McGinnis Nine-Nine: “The Valiant Strain”

Part of a celebration of Robert McGinnis’ XCIXth birthday.



The Valiant Strain, by Kenneth E. Shiflet (Dell, 1959).

You might not be surprised to learn, after appreciating the cavalry lineup featured in this Robert McGinnis cover, that author Kenneth E. Shiflet served much of his life in the U.S. military. Born in western New York state in 1918, he went on to become a signal corps communications officer during World War II. He was stationed variously in Africa, Sicily, and Italy, “and helped develop mobile communications units used during the invasion of Italy,” according to his obituary in The Washington Post. Subsequently, Shiflet assisted signal corps in Germany and Ecuador. During the late 1960s, he was a member of the staff of General William Westmoreland, who was then the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army.

Shiflet started writing while he was still in uniform. In the aftermath of World War II, he apparently took first-place honors in an Army-sponsored short-story competition. He made his first magazine fiction sale to Esquire, his tale (“Donna”) reaching print in 1951. After he retired from the military with the rank of colonel, in 1972, he joined the Congressional Schools (now “School”) of Virginia in Falls Church, and by the time of his death half a dozen years later, at age 60, had risen to the chairmanship of that institution’s English department.

The Valiant Strain was the first of two historical novels penned by Shiflet. I don’t a copy of this work, nor do I know much about the story it contains, having not found a single review online. So I am left to rely on the back-cover text—which is really just a longer version of the teaser on its front—for even the most modest understanding of its plot: “A story as big and rugged as the Oregon Territory in 1855 … A story of a long Dragoon company fighting for a future it might never see, and of a shavetail lieutenant who had nothing in common with his men, except the valiant strain the brought them to their final glory.”

Both that 47-year-old Post obit and Shiflet’s Find a Grave page confidently state The Valiant Strain “was made into a movie by MGM,” but I have yet to find any corroborative evidence.

Shiflet’s only other novel, The Convenient Coward, was released in hardcover by Harrisburg, Pennsylvania-based Stackpole Books back in 1961. Its jacket flap copy describes it as “a fictionalized biography based on the life of Marcus A. Reno, who commanded the battalion of the 7th Cavalry that survived the Custer Massacre [of 1876].”