I grew up watching Combat!. So much had it been a part of my youth that I knew the names Sgt. Saunders, Lt. Hanley, Kirby, Littlejohn and Caje, and could picture them in my mind, long after I had forgotten most of the stories I had seen. They had made nearly as much impression on me as my own family; their teamwork, leadership and unshakable sense of honor and fair play became priceless examples to follow.
Around Christmastime last year I rediscovered the series on the Encore Action Channel, just after becoming a DirecTV subscriber.
What incredible serendipity! Only weeks before I had been thinking about Combat! and the characters that were so familiar to me as a boy. When I saw the series on the listings I thought, "Maybe I'll tape it and see if it was really as good as I remember it. Can my cloudy kid's memory have inflated its quality, the way our reminiscences often do to the pleasant times of our youth?" I would find out.
I played back an episode "Any Second Now," where Lt. Hanley was trapped in a bomb-damaged church, next to the very unexploded bomb that cratered the interior of the sanctuary. His only hope for release lay in the unsteady hand of a British bomb defuser who had lost his nerve. While this episode turned out to be far from the best Combat! episode filmed, it was good enough to eclipse most of the finest episodes of television dramas of the last 30+ years. I was so impressed with my re-introduction to this WWII drama that I had to share it with my wife. She, as I, had become hooked.
Over the last three months we have seen nearly every episode of this classic series. We are left with many impressions, among them the sad thought of what an immense artistic talent was lost when Vic Morrow met his untimely death. His direction of several Combat! episodes shows as much cinematic vision as three Spielbergs put together. The two-part Combat story "Hills are for Heroes," which Morrow directed, is more solid and inspired than even most theatrical movies of the last three decades.
That said, "Hills are for Heroes" has to be the finest two hours ever written (by Gene L. Coon) and filmed for television. This is not hyperbole. I challenge anyone who has seen it to confess to me that they were NOT totally emotionally drained after sitting through it. The performances of both the regulars and the guest stars are far more gripping and immediate than conventional TV performances of the day, or even today. Even better than most performances in theatrical movies, as well.
(A special note must go to the performance of Jack Hogan as the emotionally harried Private William G. Kirby, who truly let us, the audience, feel what it was like to be ordered to take a hill that you knew only God and His angels could take.)
There are dozens of Combat! episodes that deserve status nearly as high on my list as "Hills are for Heroes," but I could ramble even further if I try to name them here. Better to see the show for yourself. No show captured the human side of World War II the way Combat! did.
I encourage anyone who has not yet seen this superb classic war drama to give it a try. You WILL be hooked. And you will feel that, for a brief time, you really were a member of King Company's heroic Second Platoon, serving under Lt. Hanley and Sgt. Saunders, driving the Germans from occupied France in the summer and fall of 1944.
As of this writing, you can see two episodes back-to-back per weekday on the Encore Action Channel, noon Eastern (USA), 9:00 a.m. Pacific (USA).
