Combat!
1962
📺 5 Seasons
🎬 152 Episodes
📅 Ended
🌐 EN
⏱️ 60 min/episode
War & PoliticsDrama
Combat! is an American television program that originally aired on ABC from 1962 until 1967. The show covered the grim lives of a squad of American soldiers fighting the Germans in France during World War II. The program starred Rick Jason as platoon leader Second Lieutenant Gil Hanley and Vic Morrow as Sergeant "Chip" Saunders.
Seasons
Season 1
Saunders and his squad, "White Rook", go in to find out what happened to another squad, "Black Rook" that went silent while on a patrol to find the location of a German big gun. Saunders finds the missing squad in a dye factory and all are dead. While searching the dye factory for Germans, they find a hidden German deserter. Saunders must decide if the prisoner lives or dies when the squad make their escape.
Season 2
Lee Marvin guest stars as a sergeant in command of a small demolition team that Saunders and his squad is ordered to take behind German lines to destroy a bridge. Lee Marvin does not believe the squad is large enough to handle the job of getting him to the bridge and back alive. He requests a platoon but is refused by Lieutenant Hanley. Marvin submits but has a huge chip on his shoulder due to a close friend being killed while on a similar mission. He has no confidence in Saunders or his men to get the job done and frequently ridicules them during the mission.
Season 3
An embittered deserter is bribed into Saundes' squad across the mountains. They are captured by Germans and left to freeze, but manage a daring escape.
Season 4
Saunders' latest green replacements are a boxer and his cocky fight manager, Murphy, who wants to run both the war and Saunders.
Season 5
After their tank is distorted Saunders decide to use a German gun to blow up a German bunker. They have to push the gun to the target. When things start going wrong the men start believing the gun a jinx.
Cast
User Reviews
My dad used to talk about this when I was a kid... well... his entire life. And I can relate. He sounded a lot like I probably sound when I still talk about the A-Team:
"And then, and then Mr. T did this and.... ahhhh... it was awesome."
"How old are you again?"
"40."
Anyway, hearing about that all my life, when I finally got to watch it, Thank you MeTV, I felt obligated to take the opportunity. After all, Combat! And All in the Family were the only television shows I ever heard my father reference.
And.... WOW.
It humanizes. The Nazi soldiers are just, well, soldiers. They totally ignored the habit of making them characterless monsters and instead just made them soldiers who may or may not be political.
That is pretty amazing right there. That sort of says "Yeah, we are going to be focused on writing and telling compelling stories more than anything else," and of course, it still manages to keep the O. Henry style moral twists that came with the era despite not making a statement of absolute evil.
It makes for a really smart show.
January 11, 2023
Network
ABC
Keywords
world war iius armyu.s. soldiermilitary1940soccupied france (1940-44)