What Happened to the Cast of Combat!?
A tale of many tragedies
One of my absolutely favorite television shows that I watched as a child was the WW2 drama Combat! that ran from 1962–1967.
I still think that a number of the episodes are among the best depictions of war and its effects on individuals ever made for TV.
152 episodes in total were produced and Season 1 is superb in many regards. One of the factors that makes it so is that every other episode of that first Season was directed by Robert Altman!
The show unfortunately has never been available in syndication as each episode is 47 minutes long whereas a modern TV show that fits an hourly time slot is 40 minutes long. That’s right, for network shows we now have to endure 20 minutes of commercials.
When the entire series came out on DVD in 2005, I immediately scooped it up and watched them all. I was surprised at how few I must have watched as a child although one in particular which had enthralled me at the age of 10 or 11 still impressed me with its power at the age of 50.
In Series 1, Episode 23 a badly burned Sergeant Saunders (Vic Morrow) tries to make it back to his own lines while facing a number of threatening situations. Unsurprisingly, this episode was directed by Robert Altman.
