Another moving episode .Every episode gives a message. Every episode is a gem of story telling portraying the human experience.Vic Morrow your name lives on.God bless you in heaven!
Agree Combat is the best WW 2 series ever made, love the action, and the history. Combat has been shown in Australia many time. Never get tired of the action
Michel Petit played the kid Bijou, very good child actor along the lines of Kurt Russell. Beverly Hillbilly fans may remember him as Jethro's friend season 1 Armstrong Dueser (little Duesey). Very impressive to be that young and speak 3 languages in one episode.
Thank you for posting the best show ever, Combat, power packed with life lessons and illustrated sermons to inspire us on ward and to not give up, in these perilous times.
I began watching Combat around 1963-64, and still find it the best war series I've ever seen. Seen lots of war movies, but my favorite is and always has been Combat. Nothing to compare.
L.A. Wood COMBAT! is the greatest war show ever made, including the movies. Every aspect from acting to directing is great! I watched it religiously when I was a kid & it's even better now. I'll never forget, my Dad got me a pair of those 2-strap boots like the squad wears when I was 8 yrs old. I finally got the 1 other thing I always wanted after I grew up; an M1 Garand. I sure wish I could get another pair of those boots............
@@exjazzer I agree, I was 10. We used to go play "war" in the fields around our apartment. Everyone wanted to be Saunders... no one wanted to be Little John!
I''m with you there, however I was 7-8 and when ever they showed the opening and they showed the guns at the beginning, all my brothers and I would say GUNS!!! Great memory!
This is was the first episode I seen as a 5 yr.old kid when I turned on the TV and distinctly remembered !! After that I started watching... especially when it was in color ! That was a big deal back then ! I loved Cage (my favorite) and nobody could play Sgt. Saunders better than Vic Morrow !!
My uncle grew up waching these and he said not only did they show the horrors of war they also showed the humain side to a lesson to be learnd in every episode
Watching COMBAT was my motivation to take German language classes during all three years of High School in Davenport IOWA (1967-1970) a skill set that served me well during my cold war tour of duty in Nuremberg [1976-1979]
3 years German in high school 69-71, then Ft Hoodlum 72-74, FRG 74-75. Thanks to my excellent German teacher I could pass for Comrade if I borrowed some euro-clothing from my landlord. That was important in the RossMarkt because Comrade"s price was WAY better than the eye-poking GIs got.
When I was a kid watching Combat!, it was the episodes with the French kids that always got to me. Was very hard for me as a kid to fathom what it would be really like to be in the middle of a war when one loses their parents, siblings, grandparents or any other family members. No one there for you. Even today with the current wars going on in our world the children really suffer. I do remember watching this episode, parts of it. Just have to wait and see how it ends. That I do not remember.
Children are the most innocent ones in any war locations. They have no political affiliation and like us are totally dependent on their families. So many children and other innocents suffering around the world …
There are comments saying the series ran 5 years, but the battle for France only lasted about 4 months. Ok, but remember each episode was about 50 minutes, and usually covered about one - two days. Also, this one squad represented countless others, it should have run 20 years, except a helicopter crashed.
This must be the antithesis to that ending scene of The Green Beret when the orphaned kid was looking for Spec. Peterson in the helicopters before John Wayne's character took the boy in. former GI here, love both Combat! and The Green Beret BTW.
calforman . I agree . Look out for Adler21 , he is another troll who has posted snide remarks on these episodes . I've been in the Army and I found it a character building experience , even though it was only as a volunteer during National Military Service . I also watch WW2 documentaries and War is sheer carnage and a senseless waste of lives , but this series is very entertaining and it is stupid of people to post ridiculously negative comments .
I got that name wrong I think from memory it is adlen21 , these episodes are very entertaining and there are some good moral messages in them . I was born only five years after the end of WW 2 and we grew up reading all those War comics from Fleet St. in the U.K. i.e. " Commando " , Battler Briton " " Spy 13 " etc for the price of one shilling and threepence here in New Zealand . They are still on sale in Book shops , but they are much more expensive to buy these days . War Picture Library were the distributors .
At 21:03, what other show ever have you seen that lines up the characters, keeps them all visible, all doing something, yet the focus is still on the speaker. I love the directing and cinematography of this show! Always something new and interesting.
When I was young living in Los Angles California there was a large fire in town destroying several buildings. The Local paper ran and article about the weekly show Combat! was moving into the location within a week to start filming another episode before the building cleanup would start. It was my favorite TV show at the time so I read the article a couple of times.
Not necessarily. Talented writers intensely research, research, research -- to make it as real as possible. Similarly, the Emmy-Award winning writers of "M*A*S*H" 1) visited South Korea and 2) interviewed dozens of Korean War vets 'who were 'there.'" Look how closely to real life "Saving Private Ryan"'s graphic 20-minute opening was -- courtesy of a dynamite, validated script and director Steven Spielberg's meticulous research and preparation.
Say what you will about Kirby, but he saw through the kid faster then anyone else. I hope his character went on to become a school principal, or maybe a warden at juvenile correction.
You gotta remember that a little French kid in the Vichy portion of France wouldn't remember the "pre-German" France. He would see the Americans as bringing the war to the peaceful French countryside and would have no concept of being "liberated" by Americans. His allegiance would be either neutral or even pro German depending on who's bombs fell in his village. Playing "both sides" of the game would be perfectly natural and an important survival tool. Smart kid actually...
On the contrary. I know two elderly Dutch women (sisters) who grew up in a village of the Netherlands. The Germans were in their town for five years during WWII. The curfew was 8pm and you were shot if out after 8pm whether child or adult. Neighbors of the Jewish faith were taken overnight and never ever seen again. Germans took bicycle tires to prevent Dutch from using bikes to deliver information between towns. BUT, the Dutch cut pieces of their hoses and used in place of rubber tires. I asked them what they thought when they heard the Americans were coming to their town in May 1945. Their answer was, "We knew they were going to free us from the Germans, and the day the Americans rolled into one end of town with tanks, the Germans ran out the other end of town leaving their weapons and uniforms on the ground as they ran."
The Vichy regime governed the free zone, south of the demarcation line, until the end of '42. They had very little power in the Nazi occupied north, where the Combat series is set, post D-day. Despite Allied bombing, the allies were general welcomed as liberators.
Smart can get you killed. As an Infantry sergeant, an actual Sergeant Saunders, I would have had that kid bound, gagged and tied shoulders to knees facefirst to a tree, the second time after he was warned off from following. Kirby wasn't wrong. The kid WAS playing both sides. And please forgive my predudice. I have a daughter his age, already a victim of bullying by boys. To the point where it was the school's decision that my daughter had to be transferred out, not the boys. Loud, ignorant, dirty pigs, they are.
How to hold onto your humanity during combat is the stated aim of the Combat shows. I certainly did not know this when watching this with my father and family back at the top of times when the family was together. Sometimes my father would say something.
"izsafe1," And when Sanders handed him his 1911 A1 pistol with the remark, "Know how to use this?" Nelson answered in the affirmative. Yet when we see him holding the pistol, 'ready for action, he has the hammer is down -- not 'cocked and locked,' ready to fire in a tenth of a second.
Love all 3 of Vic's boys but Kirby is my favourite,but Vic always was my special and always will be.I just love him born on Feb 14th 1929 died on July 23 rd 1982 9years older than me
Normally the boy would be handed over to the Red Cross to take care of. In Normandy, my father entered a town (He was in the REME, General Horrocks XXX Corps, British Army) after a battle. Whilst there a boy approached him and kept pointing at my father's medical kit . My dad went with him to found his mother lying dead behind a garden wall. Not knowing what to do he just stood there. Eventually an officer took the boy away in a jeep and he was handed over to some Red Cross workers who took care of him. My father very rarely spoke about the war, he is dead now.
A fuel depot that large would have been vital for a 100mile sector. It's loss would have limited any armoured response & crippled all strategic defensive options. Lucky the krauts placed minimum value & resources into protection detail.
Richard Marchant listen asshole, this show is quite accurate, and people that watch it love any information they can get about these types of situations. We appreciate the extra information Scott gave us, so why don’t you shut the fuck up, idiot, and get a life.
I was 10 in '64 going to Catholic school so everyday religion. On Combat night I was told we have to go to church and I was so pissed I was going to miss combat. Well there was this traveling priest and he said tongues are for today and my mother said no they aren't and the Holy Spirit said 'yes they are' I'll never forget that.
If our Combat live free or die patriotic spirits are not in high gear soon, the Little Jewel shows how most of us will soon be living. And when it comes to dealing with the Nazis, we had better be as aware and combat keen as the Little Jewel was.
"wheelinthesky300," The kid was tipping off the Germans -- apparently NOT. We can envision Bijou got his precious, oh-so-necessary pair ofboots and lighter from the dead soldiers after the fire fight with Saunders' squad.
These young americans were afraid as the young boy, only they had the American army, the little kid had no one, but he sure was a little man by the time this episode was over! Americans must have seen this a lot, kids with no parents, I sure hope the red cross or the church got them through a terrible war.
joseph weaver Yeah right..... i have talked to people who were in Germany when it was defeated.... The red cross may have helped some, and church even fewer. Many starved to death, many died of diseases for want of medicine. Many fled. The ones I have spoken with were children and fled. THat's why they are alive today.
excelente serie Combate ese niño d la pelicula representa a los niños abandonados en las guerras , cmo esta pasando en Ucrania , cmo esta pasando en Afrika o en Siria
There's a channel called WW2 History Hunter by a German guy. He finds all sorts of stuff, including unexploded mines from WW2, so I'd say they're still cleaning up. It's been about 20 years ago since I read a story about tunnels dug during WW1 collapsing and causing problems for buildings constructed after that war.
I knew some guys stationed in Germany in the mid 1960's and said that you rarely saw any bomb damage at all. Even with 10 years, West Germany was thriving.
@@pep590 I was passing through Dresden in 1993 in the center you still could see where bullets hit a couple buildings from WW2. Maybe they left them there as a reminder
Was this entire series done on the MGM studio lot? If so, kudos for the 1,000 or so French villages they put up, then destroyed. Like Saving Private Ryan. Excellent sets and scenes. It would have been cool to have a Pacific "COMBAT", but 90% of it would have been jungle, scrubland, or Pacific rural farming stuff.
I talked to Jack Hogan once (Kirby) he said there were plans to follow Sgt Saunders younger brother chip (a Marine) into the pacific, but plans for the show were canceled
Honestly it appears that it’s all the same set, shot from different angles, different shop signs put up etc. I’ve recognized the same town in the first and second season, both described as different French villages. The village that has the picturesque canal running right through the middle of it for example, with all the sailboats. I have been binge watching these and have actually noticed they’ve not only reused the set, and angles, but have actually just reused the same footage in different episodes. Doesn’t matter, the show is incredible
The production company leased MGM's "village" set. In the contract, they agreed to rebuild/repair all the damage they caused doing demo on the set. The contractor for the construction probably got VERY fat!
