. In my dumb way I always thought a frigate was some ship, but research uncovers the fact that it wasn't even counted in battle. Thirty-six to forty guns were all a frigate of that time carried. And small guns too. A 'liner' was seventy-four to a hundred and twenty big cannon."
"I was very foolishly spend a lot of my time pondering on these things. For instance, the Guerrier of the French fleet was pretty badly shot up at the Nile. Then, on August 19, 1812, we find the Guerriere engaging the Constitution in that historic frey. But the first Guerrier is termed a ship of the line and the Guerriere of 1812 fame is termed a frigate. And there's a difference or one E. Could it be that the captured French vessel went into the British service, or what?"
"A phrase came out of the Battle of the Nile. 'Where there is room for a Frenchman to swing, there's room for an Englishman to anchor." From Mukden to Malta, I've heard British officers say, when they were about to enter a tavern or parlor, 'There's room for a swing,' and thereupon they shove their way in."
"Another sentence came out of the battle. The cry of St. Vincent, 'By this time tomorrow I shall have gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey,' was repeated and made famous. Nelson's shout at the broadside, "Now for a monument in Westminster Abby!" also takes it's place with Perry's 'Don't give up the ship!' and Dewey's "Damn the torpedoes!' and Nelson's 'England expects every man to do his duty,' at Trafalgar."
Looking back over Mister Tidwell, I find my love for sail somewhat impaired, but my respect for Nelson's men considerably strengthened. I believe it's an honest picture of the times."
"It also clears up something about the Orient. That hundred and twenty - gunner exploded at ten o'clock that night with great havoc, beginning the fall of the fleet which after that, was content to lie at anchor and be taken ship by ship."
"Well, three historians give us three accounts of that explosion. There's even a poem about it, I think. Young Casabianca, the captain's son, stood on the burning deck of the Orient and gave a sentimental poet her plot for "A Boy Stood on the Burning Deck."
"Anyway, the Orient burned and blew up, and an English captain wouldn't let his men cheer because the sight was so awful to see, and a poem was written, but three men say three different things caused the explosion, and so I've settled the argument for myself. Why did it blow up?"
"Why Mister Tidwell threw his bomb, of course."
- L. Ron Hubbard