After finishing the paperback formatting, I needed a treat. I invited myself to watch a Combat! episode during the week. Here's the recap.
Combat!
Season 1 Episode 14:”The Medal”
Written by Richard Maibaum. Directed by Paul Stanley.
The episode opens with a view through binoculars (see picture above). Cut to the
squad and Hanley behind a stone wall. They’re cutting through to reach the
highway near Corbeil (or somewhere that sounds like it). The Germans are at
some town, Malon, three miles further east. Cut to the episode’s NPCs guest players, not mere NPCs—they joined for
an evening of gaming after having heard about all the fun Saunders and the gang
have been having. It looks like Frank Gorshin--.
(with much less makeup that he had in that Star Trek episode
which ranks among the least rewatchable on my list)—and Joseph Campanella.
Freddy (Gorshin) has a blister. Vince (Campanella) is a
married man with a child. Saunders interrupts the chatting men to tell them to
get up and move out. The squad goes over the broken wall, moving forward to
ominous music. There’s a tank under camouflage! And German soldiers! It looks
like an ambush!
Roll the opening credits. Cue the bayonets and helmets. (I
must admit that Combat! has one of
the best and most memorable opening credits ever – I’ve probably mentioned it
before, but it’s been a while since I treated myself to one of these episodes).
The tank opens fire, but the
soldiers remain hidden. The squad makes a saving throw against shrapnel damage
– getting double nines (I use 2d10s in this game) for the successful save
as they all scramble for cover. When the tank cruelly murders a tree without any
provocation, Hanley orders the squad back to the wall. The MG atop the tank
delivers a series of dots and gashes to a fleeing American. The rest make it
back to the wall (which now looks like a prop covered with a painted cloth
where Saunders rolls over it). Except Vince and Freddy are in a shell hole—they
didn’t get back to the wall. Saunders is asking Hanley what they’re going to do
now. (The DM tells them to go into the kitchen and find some snacks while he plays out the next bit with Vince and Freddy).
Vince tells Freddy they can take
out the tank. Freddy rolls successfully to disbelieve—and tries to get Vince to shrug-off
the crazy—but Vince is new to the game and wants to get into the action—as in
action hero time. He crawls along a ditch with a small stream of water in it.
Freddy discards his initial good sense to instead embrace a fear of missing out on the massive
XPs offered by the prospect of taking out an enemy tank.
Vince crawls from beneath a
bridge and gets the exposed gunner on the tank in his sights. Bang! Vince
expedites a missive of HP depletion—taking out the gunner. He follows by
running to the tank and dropping a little pineapple of destruction inside—a tasty treat that fills the vehicle with fun-sized shrapnel, and fills the occupants with perforations as they fail their saving throws. Now the German soldiers rush from cover, just in time for Vince to test his captured MG skill rating.
Vince discovers a secret talent
for mowing down Germans who rush toward him in the open. (It’s at this point
I’m thinking that Vince isn’t going to make it to the closing credits, and
Freddy is going to get the accolades for Vince’s foolish bravery).
Yep. I was right. A German with a
Luger flanks Vince and drops him with a single shot. The Germans gather round
as Luger-man is about to give Vince the coup de lead poisoning. The Americans
attack before Luger-man delivers the second shot. The Germans abandon the tank
and rush to who-knows-where. (So maybe Vince didn’t lose all his hit points).
Cut to Freddy crawling from beneath the little bridge across the ditch. Vince
moves! Freddy runs to him. Freddy mounts the tank in a rage, and opens up with
the machine gun, spraying an apparently empty battlefield until he’s out of
bullets or the gun jambs, and he collapses over the piece. (The rest of the gang has brought the snacks from the kitchen and they rejoin the game). The the squad runs
up. There aren’t any live Germans in the field, only the many corpses created
by Vince’s turn at the MG.
Cage pulls Freddy off the gun and
down from the tank. Everyone believes Freddy killed all those Germans. They
move to a farmhouse. Vince remains unconscious.
Hanley tells Saunders the unit
needs a moral boost. He reads a notice he has been given about awards and
decorations being awarded promptly and on an equitable basis. Saunders
responds, “So?”
Hanley is putting Freddy in for a
silver star. Saunders doesn’t believe it’s fair to pick one man out above the
rest. Hanley thinks the tank and 17 dead Germans warrant recognition for
Freddy—and has Freddy join him and Saunders. When Freddy gets the drift, he
protests that he didn’t do anything to deserve a silver star, but is
interrupted by news that Vince is conscious. Vince calls for Freddy, and the DM
has Vince roll for recovery or death: a 3 and a 4. It’s not looking good for
Vince. The DM allows him to roll for a last chance at survival using the heroic
point he acquired in his earlier action: a 2 and a 3. Perhaps he can deliver
some important last words: a 1 and a 2. No survival. No final words.
Vince, now dead and out of the
game, complains that this game stinks. How can he just die like that? This game
isn’t fun! He’s never going to play again. He storms out. He’s also the ride home
for Freddy and one of the other guys. The DM calls it a night. They’ll pick up
next week from that point.
When the game restarts, its chow
time the next day. Freddy and the rest of the squad are there. The DM gives
Saunders some letters. There’s one for Vince, which Saunder’s pockets, and
another he gives to Freddy. Freddy goes off alone to read the letter. He wads
it up, and takes a photo out of his pocket. Freddy tears the picture in half
and throws it to the ground. Cage, on picket duty, observes Freddy. Cage picks
up the two halves of the photo. He figures it was a Dear John letter and
attempts to ease Freddy’s feelings—Freddy rolls a 7, and remains uncomforted.
Freddy goes to see Hanley and
Saunders. He’s ready to tell them about what happened. He tells the story,
taking credit for Vince’s heroics—no point in letting all those XPs go to waste. While Hanley’s out on a radio call, Saunders
and Freddy have a brief discussion. When Hanley returns, they have to move out.
Cut to the squad moving through a
shelled town, and blasting open a hole in a barbed wire obstacle in the street. A German in
the wine shop begins firing as Hanley goes forward. Freddy goes to Hanley’s
side—he can’t have his ticket writer to a silver star getting his ticket
punched.
The German gets away. Hanley
reminds Freddy not to be foolish, “What good is a medal if a guy’s not around
to collect it?”—which might have been what Freddy had already considered with
regard to Vince.
Cut to night in another destroyed
French town--Malon. Hanley’s on the radio saying that the Germans have pulled
out. When Freddy comes in, it is apparent that he has missed the fighting. He
claims he came up the wrong trench and by the time he got to the right place,
everyone had gone, so he went with some guys from another platoon. Caje, whose
main task this session seems to be to intrude with news, says that a prisoner
who speaks English has been taken. I’m thinking, odds are good that the prisoner
is going to be Luger-man who shot Vince. It is.
The prisoner says, “It’s no
disgrace to be taken by men of the 361st,” because just two days
earlier, he lost a tank and half his platoon (Here it comes. I knew it.) But it
doesn’t. The Nazi doesn’t rat out Freddy. He says Freddy would receive the Iron
Cross in the German army. Hanley says he’ll only get a little silver star in
this army. Nevertheless, we know that both the German and Freddy know that the
other knows the truth—if you know what I mean.
So Hanley has Saunders take the
prisoner back to headquarters—with Freddy to help in case they run into
trouble. (My money says they’ll run into trouble with Freddy either killing the
German to keep his falsehood safe, or failing a morale check in a way that puts
Saunders wise to the lie, or the third option being that Freddy will have to
act in a way that would actually earn him the star).
While Saunders is scouting out a
path through the town, Freddy and the prisoner are alone in an abandoned
building. The German slyly notes that Freddy was taller 2 days ago. The German is
pressing Freddy to let him escape to protect his heroic story. Meanwhile,
Saunders rolls on the wandering monsters table and turns up 3 German soldiers
approaching. The soldiers turn away before seeing him, and Saunders goes back
to Freddy and the prisoner—in time to overhear (thanks to his high sneak
rating) the plotting through the closed door. Saunders enters. Now he knows
about Freddy, but there’s a German patrol out there to worry about. After he
tells Freddy, “You turn my stomach,” the prisoner makes a break and gets out of
the building. Freddy, even with the negative modifiers for a moving target in the dark,
puts a couple slugs through the rear of the fugitive’s hit point basket,
dropping him in the street. Saunders says, “That takes care of him. What about
me?”
The shots have attracted the
German patrol like looters to an electronics store. Combat ensues. Freddy
finally gets a chance to fire a weapon at targets that shoot back. The
Germans make little to no use of the available cover. Saunders jots down that
fact of it with burst from his Thompson upon the uniform of one of the
Germans—one down. One of the other wandering Nazis fires and brings down a
boutique sign above Saunders. The sign knocks the Sgt. to the ground and into
the barbed wire. (Here it comes. Freddy is going to have to get his hero on, or
Saunders is going to get permanently demoted to corpse).
Freddy’s natural instincts click
in as he fails the morale check. Fortunately, the DM reminds him that it takes
three consecutive failures to flee the field in this game. While his first
throw was a failure, causing him to retreat a short distance, his second roll
found the mark. While Saunders screams like a cat in a blender, Freddy races
back toward the action—and he’s all out of bubble gum (see They Live, 1988, if you don’t get that one). He rushes to Saunders
and takes up the Thompson. He sprays just enough from the Thompson to give the
nearest German that freshly dead scent. He begins cutting Saunders from the
wire, but there’s another German out there.
The German has revenge best
served with a potato masher grenade on his menu, and tosses the dish to the two
Americans. Freddy rejects the offering and tries to send it back.
The grenade blows as he throws
it. Freddy goes down with one arm injured. He seizes the Thompson while the
German rolls an activation failure and fumbles with his Mauser. Freddy gets a reaction roll and beats
him to the draw, sending a tip to the waiter in hot lead. The German falls.
Freddy cuts the Sgt. loose and they run. Another German appears and conveys his
feeling with a rifle shot. It misses.
Saunders and Freddy make it back
to Hanley and the squad. Freddy must’ve been more seriously wounded than he
appeared. He faints as Saunders thanks him for pulling him out of the wire. Doc
says Freddy will be all right, but that arm won’t be much use. Before the
medics carry him out, Freddy comes clean about Vince’s heroics at the tank, and
wants the medal to go to Vince’s family. As the jeep with Freddy drives away,
Saunders asks, “What makes heroes, Lieutenant?” Hanley replies, “You tell me,
Sergeant. You tell me.”
Conclusion:
Once more I didn’t get to hear
any French. We saw little of the squad other than Hanley and Saunders. Campanella
didn’t last long. We did get some combat and plenty of machinegun fire. The
Germans made poor use of their tactical advantages, letting the players off
easy for the most part. It wasn't a great episode, but wasn’t a bad episode. I give it three-to
three-and-a-half out of five bayonets. The stolen valor was returned and Freddy got to redeem himself and save Saunders
***
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