A peep inside the 1945 Armed Services overseas paperback edition of The Dunwich Horror and Other Weird Tales. This could have been what the soldiers and airmen were reading as they waited for D-Day. It was incredibly damp in England (more so than usual in a British summer) in the run-up to the invasion of Europe, and indoor pursuits such as reading were thus highly likely. After that, the men were probably rather too busy for reading.
I wonder if the thinking was that such reading would prepare the men for the horrors of battle with the Nazis? Wells’s The Island of Dr Moreau was also on the slate, in the list in the back.
Is there a publication history of this item that can reveal the facts? Perhaps in one of the Derleth biographies?
“The Dunwich Horror” was also on the radio in 1945.
Martin said:
I wonder if any if the service men were inclined to check out the village of Dunwich on the Eastern coast?