Combat! (1966)
Combat!, a one-hour WWII drama series on television, followed a frontline American infantry squad as they battled their way across Europe. With mud-splattered realism, the show offered ... See full summary »
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Episode 1 - The Bridge at Chalons
Release Date: 17 Sep. 1963The squad faces elimination by Heer troops and even worse, an ultra-caustic demo expert who refuses to let Saunders guide their sortie behind German lines to destroy a bridge. The 2 battling Sergeants trade icy glares, and contrary orders, while the infantry try everything to avoid combat with Nazis because the dog-faces must put eliminating the bridge above all else. The explosives noncom's unending contempt bruises even the calloused egos of Saunders' combat vets. Which explodes first - the bridge or the mission ?
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Episode 2 - Bridgehead
Release Date: 24 Sep. 1963The Squad is ordered to take and hold a strategic bridge. The bridge however is near an abandoned house that a squad of Germans have sought refuge in. The Germans are armed with an anti tank weapon and take out the American tank. The only thing left for Saunders and the men to do is a frontal assault on the house...under heavy enemy fire. Morale for this particular mission is low and the men question whether this bridge is worth the risk.
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Episode 3 - Masquerade
Release Date: 1 Oct. 1963A jeep pulls up alongside Sunders and the squad while they are trudging up a road on foot. In the jeep is a German Colonel who is a prisoner, the two soldiers with him (a Lieutenant and a Corporal) are taking him to battalion for interrogation but need directions. But this is all a ruse and the men are Germans masquerading as Americans. When the jeep is overturned and the Colonel is wounded they are forced to go with Saunders and wait for an ambulance. Saunders begins to suspect the two but can he convince Hanley.
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Episode 4 - The Long Way Home: Part 1
Release Date: 8 Oct. 1963Sgt. Saunder's squad is captured and placed in a temporary stockade, where they are interrogated by a cruel SS officer.
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Episode 5 - The Long Way Home: Part 2
Release Date: 15 Oct. 1963Still interred in a German POW camp, Sgt. Saunders and his squad must find a way to escape before they are all killed.
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Episode 6 - The Wounded Don't Cry
Release Date: 22 Oct. 1963The squad finds a German field hospital in a French village. Sgt. Saunders and a German soldier must travel together to get a truckload of plasma, but they have an uneasy alliance with each other.
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Episode 7 - Doughboy
Release Date: 29 Oct. 1963While on patrol in the woods, Sgt. Saunders is taken prisoner by a slightly insane American soldier in a WWI uniform. He believes he is still fighting the First World War, and that Saunders is a German soldier.
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Episode 8 - Glow Against the Sky
Release Date: 5 Nov. 1963Sgt. Saunders and his squad find themselves trapped in a French village as the Germans sweep through and capture the town. The squad seeks refuge in a cellar as the Germans search each building and cottage. With Nelson seriously wounded and in need of immediate help, he is delirious and screaming. Sgt. Saunders leaves him in the street in hopes the Germans will take care of him. A fanatical German Captain is bent on making Nelson reveal the whereabouts of the remainder of the squad, as Saunders must somehow free Nelson and escape with his men.
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Episode 9 - The Little Jewel
Release Date: 12 Nov. 1963Saunders' squad encounters a starving French boy gobbling rotted food in a bombed-out village. As PFC Caje doles K-rations to the boy Bijou (which means Little Jewel), the orphan swipes Caje's wallet, and claiming he found it, asks for a reward of chocolate from the Cajun soldier. While the squad races to bomb an oil depot, the cynical Kirby suspects the Little Jewel is following along to trade the infantry's attack plan to Heer troopers. Is Bijou an innocent child lost in war-torn France, or a Nazi informer ?
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Episode 10 - A Distant Drum
Release Date: 19 Nov. 1963A wounded Lt. Hanley is pursued by a squad of Germans, and takes refuge in a French farmhouse at great peril to the mother and daughter living there.
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Episode 11 - Anatomy of a Patrol
Release Date: 26 Nov. 1963When a U.S. recon plane crashes, Sgt. Saunders' men race a German patrol to recover the pilot and his film. The Americans get there first, but carrying the wounded airman on a stretcher over heavily wooded hills slows them down. Then the Americans must cross a river to return to camp, while wily Nazi Sgt. Beckman counters Saunders' every trick.
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Episode 12 - Ambush
Release Date: 3 Dec. 1963Losing her family in the war, a young French woman becomes embittered against both armies. She witness the Germans setting up their artillery, and Sgt. Saunders must convince her to reveal the Germans' location.
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Episode 13 - Barrage
Release Date: 10 Dec. 1963The Americans have been trying to take a German held hill for the last four days. Five different pilots have given five different locations for German artillery...they have hit them all and come up empty. Hanley's orders are to get up the hill, locate the artillery positions and report back. The squad is exhausted but marches upward. They separate and Saunders is wounded in the leg taking on a machine gun nest. Weak from his wound Saunders crawls along until he falls into an abandoned mine and discovers he is not alone.
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Episode 14 - Thunder from the Hill
Release Date: 17 Dec. 1963Lt. Hanley and the squad are en route to meet a Capt. Boulange, the commander of the Free French Army in their sector. Their guide is a bear of a man named Massine, who has a small band of underground fighters traveling with him. Before Massine will lead Lt. Hanley to Capt. Boulange, he has an agenda of his own to accomplish, as he forces Hanley to help him steal some explosives from the a German supply depot. Hanley doesn't want to do it, but has no choice. They rig an entire mountainside with the explosives, as Massine intends on dropping the mountain on an ...
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Episode 15 - The Party
Release Date: 24 Dec. 1963This episode is strictly for laughs. The squad is left in a French village to wait for a ride to meet up with Saunders, and Kirby is placed in charge. Three good looking gals smile at our guys as they pass by, and Kirby, Caje, and Billy immediately want to come up with a plan to delay their ride so they can woo the three gals. Littlejohn wants no part in it and tells them, "It won't work." Three Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) sergeants already have dates with the gals, and our guys connive to beat the sergeants out of their dates. Their efforts do not quite ...
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Episode 16 - Gideon's Army
Release Date: 31 Dec. 1963Saunders' squad happens upon a Nazi concentration camp, occupied only by a few starving Poles. SS overseers killed most prisoners, then fled with the strongest inmates, but in their hurry to flee left behind these men, mostly from the same village. The squad has orders to move on, but few of the liberated are able to walk with them. The men's leader, their former mayor, begs Saunders to stay and help, while their former kapo, also a Pole, wants out with the squad, before the furious prisoners kill him.
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Episode 17 - The Pillbox
Release Date: 7 Jan. 1964While falling back under intense pressure from the attacking Germans, Lt. Hanley stops to help one of his men who is severely wounded. The Germans are advancing rapidly, so Hanley and his man take refuge in a vacant pillbox. As the rains begin to fall, Hanley attempts to head for his own lines, but is stopped when three German soldiers also enter the pillbox, making for a dramatic standoff. Hanley must make a decision to save his man and kill the Germans, or surrender himself.
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Episode 18 - The General and the Sergeant
Release Date: 14 Jan. 1964John Dehner and Vic Morrow have the title roles, but they play two characters from two wars nearly thirty years apart. Upon liberation of a small French village by King Company, French General Armand Bouchard, a veteran of WWI, arrives in the street and wants to take command of Saunders' squad. While Bouchard apparently suffers from some form of dementia and is the object of ridicule by some of the villagers, he obviously has personal pride and character. General Bouchard is ordered by Hanley to stay behind while Saunders' squad goes on a mission to set up an ...
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Episode 19 - The Eyes of the Hunter
Release Date: 21 Jan. 1964A soldier is assigned to guide Sgt. Saunder's squad to a hidden German artillery post, because he knows where they are located. Saunders is warned to keep a close watch on the soldier, but he doesn't know the reason why.
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Episode 20 - The Hostages
Release Date: 28 Jan. 1964While in their own rear area, Saunders, Doc, and Caje get the opportunity to get showers and clean clothes. While taking showers, they are taken hostage by a German Captain and a German NCO who have been trapped behind American lines and are trying to get back to their own lines. The German Captain holds Saunders and Caje hostage while he frees Doc to get an ambulance to transport them out of the village and back to German territory. Doc becomes the central character in this episode as he goes about getting an ambulance for which he has no authorization. The German ...
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Episode 21 - Mail Call
Release Date: 4 Feb. 1964Sgt. Saunders' squad blames his bad treatment of likable new member Trenton on his foul mood caused by a letter he has just received but actually Saunders believes Trenton is a coward who fakes injuries to avoid battle.
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Episode 22 - Counter-Punch
Release Date: 11 Feb. 1964Chaos ensues as the Germans make a breakthrough, and all rear-echelon troops are ordered to get their weapons. Never able to form up into any sort of fighting force, they become stragglers separated from any cohesive unit. Saunders and Caje are also separated from their unit, and they pick up several of the rear-echelon stragglers as they discover they are all now many miles deep in German territory. While the rear-echelon guys have no combat experience, they each contribute in their own way in their effort to get back to their own forces. During their trek back, ...
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Episode 23 - A Silent Cry
Release Date: 18 Feb. 1964Sgt. Saunders must deliver radios to the French underground, and a radio-expert named Sgt. Perkins goes with him. It's Perkin's first combat mission, and he is very anxious and displeased.
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Episode 24 - The Hunter
Release Date: 25 Feb. 1964Saunders and Kirby are searching the buildings of an abandoned French winery when they are spotted by two Germans who are using the tower for an observation post. A firefight ensues, and one of the Germans and Kirby are both badly wounded. The German officer, Heismann, snatches Kirby and takes him into the tower building. The wounded German attacks Saunders with a knife, but Saunders finishes him. Saunders has seen the Germans are setting up a large artillery position nearby, and Heismann uses the wounded Kirby to convince Saunders to surrender before he can report ...
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Episode 25 - What Are the Bugles Blowin' For?: Part 1
Release Date: 3 Mar. 1964A British unit holding a depot doesn't know that Allied units around them are retreating from a Nazi offensive, because the Brits' radio is broken. Sgt. Saunders' squad can't join the pullback, because Lt. Hanley orders Saunders' crew to march to the railhead in France, to let the Brits know they are being surrounded.
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Episode 26 - What Are the Bugles Blowin' For?: Part 2
Release Date: 10 Mar. 1964A British captain refuses Allied orders to retreat, delivered by Sgt. Saunders. Instead, Capt. Johns commands Sgt. Saunders' battle-fatigued U.S. squad to dig in at the besieged railhead and help repulse a German advance. Saunders fears it's suicide for all, but the imperial Capt. Johns, a Sandowner and son of a general, insists they can hold the depot against a Nazi offensive.
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Episode 27 - Weep No More
Release Date: 17 Mar. 1964Squad members, lead by Hanley, run into a young women. She is, however, mentally scarred, and seeks to return to where she feels safe. She runs back there, and when Hanley goes to get her he finds out the place in now in German hands.
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Episode 28 - The Short Day of Private Putnam
Release Date: 24 Mar. 1964A new squad member is aggressive and naive - because he's really only 15. Orville Putnam's actual age is discovered by a knowing French bartender he puts his unsubtle moves on, to impress his fellow infantrymen. Orville swears Fauvette to secrecy, but then the squad is ordered to recon a treacherous hill whose treetops are stuffed with German snipers. Sgt. Saunders understands that Orville is covering up for his lack of combat experience, but doesn't know the whole truth about the orphaned teen.
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Episode 29 - Rescue
Release Date: 31 Mar. 1964This episode is all Lt. Hanley and a bunch of twists along the way. Concussed during an artillery barrage and separated from his platoon, Hanley starts to come out of his daze only to find he is being taken prisoner by an SS soldier. The first twist is when the SS soldier is shot by another SS soldier who frees Hanley. Then we learn the second SS soldier is really a GI corporal who just escaped from a holding area, but his wounded Colonel is still being held by the Germans and has information valuable to the Germans. As Hanley's head clears, he decides they must ...
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Episode 30 - Command
Release Date: 7 Apr. 1964A wounded Hanley is replaced in the field by Lieutenant Douglas ('Joseph Campanella'), who proves to be surly and opinionated even by Saunders' standards.
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Episode 31 - Infant of Prague
Release Date: 14 Apr. 1964The squad discovers a group of nuns in a convent, and they travel together through enemy territory. Nearly surrounded by Germans, Lt. Hanley must call in artillery, placing them in great danger.
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Episode 32 - The Glory Among Men
Release Date: 21 Apr. 1964A bitter, antagonistic replacement whom none of Saunders' men can stand (with good reason) is wounded and pinned down by German snipers...who use him to try and lure his fellow Americans into their ambush.