#Beach Head

[gijoe-forever]

[renaultphile]

There is something about the way Ensan Case writes awkward male banter that I love so much! I don't know why 😊

Beach Head, Ensan Case

[decepticonseeker]

Here's my version of Cobra Commander as a half-snake man with Beach Head (My crackship, lol idk how to explain it)

[thevondoom62]

When it comes to this kind of dirty work? Nobody gets the job done better than Firefly.

[shadows-on-the-sky]

Beach Head by Ensan Case

Beach Head is Ensan Case's (author of Wingmen) second novel. It was published in 1983 and has been out of print ever since, so I decided to digitize it to share with my fellow Wingmen fans.

There are some notable similarities between Beach Head and Wingmen, like their structure, the World War II setting and the realistic and slow burn style. However, the (mostly investigative) latter half of Beach Head takes place in the 1960s, and the story has American and Japanese characters. The plot is also much more complex, and there's also much more explicit violence. And while it doesn’t center its narrative around a gay romance like Wingmen, Beach Head has LGBT characters as well.

You can download Beach Head here.

If the link isn't working, or if you have any additional questions, don't hesitate to contact me!

For those who want to know a little more about the novel's plot, here's the (spoiler-ish!) back cover synopsis:

The sand and water were stained red, the beach littered with the bodies of young Marines he had just met. The screams of the wounded and dying rose above the sound of the gunfire.

It wasn't what Carl Randall expected when he left his job on the society pages to become the war correspondent for his father's San Francisco newspaper. When he left the smouldering ruins of Pearl Harbor, he still expected his role to be drinking and storytelling. Randall never imagined that the end of the war would find him stranded on a deserted Pacific island… or the key to a secret the government would never want revealed!

The nightmare of the war stayed with Randall. A generation after the Japanese surrender, it was about to become reality… again!

[alovelywaytospendanevening]

She dreams. The smell of the place is present even in her dreams. The rice paddies, so benign in appearance from the air, reek with the stench of mud, decaying vegetation and fertilizer dung. The Marines tramp through the boot-clinging muck, sloshing and splashing, wet up to the knees, tired and miserable. It is her first, and last, patrol. The officers refer to it by various means: armed reconnaissance, intelligence gathering, routine incursion. But to the men it is simply patrol. They have been on patrol for twelve enervating hours, and it is nearly over. But something terrible is lurking up ahead. She knows this, but in her dream can do nothing about it.

— Ensan Case, Beach Head (1983)

[zaccariacombat]

Beach Head has arrived! I am excited to read Ensan Case’s other work!

@alovelywaytospendanevening

[georgeromeros]

G.I. JOE: A REAL AMERICAN HERO - “Arise, Serpentor, Arise! Part 3”

[askvectorprime]

Dear Vector Prime, do GI Joe and Cobra exist somewhere in the Viron cluster?

Dear Real Anime Hero,

Indeed they do! Under the purview of the United States military, the G.I. Joe Rescue Corps worked tirelessly to combat the evil terrorist organization Cobra, who caused disaster from the shadows. By inoculating key individuals with their behavior-altering "Venom" serum, Cobra could engineer crises such as dam breaks, reactor meltdowns, bank robberies, and forest fires. When the call came in—"YO JOE!"—it would be up to Sergeant Duke and his emergency response team to fight back and save the day!

To challenge the dragon cult's mystic brainwashing and command over the elements, G.I. Joe was equipped with state-of-the-art high-tech vehicles—like Duke's "Attack Cruiser", a weaponised police car and peacekeeping machine. Joining him were the serious-minded pilot Scarlett, who flew the "Sky Hawk" helicopter; empathetic paramedic Lifeline, who drove the "Road Defender" ambulance; hot-headed firefighter Hot Zone, who drove the "Inferno Engine" firetruck; and boisterous construction worker Heavy Duty, who operated the "Drill Bit" mining machine. Depending on the mission, they would sometimes be joined by laid-back coast guard Beach-Head, who used the "Wave Crusher" hovercraft, and stubborn engineer Steamhammer, who drove the "Silver Streak" train. With General Tomahawk's tech-savvy son, Vinnie, backing them up at Rescue Corps headquarters, they used teamwork and ingenuity to defend the free will of every citizen.

Most curiously, the confrontations fought between these iterations of G.I. Joe and Cobra are repeated in an entirely separate timeline, deep in the megaverse! There, it was not Sergeant Duke who fought Cobra, but rather Officer Morishita of the Shinsei Foundation who investigated and counteracted the machinations of the Black Dragon Empire. Events played out almost identically between these two timelines, but where Duke had utter conviction, Shun Morishita was gripped with doubt over whether the Black Dragon Empire's rituals truly held sway over the minds of men—or if it was simple human apathy and incompetence which precipitated these daily emergencies.

This version of events may already be known to you! They are recounted in Kinkyuutai Shinsaver, a Toei anime and accompanying toy series from the year 2000. In certain markets, pleased with the cost-effectiveness of importing Car Robots for western audiences as Robots in Disguise, Hasbro would then do the same for this series—adding their own iconography and references that might be more recognisable, along with two new toys designed from scratch to fit the more militarized concept: the "Night Raven" stealth jet piloted by Snake Eyes, and General Tomahawk's "Super Slugger" battle tank. The line was unpopular with existing fans in the US, as the gimmick-heavy vehicles and 2" figures with limited articulation did not scale nicely with their older toys, but it sold well with its target audience, and the vehicles' action features went on to inspire similar gimmicks in Transformers: Armada toys developed later that year.

Anyway, I can see why you might not at first draw the connection to the continent-spanning battles between Optimus Prime's Autobots and Megatron's Predacons, as these groups never directly interacted at the time. It was only many years later that hidden "Ask Vector Prime" text in Transformers: Animated: The AllSpark Almanac II would declare that both Transformers: Robots in Disguise and G.I. Joe: Rescue Corps, together with A.T.O.M. - Alpha Teens on Machines, all took place in the same universal stream, Viron 901.8 Alpha.

[madamshogunassassin]

[nscafe-firehose]

The Baroness (#13) directs the 788 Cobra H.I.S.S. - High Speed Sentry to fire on Gung-Ho, Recondo and Beach Head... the Joe's are fighting back!

[gijoe-forever]

[renaultphile]

Ensan Case missing in action 🙁

So, I have finished Beach Head, the second and, as far as we know, last book by Ensan Case (here writing as C.E. Case), published in 1983.  I think it’s fair to say the book is not quite as perfectly formed as Wingmen.  But it is far more ambitious in scope.  He may not have been the first to write about the WWII US/Japan conflict from both perspectives, but he does it convincingly, and constructs the whole book around that dual perspective, personally and politically. 

It’s not an easy read.  But more than ever, there is something about the way Case writes that is so compelling.  The action is powerfully written, and the spikiness, the grittiness of the characters, even the unlikeable ones, are exciting to read, with even the briefest of cameos pinging off the page.  I do like Carl Randall very much, and his journey is beautifully written.  The hack journalist who got his job through nepotism, but finally finds the words….

As if to deliver a final twist of the knife, this book even features a sub-plot involving a manuscript that failed to be published. You are breaking my heart......

But I am just grateful to have read these two wonderful books.  And to @alovelywaytospendanevening for introducing me to this writer, whose qualities I can’t quite put my finger on…….

[supermaurice]

Newest GI Joe additions!

[thevondoom62]

Shadow Tracker's on the hunt

[shadows-on-the-sky]

Ebook download:

Wingmen: Link 1 or Link 2

Beach Head: Link 1 or Link 2

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Both Wingmen and Beach Head are also available at the Internet Archive.