Winchester Remington Smith is a crack shot. Problem is, surrounded by roller coasters and merry-go-rounds, his talent is going to waste, knocking down ducks in a carnival shooting gallery. Win wants some real action, and like Gary Cooper as Sergeant York, he s going to war running off to join the U.S. Marines to fight a guerilla insurgency south of the border.
In the jungles of Central America, Win takes a different kind of roller coaster ride. Quick and quiet, he s now a runner. It s a vital role, but he feels like a messenger boy, unable to put his rifle to good use. Even when he saves the life of First Sergeant Fifty-Fifty O Brien a Marine so gung-ho he has about a fifty-fifty chance of survival Win ends up facing a disciplinary hearing for disobeying orders.
Can the young sharpshooter redeem himself? Win s about to get his chance, an opportunity to deliver a message that the Marines will never forget.
Hubbard knew exactly what it meant to be a Marine. As he wrote in 1935: Most of the fiction written about Marines] is of an intensely dramatic type, all do-or-die and Semper Fidelis. But the reality, he said, was far different. 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 get their orders . . . and do the job and that s that. It s that kind of unique and pointed insight that he brings to stories like Fifty-Fifty O Brien.
Also includes the military adventures "The Adventure of X," in which a French Foreign Legionnaire s intelligence mission leads him into an enemy ambush, and he has to warn his fellow Legionnaires before they walk into a massacre; and "Red Sand," the story of a disgraced Chicago cop who joins the Legionnaires and finds his investigative skills invaluable in the desert.
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