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Loading... Fifty-Fifty O'Brienby L. Ron Hubbard
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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. Step right up and take a shot as the audio version of Fifty-Fifty O'Brien leads you from the carnival midway to the middle of the jungle as a young Marine takes aim at heroism. 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. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.52Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1900-1944LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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All three of these stories are military stories and all have to do with a hero beating the odds to follow orders, no matter how crazy they seem.
So is the story with Winchester Remington Smith, a man you would expect to be good with guns and he is, both in a carnival and in the forests of Nicaragua. Ron describes his C.O., Fifty-Fifty O’Brien as “Self-reliant, big-jawed, swashbuckling, with a killer’s eyes 0 pale, icy eyes that stared straight through you and out the other side and saw something you couldn’t see.”
This becomes clearer when Smith is sent as a courier through the worst of the jungle infested with rebels. Will he make it to base and will he get back alive? Quite a story of stubbornness and heroism and a harrowing experience, both for Smith and this reader!
The second short is called The Adventure of X, a certain Larry Grant, legionnaire in the sandy French Algeria. He’s a rough character in an out of jail, as he puts up with military martinets and enemies of the French, shooting it out with them. Great story of mistaken identity and heroism.
Lastly is Red Sand, somewhere in the Moroccan mountains where Legionnaire Hardesty doing guard duty comes up to a dead body! The fight between the Berbers and the French is fierce – a man wants the fort for himself for greed and Hardesty wants to stop him – if he could only find out who it is. Betrayal and suspicion go through this tale, and when all the evidence points to a traitor, the twist ending changes your mind fast!
Great adventure stories.
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