During this long hot summer, I have been watching 1-2 episodes of this 60's tv show daily. My father and I eagerly looked forward to this show when it was running on Tuesday nights.
The acting, story lines, and direction have held up extremely well over the years and they had some outstanding guest Redirect Notice

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Witzell
"The dude abides".

Great show, but a tragic ending for the main star, Vic Morrow.

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So many S&W's, so few funds!!

I used to watch it with my Mattel Tommy Gun handy. See the bad guys coming and "brrrrrrrrriiiiiipp!"

I used to watch it, but it wasn't on my "never miss an episode" list. As I remember, it seemed that there wasn't much difference between episodes. Mainly just killing Germans.

Loved it as a kid, my dad came here from Germany in 1952 and was in the Wehrmacht, he didn't care for it too much but he'd let me watch it. Hogan's Heroes was strictly VERBOTEN.

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LIVE FROM THE DAWGHOUSE

Sgt. Saunders(Vic Morrow) with his Thompson was my favorite.

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S&W Accumulator

Back story on Morrow and his Thompson:

When the show was developing, Morrow personally chose the Thompson. However, his costar Rick Jason wisely picked the .30 carbine.

Morrow soon learned the Thompson was heavy, very heavy for him while doing the long hours of filming.

The prop department made for Morrow a lightweight wooden Thompson for his running, jumping action shots and the real Thompson was used for close-ups and Morrow's shooting of it.

Costar Rick Jason was more familiar with weapons and he knew his carbine would kill Germans just as effectively because that's the way the script read.

I think Rat Patrol is a close second.

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"The Dude abides"

In the early 50's you could buy a kit to make a wooden Thompson, they were very realistic. I wonder if there is some connection to the one made for the series?

I liked Jason better, because he was more like me. Morrow/Saunders was a little rougher around the edges.

I think Jason had the .30 carbine because it was standard for officers, and he was a Lt. Saunders was a Sgt. Of course, Maj. Gen. James Gavin was an officer, and he carried a Garand. Must have wanted to kill who he shot. That little carbine gave mixed results. Gavin may have also figured that a watching sniper might not peg him as a senior officer if he was lugging a rifle. And he was fighting for real, not on TV.

I did enjoy, Combat as a kid. It was one of my favorite shows then.

Great series for sure. It's been said that color ":killed" COMBAT. Too many favorite episodes to really pick but--I really liked the ones with Shecky Green in them--especially the one where he was mistaken for a Colonel (played by:Keenan Wynn-who was Colonel Clyde) when he was found by the Germans after he was in an accident. I forget the title of that early season 1 episode but--nobody died and it was a hilarious episode.

...here's the wooden Thompson...

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A Country Boy Can Survive

I've got several full seasons of Combat! on DVD that my youngest son and I would watch during winter when he was younger. I thought they were pretty good and I don't see anything wrong with the color episodes, but I seem to like the B&W ones better.

I used to remember watching Rat Patrol as a kid and it was one of my favorite shows. I picked up season 1 recently and was disappointed at how poor the show was, it just wasn't that good. I barely made it through all the episodes and don't plan on buying season 2.

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- Change it back -

On the: Rat Patrol. I too had picked up the series in the last decade--and absolutely felt cheated. IMO--the best episodes were 2-parters. IF that show had originally been an hour? it wouls have been a GREAT show.

Liked the Cajun guy in Combat. Sgt Saunders was always having him check out spots for Germans. Remember him saying "check it out Caj". Also neat to have him interpret French with the locals. Great show.

My old Ohio home town used to always have a big Labor Day parade. Once (I think in 1967 or 1968) Rick Jason was the parade Grand Marshall. He was in his "Combat" uniform and helmet with a carbine and riding in a Jeep. Some guy dressed up like a soldier was driving. I don't know who the driver was, maybe someone local. I have a picture of that which I took hidden away somewhere, as I ran across it several years ago.

FYI, you can watch the shows on YouTube... Checked it out last night after reading this thread.

Combat and Rat Patrol were watched weekly by us. My Dad sat mesmerized reliving his WW2 experience. Dad loved the Willys, I developed Willys love too. I have watched a few combat on youtube but not rat patrol.

Kirby was my boy, wise-crackin' smart *** humpin' that beautiful BAR!!

I watched Combat and 12 O'clock high every week when they were first-run on television. If you watched a lot of episodes, you would see the same German soldiers get killed just about every week!

I can't seem to find 12 O'clock High anywhere.


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12 O'clock High was better when Robert Stack was the lead character. The studio was so cheap that, filming the episode his character got killed in, they wouldn't pay him to appear in it and they just had some anonymous guy in the uniform keel over pretending to be Stack and never showed Stack's face during the episode.

The show ran out of WWII B-17 combat footage pretty quickly and you saw the same stuff over and over again, which, to a 12 year old, was still pretty exciting stuff.

MAD Magazine did an absolutely hilarious send-up of 12 O'clock High, I think they called it 12 O'Cracked High or something. So funny I still remember a lot of it 45 years later.

Why is Sgt. Saunder, USA, wearing a Camy helmet cover? Thouht only Marines wore those after '42 in the PTO.

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"Your other right........."

Fordson,

Camo was used on a limited basis in Europe. U.S. shunned camo, I believe, because it was too much like what the German soldiers already were wearing.

Interesting story about uniforms told by a German paratrooper.
The German paratroopers, part of the Luftwaffe, wore a helmet which could easily be mistaken for the American one at a distance. For that reason, the German veteran said at least one time the Americans thought the German paratroopers were American. And the German paratroopers definitely wore camo.

My Dad fought in the Pacific Theater in and around New Guinea. He hated the Thompson because it was so heavy. He was fighting near the equator and it was very hot and humid. Anything they could do to lighten their load they would do it.

He traded his Thompson for a .30 Carbine. Whenever the higher-ups would discover this, they would tell him to get another Thompson. He would keep it around until it was time for him to go on patrol and then he would trade it again.

Combat! was one of the few war shows my Dad liked. Maybe because he didn't fight the Germans and so the show didn't give him nightmares.

Saunders supposedly got it from his brother-who was a Marine.

Braddock, was my favorite while he was on the show: And this episode is my over-all favorite of the series:


As Col. Clyde (what the Germans thought anyway)

There are many episodes of 12 O'Clock High on YouTube. I watched a few just a couple of weeks ago.

The story I heard about Saunders and the camo helmet cover was it was to make him easier to spot from a distance in the scenes. Of course he was the only one carrying a Thompson so I don't know how valid that theory was.

My Dad watched a couple Combat episodes with me. He spent time in the ETO as Master Sargent. He'd watch the show and say "those guys are lucky they're fighting the "stupid" Germans, the ones I met were a lot smarter."

I was watching an episode and he was slogging waist deep through a river and I got a flashback of a helicopter hitting the water.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

Just saw "Caje" in an episode of: Custer--as a 7th Cav scout.

It's nice to know that I am not the only former kid who spent part of his youth watching COMBAT! It had as much of an influence on me and my nere-do-well pals as anything on TV. It was the subject of many animated arguments in the back woods where the show's fine points and tactics would be discussed in great detail among us 10 year old military experts.

Rick Jason was utterly convincing as the Lt. It seemed that he was always trying to get Checkmate King 2 on the radio and never could. It is sad to know that Jason committed suicide in 2000.

One thing that always stood out for me what the theme song and the opening and closing credits. Properly martial. The simulated "artillery" fire heard against the backdrop of the stylized M1 bayonets and Vic Morrow's helmet was very clever. I can hum it to this day.




For those who revere the old COMBAT! series there is a website devoted to it with lots of trivia and details on the cast, crew and writers. You can find it here: Combat TV Series

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Charlie Flick
SWCA 729 HF 215

there was a very similar show on another network. It didn't last. Was it the Gallant Men? I think I liked it better then

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A Country Boy Can Survive

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A Country Boy Can Survive

Your Dad was right.

My Dad told me he really respected the German military and their soldiers, very smart folks. they were in the war to win and he said at that time they all believed in what they were doing.

The ruination of the German Military were the leaders at the top. I recently read that Hitler had standing orders to not be awaken until 10 or 11 AM. When D-Day started we had a 6 hour start on Adolph.

Those bayonets always bugged me. True, some were shortened from the longer WWI style, and the points were ground that way. But the blades here are upside down!

Artists often depict blades upside down, and some idiot who designed a manual describing the M-3 fighting knife couldn't figure out when it was right side up! The upper quillon is the one bent forward, to allow advanced thumb placement on the guard.

I saw one VHS video box in a shop that depicted a Buck Model 120 with the blade inverted in the handle, too. The Model 120 is a Hollywood favorite, BTW, appearing in a number of movies and TV shows, most notably perhaps, the Scream series.

Both my brother and I, wearing our green fatigues and Rat Patrol Goggles with Mattel Tommy Gun

My Dad, who fought in ETO 1st as infantry, then as Sgt crew chief for an anti-tank gun, normally would not watch COMBAT! His issue (other than a lot of bad memories) was that almost exclusively featured patrol action. He said that was not what it was really like, most action were battles that he said you could not even see what you were shooting at. Imagine that ... a lack of realism in TV!

But as a young kid, I lapped it up. Only quirk that eventually got me was seeing the same wash, gully, canyon, and trees that only grew in CA over and over again. They were not big on realistic location settings.