Flammonde, Felix "Sailor with Spurs."

Adventure tag line: “That ‘vaquero’ from Chihuahua was without doubt the strangest thing on two legs that ever decided to go down to the sea in ships. Sombrero, gunbelt, spurs and all – the only things he’d left ashore were his saddle and horse. It took the bosun a whole voyage to get accustomed to the misfit mariner, but by the time we made port he was damn glad to have Ramón and his ‘reata’ aboard.”

Despite a typical pulp plot featuring personal conflict and danger, what makes this World War 2 story unique is its focus: that of a Mexican crew (specifically the aforementioned Chihuahua cowboy-turned-sailor) serving aboard a Mexican registry ship (the freighter JALISCO) in trade with the United States in the days following Mexico’s entry into the War as an Allied nation. Though Flammonde portrays the Mexican mariners as rustics, he also portrays them entirely sympathetically — and definitely portrays them as competent sailors. Thus, this is one of but a handful of examples of World War 2-era nautical fiction depicting “minority” characters rather than standard-issue white men. The story’s denouement is also of interest in that it ties its main character (the vaquero Ramón Caballero) into the very real 1942 act of German aggression (the sinking of the unarmed Mexican tanker POTRERO DEL LLANO off the coast of south Florida) which triggered Mexico’s entry into the War. It turns out that Ramón’s only brother had been a crewman aboard the POTREO DEL LLANO and had not survived the vessel’s torpedoing; Ramón has come to sea “to carry on in his place.” The vaquero concludes by telling crewmates, “There is no longer any room for personal enmity when our country, and other free countries of the world, need to fight against our common enemy.”