StanleyWheeler

It was still Thursday. We had just left the souvenir shop near the Pantheon. We were on our way to the Luxembourg Gardens. The sidewalk was pretty wide, wide enough for some shops to have racks of goods out on it. There was also a youth sprawled on the sidewalk. He had two suitcases next to him. The suitcases were red. We gave him a wide berth; there was something hinky about the guy.  I realized what the feeling was when my wife kicked the container, made from the bottom quarter of a clear plastic water bottle, which held a few coins, and which he had placed out in the center of the walk. The container was virtually invisible. She hit it solidly, like an opening kickoff. The bit of bottle went tumbling; the coins went skittering. Did I mention the grate across the sidewalk? Most of the coins went down the grate that was located about six or eight feet from the ambush site.  I found two of his missing coins that the grate had not consumed, both one centime pieces. I could...

Combat! Season 1 Episode 3: “Lost Sheep, Lost Shepherd” The player characters are: Hanley, Saunders, Doc, and Littlejohn. The opening reports a massive tank battle shortly after D-Day…and its aftermath of scattered tanks, crews, and infantry. After footage of tanks driving, shooting, burning, blowing up, and in other ways failing their saving throws versus 88 millimeter armor piercing magic missiles, we finally see some familiar faces; they’re marching on a road in Normandy. We also see these two guys with a dog. Cut to the Lt. and Saunders. Hanley is going over a map; he wants Saunders' advice. Saunders informs him that they have about an hour and half before the enemy tanks overtake them.  Run the opening credits. Jeffrey Hunter is guest starring as the featured NPC of the week (Sergeant Dane). Saunders tells a soldier who is singing the chorus to "The Whiffenpoof Song" (go to 0:59 to hear the chorus)  (echoing the ‘lost sheep’ reference ...

It was a Thursday.  According to the red book, we had 22 steps for the day's events. I had constructed the red book before we had left home. Every day had been planned with destinations, addresses, telephone numbers, flight numbers, airports, arrival times, etc, from the departure day of May 11 to the return day of May 19--all tucked into clear plastic page protectors. Each day had a schedule page, subsequent pages contained the documents that we might need for that day. The red book had served us well. At hotels, I had pulled out the reservations previously made online; at the car rental when the girl insisted on asking me every question that I had already answered online, I showed her the page from the red book and everything went smoothly. My advice regarding the red book, in the voice of Karl Malden: Don't leave home without it.  But this was Thursday.  We were going to Paris. We would be at Notre Dame by step 3. Step one consisted of breakfast...and we skipped th...

Combat! Season 1 Episode 2: Rear Echelon Commandos In this episode the primary player characters involved are…sort of...Saunders, Caje, and Kirby. At the opening, Caje follows Saunders into a barn where cows and soldiers rest. Saunders drops his equipment belt, and collapses with fatigue to sit on the floor. Littlejohn gets the first line. The news is that they’re getting three new men. Hooray! NPCs to soak up damage, or are they going to be regular player characters? Kirby introduces the three newcomers as each having two years of rear echelon experience: a cook, a physical fitness instructor, and a disc jockey. As Saunders shakes down the new guys, we learn the physical fitness instructor was actually a ballet dancer (played by Tim Considine of Disney fame). Disc jockey claims that he’ll be back in London in two weeks. He’s definitely got obnoxious NPC written all over him; he’ll probably be at the center of the story in this adventure scenario. The cook is just v...

This was on the wall of our room at the bureaucratic hotel: It's not the exact picture; I found this one on the internet. In fact, I remembering the moon as being bigger. Another thing we found in the room (along with the bottle of water and candy) was a menu. I also found this one on the internet, as I did not consider the menu something of which I wanted a picture when we were there. This picture is too small for me to accurately read. The actual menu that we found in the room suffered from a similar problem--not legibility, but accuracy. We spent some time deciding what we would have. I forget now what we finally decided to have...but it sounded good. When we arrived in the restaurant, we discovered a completely different menu. Apparently, the menu in the room was outdated; the selection upon which we had decided was not to be found on the new menu. We couldn't find anything on the new menu that interested us. Nevertheless, in our famished condition, not having...

Combat! Season 1 Episode 1: A Day in June In this episode the player characters in the adventure party are Saunders, Hanley, Doc, Braddock, Caddy, and Beacham. The rest are all NPCs. This episode establishes Saunders as the sergeant who knows what he's doing. At the opening, Vic Morrow (Sgt. Saunders) gets the first line. We see guys who will be the show regulars, including Tom Skerritt. They’re resting in a leaky building during a rainstorm, talking about getting to Paris. Saunders lights up and remembers back to England, telling the current adventure party about a previous adventure in this same campaign setting. The rest of the episode is a flashback.  Hanley is in church with other soldiers in dress uniform. He’s sitting with a blonde. The service is interrupted and all military personnel are ordered to return immediately to their bases. Hanley rides the bus with the blonde. We hear her English accent, and see her gaudy earrings before they get off ...