Favorite and Least Favorite "Combat!" Episode?

I can't name the title but my two favorites are 1) that big, mean-looking German officer/NCO who picked up a Garand and resolved to follow and pick off Saunder's entire squad one by one, and 2) that one guest starring Charles Bronson, in the role of a demolitions expert, who refused to blow up a bridge filled with priceless art objects.

The ones I don't like are "Gulliver" wherein Little John was captured by vagrant French kids, and that one with a young French nurse who played with Saunders on a carousel. I hated the ending.

Other ones I kinda liked:
1. that poker game and Kirby's plan to put up a bowling alley when he get's home
2. that German bomb expert who booby trapped an entire town and he and Hanley tried to deactivate them one by one
3. the French resistance fighters whose leader was played by Ricardo Montalban, and that a-hole captured German who said to Ricardo's character, "Why are you staring at me, animal?"
4. the German officer who told a GI who chickened out in battle, "It's not the fear that makes you a coward, it is the lie that does."
5. the secretive citizens of the town Bonaire.

 

My favorite was where Saunders and Tom Skerritt were stuck behind the lines, Skerritt ran out on him and Saunders grabbed a German uniform to get away. This was one of the color episodes. Also, the Germans gave Saunders morphine, and we saw from his point of view through a fish-eye lens.

I didn't like the "Gulliver" one either.

 

"Gulliver" was one of the episodes directed by Vic Morrow. Didn't like the storyline, but thought the camera work was good.
No. 2 was Robert Duvall, I think. The one with the citizens trying to hide their wine stash was priceless.
Kirby's poker game was a good one, and that one with the French girl getting killed at the end was brutal by '60s standards.
The ones I hated:
The one in series 5 where Vic Morrow is on leave and meets a schoolteacher, who later gets killed in an air raid. Don't know where the military advisers were when wardrobe was kitting him out.
One where Hanley gets sent to London, handpicked for a secret mission and parachuted behind Jerry lines. Corny is the word.
Any one with "British" troops in it. Don't know what I hate more; the accents, or their attempts at wearing the uniforms.
The Mickey Rooney one in series two, where he's a truck driver. It's one of two episodes set in the winter of '44, snow and everything...and then every episode afterwards is back to the Summer of '44. That and the fact that after five seasons, they never even made it as far as the Belgian border.

 

like:
the three misfits: a cook, a ballet dancer, and an aspiring dj.
the signals man with his homing pigeons. remember white wing?
the british bomb expert who was trying to defuse an unexploded bomb.
"jonah"
that lying sergeant who tells everyone he used to work in their home town. it was never clear to me why he did that. was it to familiarize with the soldiers?

dislike:
one of the weirdest episodes was the one wherein they were laying out a telephone line. they couldn't have laid it more than a couple miles and they were thick with enemy soldiers. WTF?!
that kid who looked like saunder's kid brother. was it really his brother?
any episode showing a tank getting knocked out by a bazooka. it shaped my notion of anti-tank warfare which, it seems, was largely illusory.

 

My favorite is the one where (Kirby?) is trapped in a French farmhouse during a blizzard with Claudine Longet. They make camo cloaks out of white bed sheets and sneak back through the lines. I must have been approaching puberty because all I can remember is Claudine Longet, because this episode featured Claudine Longet playing a beautiful young French woman who closely resembled Claudine Longet. Good casting there. There were also other characters aside from Claudine Longet, but mostly I remember Claudine Longet. Claudine Longet.

One thing that is very noticeable in this series is that the initial seasons had much better writing. They were contracting with established fiction writers and some of those scripts are pretty good. Later, they put together a team of Hollywood hacks and the stories suffered. Still watchable, but not as good as the early seasons. Another interesting aspect of those early seasons is that the German characters seemed to have better (more realistic) outfits and weapons. Some of the Germans would have G43 rifles, and the uniforms had a certain beaten quality consistent with soldiers in combat - no doubt, actual used uniforms picked up from some military surplus outlet. In later seasons the G43s disappeared and you'd just have a squad of guys carrying K98s led by one evil guy with an MP40, and all of them in new Hollywood reproduction uniforms.

 

Yes, the German uniforms always looked brown in the colour episodes, probably due to the amount of washing/wearing they'd had.

 

Golly, this IS from a long time ago! I can remember two episodes I liked. The first is one when Saunders tries to get back behind his own lines and puts on a German uniform and is picked up by the Germans, pretends to be shell-shocked and is befriended by a German NCO. In the end the German sergeant is killed and Saunders grieves because he saw a lot of himself in that German NCO. The second was about the platoon having to attack two pillboxes and take horrible casualties in the process.

I also remember a lot of BS. Like when Saunder's squad is advancing down this little road. A German squad with a MG 42, G43 and MP 40s ambush them at about 100yds. The Germans fire a gazillion rounds and hit, like, two americans, the rest of who proceed to kill the all the krauts without another casualty. Another episode where a replacement turns out to be way under age. Before they can return to their lines they get pinned down by a bunch of snipers in the trees (in Hollywood all snipers shoot from trees). The kid saves their bacon because he's a biology nut and can pick out the mistakes in their camo and while the snipers keep missing with their scope-sighted K-98s--at about 50 yards or less, Saunders gets them all with his trusty Thompson. Lots of reality there, right?

 

i missed that one with saunders behind enemy lines (it was usually hanley.) the biology whiz, i recall. they were the first german soldiers in the series who weren't wearing parade dress (discounting those in civies.) which brings one question to those who watched the series as kids: were you enamoured at the difference in uniform between the GI's and the wehrmacht?

 

My favorite episode was called "Bridgehead" which aired Season 2 Episode 2...the mission for the 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, especially by one Pvt. Mick Hellar played by Nick Adams. As a former jazz drummer, he could care less about his comrades and this stupid mission...as he says "So if you wanna follow your sergeant until your boots fall off..be my guest...it's all a matter of direction. You stick your neck into a lion's mouth and you come up without a head. Me, I'm a south-bound fellow in a north-bound world."

 

....The Hell Machine ---kind of wierd if you ask me
The Hell Machine

 

Tanks a lot bronk7..nice to see Gorshin other than the Riddler.

 

It was Beau Bridges. I recall the scene well. A shot pings off a rock. Bridges points into a tree. Saunders fires a burst and a German falls out. Repeat. The third time, a German jumps from a tree at the burst. Saunders chases him a couple steps and cuts him down with a burst from the Tommy gun.

 

The only thing I remember about that series is that Vic Morrow was in it, if I am not mistaken. Guess I was not the fan that some here were.

 

.....roger that..he was in a movie called Goliath Awaits and I was very impressed by him..he played his role very well
..the theme of the movie was ''goofy'' [ sunken ship under water for years with most of the people still alive ] ....but I thought the movie was entertaining

 

Have to say my favorite character of the show was PFC Kirby played by Jack Hogan ...besides griping most of the time, or picking out cooties under his fatigues, he looked cool firing that BAR left-handed..which was pretty accurate as those dumb krauts would usually jump up and he mowed them down like bowling pins.

 

Another great episode was "Hills are for Heroes", which was in two-parts and directed by Vic Morrow. Shows the futility of combat without any artillery or air support but simply ordered to take out some machine gun bunkers with the common foot soldier and guts. The bodies pile up fast after each assault, while the Sarge gets severely wounded in the first try...could of been made into a movie in my opinion.