Ray Millholland – Engineer, Sailor, Author

Ray Millholland is pretty unknown today. Back in the day, he was famous for a series of stories in the Saturday Evening Post about a master machinist named Blue Chip Haggerty. Blue Chip is a master machinist who gets into a jam, and then out again while trying to meet the rigid specifications of the Army and Navy. These stories were later collected in a book. He’s also famous for his book on the splinter fleet of submarine chasers in World War 1, The Splinter Fleet of the Otranto Barrage, which was later made into a movie. I’m writing this article as part of a series about the authors in an issue of Short Stories that I’ll get around to reviewing soon.

Ray Milholland - Author (1894-1956) - Image courtesy Library of Congress

Alfred Batson – Soldier, Journalist, Author

Starting a new series of biographical articles about some authors who appeared in Short Stories magazine. I intend to review an issue of Short Stories where these authors had appearances, and in the process of reviewing the magazine, also took the time to unearth some biographical info about them. 

The first author in this series is Alfred Batson, who turned out to be quite an interesting character. He started appearing in pulp magazines in the early 1930s and continued till the early 1940s.

Alfred Batson (1899-1977) - Soldier, Journalist, Author