Battle Cry

If it wasn't for that cover painting of some Nazis about to brand some unfortunate half naked woman with the swastika,  you'd be hard-pressed to identify this issue of Battle Cry as a war-story themed men's magazine.  None of the stories featured on the cover appear to have any connection with any war, nor any military theme.  Instead, they read like the contents of the raunchier end of the men's magazine field, with their relentless focus on sex and sensationalism.  It's all there: wife-swapping, small town prostitution, harems and even some cannibalism thrown in for good measure.  Somewhat bizarrely, tacked onto all of this we have 'A Bowling Pro Tells: The Secrets of a 200 Average!'.  Now, unless a '200 Average' is some kind of sexual euphemism, this strange mix of stories tell us something about the fantasies of American men in the early seventies:  sex with exotic women, eating human flesh and racking up a top score at the bowling alley.  Not necessarily all at once.

Battle Cry started life as a comic book, before becoming a war themed men's magazine in the mid fifties.  It stayed focused on war throughout the fifties and into the sixties.  But as World War Two (the main conflict featured in stories) receded into history, other wars began to feature more prominently, notably Korea and Vietnam, not to mention Cold War tales of Soviet/Red Chinese/Cuban depravities, even, eventually, the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland.  Semi clad women featured ever more prominently on the covers as the sixties progressed, to be joined by increasingly sex-orientated content in the late sixties.  By the early seventies, with the magazine, like its contemporaries, increasingly scrabbling to retain readership, the sex and sensationalism started to overshadow the war content.  Sometimes, as with this November 1970 issue, crowding it out completely.  Battle Cry staggered into 1971 for a few more issues before expiring.