Men’s Adventure Quarterly #10

Men's Adventure Quarterly #10, Edited by Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham

February, 2024  Subtropic Productions

This volume of MAQ focuses on the Vietnam War, and editors Robert Deis abd Bill Cunningham have done a great job, as usual, of selecting stories that run the gamut of the men’s adventure magazine field. There’s everything from factual reportage on the war to the escapist pulp one most thinks of when thinking of men’s adventure magazines, and you get even more of it in The Vietnam Issue, which is longer than the previous volumes of this series. 

I wasn’t sure I’d be as much interested in this one, as I thought Vietnam was a little too “real” for the pulpy stuff I prefer in men’s mags. Also, I’m not as much into military fiction, or war fiction in general. At one point in time I ranked Gustav Hasford’s The Short-Timers as the greatest novel I’d ever read, and Michael Herr’s Dispatches as the greatest “nonfiction” book I’d ever read, but that was like over 20 years ago. In fact, I reviewed both books on Amazon way back then; I even liked Hasford’s followup, The Phantom Blooper. But really, that Vietnam is not the Vietnam of the men’s mags; the surreal, drug-fueled vibe of Apocalypse Now has been replaced with something more akin to Robin Moore’s The Green Berets, or even the film version, only without the patriotic vibe of the film. The writers in the stories collected here never judge the merits of the war, or dwell on how ‘Nam was “the first rock and roll war,” but instead focus on the hellzones the soldiers had to battle through, on land, air, and under the ground. 

Bob Deis provides one of his typically-informative intros, in which he relates his own personal thoughts on Vietnam. Bob as well does not provide his views on the justness of the war, focusing more on how the growing public distaste with it gradually led to fewer and fewer ‘Nam stories in the men’s mags. That said, even the early stories here aren’t gung-ho in support of the war; it’s clear that even at the time the editors were putting a different spin on Vietnam stories than on the typical WWII combat stories. One thing I was curious about was whether soldiers in ‘Nam – or ones who served early in the war and then returned home – were readers of the men’s adventure mags. Or was the readership mostly limited to WWII vets and Korea vets? It would be interesting to see what insights the publishing companies had on their readers back in the day, but that’s just the marketing professional in me, I guess. 

Oh and Bill Cunningham’s art direction is as usual perfect throughout; one story is even graced with an original duotone that was not featured with the original men’s mag publication. The artwork is reproduced with meticulous care throughout, with even the usual “cover gallery” we’ve gotten with previous issues. That said, the “eye candy” of earlier books isn’t as prevalent this time; what with the focus on combat stories, there is little in the way of the female presence typically expected of escapist men’s mag yarns. But as with Cuba: Sugar, Sex, And Slaughter, I’m sure there had to be a few men’s magazine stories that focused on sexpot girl guerrillas waging lusty war in the jungles of Vietnam. Maybe we’ll read a few of them if there’s ever a ‘Nam MAQ followup. That said, there’s a great pictorial piece on Raquel Welch. 

First up is “The First Gis To Die In Vietnam,” by Jack Ryan and from the January 1963 Man’s Magazine. This long piece is factual in its approach, telling the grim story of the first two American soldiers to die in combat in ‘Nam. Sent there as “advisors,” the soldiers engage in combat with the VC and are injured; the story mainly focuses on the plight of the two surviving soldiers, who are taken prisoner by the VC. This is an affecting story, with the extra impact that it is not the pulpy sort of yarn expected from the men’s mags, again indicating that even very, very early in the war the men’s magazine editors were treating Vietnam differently than other wars. 

But the next tale is pulpy, and it’s not only for that reason that it’s my favorite in the collection – it’s also great because it marks the first appearance of Mario Puzo, under his men’s mag pseudonym “Mario Cleri,” in Men’s Adventure Quarterly. Hopefully someday we’ll have an entire issue devoted to his yarns, as Cleri/Puzo is definitely my favorite men’s mag writer…and I’m not just saying that due to some prejudice over Puzo later becoming a bestselling author. In fact, I’ve only read one Puzo novel, The Godfather of course, and I’ve read it twice…once in high school and then again a few years ago. On this second reading I couldn’t believe how much of a Harold Robbins-type novel it was. 

No, Puzo was just a talented writer, bringing a great touch to his men’s mag stories…and also he was the only men’s mag writer who realized he could expand one of his stories into a feature-length novel, with Six Graves To Munich. The tale collected here, “Saigon Nymph Who Led The Green Berets To The Cong’s Terror Tunnels,” is just as pulpy and fun as the other Cleri stories I’ve had the pleasure to read; it originally appeared in the August, 1966 issue of Male. As ever Puzo packs a lot of story into this one, keeping it fast-moving: we meet a 19 year-old new recruit in ‘Nam as he goes home with a local beauty he just met in a bar, but it’s a trap and wily General Fonh wants the kid, Johnny Blake, to tell all he knows about his older brother, Korea vet Colonel Victor Blake, who serves now as head of counter-intelligence. The kid says no and pays the ultimate price. 

Thus ensues a revenge yarn, but it’s atypical from the format in that Victor Blake, who arrives in ‘Nam shortly thereafter to set up counter-terrorism methods, goes about his vengeance a little more coldly than one might expect. There’s little emotional depth, and he’s more about using his combat-trained intelligence – not to mention his penchant for remembering the odd fact – to gradually set the trap for General Fonh. Hell, the dude even sleeps with the chick who set up his brother for death, the lovely Lilly (with her “dusky nipples,” Cleri as ever serving up the goods expected of men’s mag writers), but we’re told this in an off-hand manner…also, that Blake has to “get drunk” to screw her. The climax sees Blake staging a Green Beret raid on Fonh’s secret village hideout, but the finale itself brings the emotional impact Puzo denied us earlier in the story, featuring as it does a firing line execution that leaves Blake cold, despite his vengeance having been gained. 

“Ambush By The Bridge At Nam Nang,” by Jackson Boeling and from the October 1966 Man’s Life, answers the unasked question: “What if Joseph Conrad had written for the men’s mags?” This 6 and a half-page “Book-length novel” is quite tonally different from the average men’s mag story, featuring Vietnamese natives as the protagonist. The author gives us a glimpse of how war can not only rip a country apart but a family as well, telling the story through the perspective of an older Vietnamese who attended a Catholic school and who sees the war through the prism of the old ways, while his son has joined the Viet Cong. 

“The Million-Dollar Ballad Of A Green Beret” is by Garth Roberts and from the October 1966 Man’s World, telling the tale of how Green Beret Barry Sadler wrote the famous “Ballad Of The Green Berets” and had a hit from it. More interesting by far however is Bob Deis’s intro; decades removed from the original men’s mag story, Bob is able to tell the full story of Barry Sadler’s life, and it all seems to have come out of a John Steinbeck novel, complete with Sadler gaining and losing wealth and fame, even murdering someone later in life and getting away with it. Bob also mentions Sadler’s Casca series, and like most guys my age that’s how I came to know of him; man I used to always see those paperbacks at the local WaldenBooks, but I never read any of them because there were so many of them that I was daunted by the prospect. And also, so far as I can recall, I never came across the first volume, so that further made it all seem like a too-daunting prospect. 

We’re back to the pulpy escapism with “Saga Of ‘Mad Mike’ Kovacs and His Battling Lepers of Vietnam,” by Glenn Infield and from the January 1967 Male. I’ve read and reviewed some other Infield men’s mag stories here on the blog, and also I know his name from various military paperbacks he published, so I appreciated Bob’s intro piece on the author. Otherwise this is an entertaining story of Kovacs, who is dropped into a leper colony to figure out how the VC are smuggling weapons across the Cambodian border, and he uses the lepers as his commando squad. Not much as done with this setup as you might expect, and indeed more detail is placed on the “blunderbuss,” a sled made out of the bed of a helicopter with two .50-caliber machine guns and a grenade launcher mounted on it. Kovacs places this on a path in the jungle and blasts the VC to oblivion in a memorable finale that brings to mind the climax of the 2008 Rambo. 

Robert F. Dorr provies the realistic war fiction he would become known for with “MIG Bait Over North Vietnam,” from the February 1968 Man’s Magazine. This one features Major Paul Gilmore getting in an aerial dogfight with a MIG over ‘Nam in 1966, and is very much in a “military fiction” style – and, per Bob’s insightful intro, is based on a real event, as typical of Dorr’s men’s mag work. 

“Mission Imperative: Smash The Cong’s Terror Tunnels” is by Eric Breske and from the November 1968 True Action; despite the sly callout to a famous TV show of the time in the title, this one’s not a spy yarn, but instead focused on the famous “Tunnel Rats” of the war. Here we read the claustrophobic tale of Captain Horten and his 3-man Tunnel Rat squad as they chase Charlie beneath the Earth, encountering incredible heat and fire ants and booby traps. A tale that again brings to light the plight of the average soldier in ‘Nam, and what was expected of them, and also one that concludes on an unexpected emotional touch with the note that Horten’s squad – as well as others – often adopted children who had been orphaned by the war, making them the “official mascots” of their squads and such. 

Likely the most gripping piece in Michael Herr’s Dispatches is the long, surreal piece on Khe Sahn, which I believe was originally published in Life or something, years before Dispatches came out. The next story here, “Ambush! The Horror At Khe Sahn,” provides the men’s mag take on this nightmarish siege. It’s by Dave Graham and from the June 1969 Bluebook. While not capturing the psychedelic soul-horror of Herr’s piece, Graham’s nonetheless documents the “hell in a very small place” that was Khe Sahn, where American soldiers at the titular base endured a four-month siege. 

This MAQ ends on a downbeat note with “Uncle Sam’s Universal Shafting Of Viet Vets,” by Ed Hymoff and from the November 1972 Saga. The author tells us of the dispirited post-war lives of vets who gave so much in the war, “shafted” by the very government they gave so much to. But again it’s Bob’s intro that has the most impact, telling from his own observations how vets were ignored back in the day – compared to how they are given their due today. 

In addition to all the above there are some great pieces throughout, like one on Army comics of the war by Bill Cunningham, and also Paul Bishop serves up a great piece on the Vietnam-focused men’s adventure paperbacks that were ubiquitous in the ‘80s. As mentioned before, I quite remember this as well, and indeed had a few volumes of The Black Eagles (if for nothing other than the covers!), and also I had several volumes of Eric Helm’s Vietnam: Ground Zero, which I got every other month in a package from Gold Eagle, but I never, ever read a single one of them. 

So, once again this volume of Men’s Adventure Quarterly is a winner, so I highly recommend you pick up a copy of MAQ #10 yourself! 

Six Graves To Munich

Six Graves To Munich, by Mario Cleri
October, 1967  Banner Books

Two years before his breakout success with The Godfather, Mario Puzo published this scarce paperback under his “Mario Cleri” pseudonym, which he’d been using for years for his men’s adventure magazine work. Interestingly, this Banner edition of Six Graves To Munich is copyright Puzo, so there was no mystery behind its authorship. No mention is made of Male Magazine, in which the original short version of the story first appeared.

As far as I know Puzo was the only men’s mag author to decide to elaborate one of his stories to novel length; I’ve read several of these sweat mag yarns that would’ve made for great novels, like “Raid On The Nazis’ Sex Circus Stalag,” “Assignment: Nepal,” and especially “Blood For The Love Slaves.” But Puzo appears to have been the only author to go this route; “Six Graves To Munich,” the story, first appeared in the November 1965 issue of Male Magazine (it wasn’t the cover feature, so I haven’t put up a scan of it). Puzo must’ve liked the story or felt that it needed to be further exploited, hence two years later we have this sort of director’s cut.

Running to 128 pages of small print, Six Graves To Munich reads exactly like a men’s mag story of the day, with a no-nonsense, virile protagonist confronting and surmounting great odds and scoring with a bunch with exotic Eurobabes along the way. The tale is set in 1955, yet Puzo really doesn’t do much to capture the era, and other than the occasionally-mentioned ages of a few characters, it could just as easily be 1965. Indeed, later in the book Puzo (possibly) slips and states that one of the villains is “no longer the killer he was twenty years ago,” rather than “ten years ago.” But to Puzo’s defense, the character in question is a Mafia don, so he could just be generalizing about when he was younger, not necessarily just his wartime years.

Anyone expecting a multi-character drama with rich subplots along the lines of Puzo’s later The Godfather will be underwhelmed, but those looking for a streamlined tale of vengeance in the manner of the pulps will be entertained. Six Graves To Munich is almost tunnel-visioned in its simple plot, which concerns a WWII vet named Mike Rogan gaining vengeance on the men who tortured and “killed” him ten years before, along with Rogan’s wife and unborn child. Puzo livens up the plot with some interesting characters and unexpected developments, but this is not a meaty tale by any means, and likely was even more powerful in shorter form.

Rogan is a little different than the typical men’s mag protagonist: whereas he’s still a badass like the best of them, he’s a genius to boot, gifted with a photographic memory which he used from a young age to master subject after subject. In backstory (no doubt material added for this novel version) we learn how Rogan’s parents considered his brain a “gift to mankind” and pushed him to better the human race. We also learn that Rogan’s dad, after his brainiac kid got bullied, taught him how to box to defend himself. When WWII came along, Rogan used his smarts to get a job with Army Intelligence, with a mastery in code breaking.

Yearning for field deployment, Rogan was parachuted into Occupied France several months before D-Day, helping work various coded messages. Staying with a French farming family, Rogan fell in love with their beautiful daughter Christine and married her. Soon she was pregnant. But on D-Day itself Rogan got careless with his radio broadcasts and the Gestapo intercepted them. Two weeks later they descended on the farm and killed everyone, capturing Rogan and Christine. They were taken to the Munich Palace of Justice, where Rogan’s nightmare began.

Puzo flashes back to Rogan’s plight throughout the novel. Kept alone and beaten mercilessly and at whim, Rogan was questioned by six men throughout, tortured by his wife’s screams in another room. Rogan was never able to see her, never able to learn what exactly was being done to her. His dignity destroyed by the sadism of torture, Rogan was eventually broken – especially when the Nazi bastards revealed that Christine had been dead all along, and the screams Rogan heard nothing more than a wax cylinder recording. Both she and the child had been dead since shortly after their capture, and all along the sadists had just been toying with Rogan.

But when the war’s end looms the captors tell Rogan he is a free man; they bring him clean clothes and a hat and tell him to get dressed. His mind destroyed from the endless torturing, Rogan complies…only to realize when he feels a barrel against the back of his head that they’re lying yet again. However by a complete fluke the bullet doesn’t kill Rogan, though it shatters a portion of his brain. Dumped on a pile of corpses, he’s discovered by the Army doctors who soon arrive at the Palace. Over a great length of time Rogan recuperates, but now he has a metal plate in his head and his face, due to surgery, looks completely different from the one he was born with.

All this is sprinkled through the tale; Puzo focuses on the revenge plot and hits the ground running with Rogan already on one of his vengeance kills on the very first page. Only gradually do we learn that Rogan, battered from his experience to the point where he’d become an alcoholic bum, eventually got himself together and now fronts a million-dollar computer company with ties to the government. So in other words the guy is like the Count of Monte Cristo meets Bill Gates. It’s been ten years since that hellish day in the Munich Palace of Justice, and now Rogan has come to Europe to exact his revenge.

Six Graves To Munich is more of a suspense thriller; the “action scenes” are relegated to Rogan’s quick hits on his prey. His killing tool is a Walther P-38 with a silencer, which coincidentally enough is the same weapon and accessory later featured in The Butcher. The novel opens with Rogan carrying out one of his hits, heading into a sleazy strip club in Hamburg, introducing himself to a portly German, and them blowing him away. For the most part, Rogan’s kills will follow this template through the rest of the novel; he wants his quarry to know who he is, to remember the horrors they put him through ten years ago, and then watch the realization dawn on their face before he shoots them.

This first victim is named Pfann, and was one of the minor flunkies in Rogan’s torture; previous to this – in a sequence delivered in a later chapter (per men’s mag tradition, the story is told a bit out of sequence) – we’ll learn that Rogan has already killed another of his torturers, a guy named Moltke. After the hit on Pfann Rogan heads into Hamburg’s red light district as a way to lose any tails and picks up a whore, whom he choses because she shows no interest in the passing men on the street. She is a beautiful blonde named Rosalie, and Rogan buys her services so he can sleep in her room – the metal plate causes him much pain and torment, particularly when he’s worked up, and doctors have told him he could kill himself if he pushes too hard.

But next morning he ends up having sex with good-natured and innocent Rosalie after all, particularly after admiring her “strawberry-tipped breasts,” which I believe is a recurring phrase in Cleri/Puzo’s men’s mag stories. The ensuing sex is strictly fade to black, with only a little detail; safe to say the sex scenes were not sleazed up for the paperback edition. Rogan and Rosalie basically fall in love, and he enjoys being with her so much he rents her for a week, taking her out to all the fancy places. Along the way she snoops in his stuff, finds his files on the men who tortured him, and pleads to aid him in his quest for vengeance.

They head on to Berlin, where Rogan has two victims: Eric and Hans Friesling, brothers who took special delight in his torture. Eric in fact was the one who shot Rogan, though under the orders of the mysterious man who led the torture sessions; Rogan is still uncertain of the names of all of his tormentors, and the Friesling brothers are the last leads he has. They now run an auto shop in Berlin, known as wheelers and dealers behind the Iron Curtain, and Rogan makes friendly overtures with them as a guy looking for an inroad behind the Iron Curtain to sell his computers for a good price without red tape and etc.

The novel is opened up a bit with the presence of Arthur Bailey, a CIA agent who has been tailing Rogan and has figured out what he’s doing. He warns Rogan not to kill the Friesling brothers, as they are key to a big operation the CIA is working on. Of course Rogan doesn’t listen, drugging the brothers and having them separately write down the names of the three remaning torturers. Then he puts them in the trunk of his Mercedes and kills them with carbon monoxide! Leaving Rosalie behind due to the fact that Bailey’s now onto him, Rogan goes to Sicily: one of the six torturers turns out to have been an Italian named Genco Bari, there as a consultant. Now he is a Mafia don. 

The material with Bari is interesting in how it prefigures The Godfather. All of it could’ve come straight out of that later book. Bari, like Don Corleone, is at heart a good-natured man, one who regrets the necessary violence of his life. He was the only interrogator who was kind to Rogan back then, something for which Rogan now hates Bari even more. But Rogan finds that Bari is incredibly old now; he sees him at a festival in which the entire community is partying, and Bari looks like a cadaver. Rogan knows he has to act fast or nature will take care of the job for him.

Meanwhile Rogan gets lucky with a dark-haired, lusty native gal who takes him to a room in Bari’s castle…and the next day announces that she’s Mrs. Genco Bari! The don is complicit with her wanton nature; indeed he married her just a few years ago, hoping her youth would make him live longer. Instead he is unable to please her and allows her to have her share of men…men who are later paid for their time. But Bari somehow recognizes Rogan, even though he can’t place him; he invites Rogan to stay. The two become sort of friends, with Rogan uncertain if he will be able to kill the kindly old man.

The sequence with Bari is probably the highlight of the novel, as it has the most emotional resonance. Rogan is surprised to learn that the old don has long figured out that Rogan is here to kill him, and indeed welcomes him in this act. Bari is in suffering and just wants release. He is also the one who reveals to Rogan that Rogan’s wife Christine died in childbirth; none of the interrogators touched her. It was the decision of the lead interrogator, a Nazi named Claus von Osteen, to record her death cries.

Rogan next heads to Budapest, where he’ll find another interrogator who was there in Munich as a consultant for his country. This is Pajeski, who is now chief of the secret police. Arthur Bailey shows up again, offering his help, but Rogan suspects the CIA agent has ulterior motives. Whereas the Bari hit has the most emotional depth, the hit on Pajeski is the most suspenseful. The lecherous man is constantly guarded and follows a strict daily routine. Rogan puts his brains to work and figures out that Pajeski’s one moment of weakness is during his nightly game of chess in a restaurant.

The hit on Pajeski also prefigures Puzo’s later novel, in particular Michael Coreleone’s assassination of the police chief and rival Mafia don in the restaurant. Instead of a gun, though, Rogan wires a chess piece to blow! This is by far the goriest part of the book, with copious juicy detail of Pajeski’s head exploding in the ensuing blast. From there it’s back to Berlin and a reunion with Rosalie, who has been pining for Rogan and checking the airport every night in hopes of his return. Rogan has learned that the sadist in charge of his torture was an official named Claus von Osteen, now a judge in Munich’s Palace of Justice, which is where Rogan was held and “killed.”

The finale of Six Graves To Munich plays out on an unexpected note of hesitation and remorse as Rogan knows that it will be suicide to kill von Osteen, so should he just give in to Rosalie’s pleas and live happily with her, forgetting about his quest for vengeance? Meanwhile Bailey’s back in the picture, and we learn that he does in fact have ulterior motives, and if Rogan does carry out his hit there will be no happy end for our hero. Of course you can’t write a book like this and have the hero decide “to hell with it” at the end, so Puzo delivers an appropriately bittersweet resolution in which vengeance is delivered, but not without great cost.

Overall I really enjoyed Six Graves To Munich, possibly even more so than The Godfather, which occasionally gets lost in Harold Robbins-esque sequences, like the unforgettable part where the good-looking doctor rebuilds a certain portion of his girlfriend’s anatomy. But at the same time, Six Graves To Munich is a bit too spare, following the same repetitive storyline as Rogan goes to a city, appraises his quarry, and then kills him. In fact Rogan has much too easy of a time of it. To tell the truth I would’ve been happier if Puzo had chosen to turn say “Barracks Of Wild Blondes” into a full-length novel…now that would’ve been cool.

I lucked out and found a copy of this Banner edition for cheap, but Six Graves To Munich has recently been reprinted under Puzo’s own name, and is available for much cheaper. I’d certainly recommend it, but again it wasn’t the knockout revenge thriller I was hoping for.

Men's Mag Roundup: Mario Puzo

Before he achieved mega fame with The Godfather, Mario Puzo cut his teeth on men’s adventure magazines, where he doled out many stories under the name “Mario Cleri.” Sadly none of these stories have yet been reprinted,* and it’s a wonder some publisher didn’t come out with an anthology post-1969 to capitalize on Puzo’s sudden fame, something like Women With Guns but solely comprised of Cleri/Puzo stories. But then it seems such men’s mag anthologies dried up in the early ’60s, anyway.

Puzo’s story in the December 1967 issue of Male is “Yank Agent Who Penetrated The Nazi High Command’s Love Swap Circus,” an “extra-length” tale. Once again we have a story that sort of follows the illustration, captions, and photos – which by the way are staged shots of barely-dressed women standing around while a Nazi looks them over! (According to the credits at the back of the mag, these photos are actually from the 1966 French film Is Paris Burning?) The captions meanwhile state that the story is about “a palace of twisted pleasures…crammed with top-ranking Nazi overlords and their depraved wives and mistresses.”

Actually it’s the hero who creates this “palace,” not the Nazi overlords – and it’s a lavish apartment suite, not a palace at all. Bill Southegate is an American Military Intelligence agent whose mission is to figure out where German infantry divisions are disappearing to in late 1944. Military strategists figure that Germany’s about to make one last push in their failing war effort, so likely these missing divisions will play a part in that. Southegate is interrogating captured German Intelligence officers when he discovers that one of them is a dead ringer for himself. This officer is from a small town and was en route to his new orders in Berlin, where he was to serve on the official staff.

Southegate’s instant plan is to pose as this guy and take his place in Berlin. Born and raised in Germany, Southegate has a native’s grasp on the language. However according to his transit papers the officer also had a wife; after a quick call British Intelligence sends in a dropdead gorgeous female operative named Gaby (her undercover name; Southegate never learns her real one). Puzo gives us just the story we want when, as soon as she meets Southegate, Gaby insists that they have sex, so Southegate won’t later get jealous when she “sleeps with all the German officials in Berlin.” The ensuing sex scene doesn’t immediately fade to black; it’s not outright hardcore, but it’s there, moreso than such scenes in earlier men’s mags I’ve read.

In fact sex plays more of a focus here than regular action, as Southegate soon discovers that the Nazi high command likes to have parties where they swap wives. Gaby, a “nymphomaniac” as far as Southegate is concerned, is up for it, and within their first few nights in Berlin they’re already sleeping with other couples. Southegate rents out an apartment that has a two-way mirror, and behind it he sets up cameras and microphones. He records the ensuing orgies, but of course nothing intel-worthy comes out in the material he secretly films and tapes…I mean, why would the Nazis discuss their war strategies while screwing each other’s wives? Southegate obviously isn’t the sharpest agent in SHAEF.

When a Gestapo officer appears in the apartment during the latest orgy, Southegate realizes the jig is almost up. First he has Gaby seduce the guy into the hidden room (which is soundproofed), and there they kill him – nice gore here as Gaby shoots him in the ear with a small pistol and Gestapo brains splash everywhere. After this Gaby entertains three men in a separate room while Southegate searches their briefcases, finally getting the info he wants. When asked later what exactly she did with those three men, Gaby will only say, “We weren’t playing Monopoly, that’s for sure.”

The climax sees the duo escaping Berlin as the Germans come after them, but again there isn’t much action, playing out more on a suspense angle. All told though it was a fun story, if not a great one. Puzo’s writing is as quality as the other writers in these Diamond-line magazines, with strong characters and zero POV-hopping, though it must be stated that this story is rife with spelling and grammatical errors. I wonder if this was Puzo’s doing or if the copy editor was at lunch – speaking of which, it appears that Noah Sarlat was no longer the editor of the Diamond magazines at this time; George Fox is now credited as the Editorial Director.

Other stories: “The Mob Goddess 2000 Mafia Gunners Couldn’t Kill” is by Burt Stewart and about Anna Hoegerova, aka the Black Tulip, who got her start smuggling and now commands a global underworld empire. The story trades between straight-up fiction and psuedo-factual background detail. “I Was An Office ‘Passion Lottery’ Girl” is by Lynn Hughes “as told to” Arthur Alexander; a goofy first-person narrative by a girl who gets a job in a Manhattan ad agency where all of the higher-ups like to have sex parties. This one is graced with lots of funny staged shots of 1967 go-go girls sitting around in offices in their lingerie.

There’s also “China Bomb” by Richard Tregaskis, a “True Book” excerpt of the 1967 novel of the same title; this one’s about a war reporter who hooks up with a squad of American commandos as they hunt down the titular weapon of mass destruction. The story takes up a goodly portion of the magazine, but I skipped it, figuring maybe I’d just read the actual novel someday and not this condensed version. “All Night Date with Cindy” is by Eugene Joseph and is a funny story very much in the mold of Blue Dreams, about 36 year-old Joe Scott and how his life falls apart when gorgeous and flirtatious 17 year-old “jailbait” Cindy Whitlow moves in with Scott and his wife. She wants it, he’s afraid to give it to her, frustration and comedy ensues.

“Sgt. Jim ‘Red’ Zale’s No-Quarter Attack on the Cong’s Torture Compound” is by Erik Broske and is a Vietnam War tale that once again doesn’t have much to do with its title. There’s no “torture compound,” but the story is pulpy enough. Green Beret Sgt. Zale witnesses a VC assassination squad take out a few village elders and vows to track down the squad leader. This is the infamous Kuong, who pulp fiction-style wears a bambo half-mask over the left side of his face, hiding the hideous scarring of an old wound. It’s all like something out of the later Black Eagles series as Zale uses a young, VC-supporting kid to bait Kuong, with Zale launching a one-man war on the assassination squad. Pretty good and with some colorful gore.

Puzo’s story in the April 1968 Man’s World is a “Booklength extra,” and it really is quite long, like novella-length. Titled “Barracks of Wild Blondes,” the actual story has nothing to do with the title, but at least the illustration and photos share common elements (and once again the photos are taken from Is Paris Burning?). Seriously, there are no “barracks” here, but at least there’s a blonde – if only one, and not even a “wild” one at that. Aside from the discrepancy between title and tale, the story is very good.

Frank “Dutch” Munro is yet another Intelligence agent protagonist; his mission is to parachute into France and act as a clown in a French circus that has been commandeered by the Germans, a circus that tours with an infantry division so as to provide the troops some entertainment. Puzo captures a pulp flair immediately, though, opening with Munro murdering a Nazi-supporting French clown and then having sex with a gorgeous French circus dancing girl right there beside the corpse!

The girl is Antoinette, and we learn in the flashback that she’s a member of the French Resistance. Munro is the sole American working with them in these weeks before D-Day; his assignment is to take out the German beach defenses in this region of Southern France to aid in the Allied invasion. But first to prove himself he must murder Panuche, a lecherous drunkard of a clown who is an avid Nazi supporter and informant. After six months training as a circus clown(!), Munro is sent to France, and after staying with a family of farmers (where he sleeps with the busty daughter) he hooks up with Antoinette, who poses as his cousin so as to get him a job as Panuche’s back-up on the German circus.

Munro and Antoinette have an instant chemistry, but she’s obviously jealous that Munro would stoop to sleeping with that “cow” back on the farm, so constantly puts off his advances. After Munro proves his worth, murdering Panuche in cold blood, Antoniette finally sees that he is “truly a man.” As she helps paint up Munro’s face like Panuche’s in the conveniently-hot cabin car of the circus train, Antoinette unhooks her bra “so that her breasts, strawberry tipped, milky white and full” hang in Munro’s face, and unable to take it anymore he grabs a handful and the two go at it. Once again Puzo doesn’t shy from the details here.

Munro plans to go on stage as Panuche, for that night the circus is giving a performance for high-ranking officials right outside of a German beach defense position. Munro’s performance is so good that Captain Gruber, the German in command of the circus, instantly realizes he is an imposter – Gruber you see is a self-described “expert on clowns!” Another quick Nazi-killing and Munro and Antoinette can proceed with their plans. Here the story’s illustration comes into play, as Munro straps Antoinette and another pretty dancing girl to the spinning Wheels of Fortune – the Germans turn out in force because they believe two lucky winners will get to have sex with these women.

Instead Munro hurls some grenades from beneath his table and blows away more Gestapo with a submachine gun. More action ensues as Munro escapes with the Resistance members, firing at pursuing Nazis with an anti-tank cannon in the back of his truck. But in a goofy ending Munro finds himself in the most danger when they get to that farm back in the country, and Antoinette and the “cow” are together…Munro knows he’s in for trouble once these girls get hold of him, so he arranges for immediate departure. This was a fun story with good action and dialog.

Other stories here are “No-Holds-Barred Duel with Australia’s Man-Butcher Legion,” by Tim Gogarty; this one has a great title and art but the story is lackluster, about a dude named Pat Duncan who goes hunting for opals in Australia but runs afoul of crooks and a bloodthirsty tribe. “Health Club Tease” by Alex Austin is hilariously mistitled, as it has zilch to do with the title or the art – it’s about a married guy who meets this young chick at the bowling alley and the two start an immediate affair. The humor gist comes from the fact that they always have to screw in the cramped confines of a car. I mean, the girl isn’t a “tease” at all! “Death-Dive Attack on the Cong’s Torture Beach” by Henry I. Kurtz is another misleadingly-titled story; there’s no “torture beach,” just a string of GIs being tortured by the VC, and air cav captain Steve Pless flies in to the rescue. Okay, but nothing spectacular.

*Puzo’s story “Six Graves To Munich,” from the November 1965 issue of Male, was later expanded into a novel of the same name and published as a mass market paperback by Banner Books, as by Mario Cleri; it was adapted into a film titled A Time To Die in 1982, but Puzo had nothing to do with it. Six Graves To Munich was reprinted under Puzo’s own name in 2010, and one of these days I intend to read it.