Episode
Combat!: Rear Echelon Commandos
Overview
On the frontline, the squad receives three new replacements straight from rear echelon duty in England. They are Gainsborough (a scared, overweight cook), Temple (an equally scared ex-ballet dancer), and Crown (a radio announcer whose cocky attitude masks his fear). Saunders reluctantly takes these newcomers on a dangerous recon mission and discovers that his survival depends on the ingenuity of these misfits.
Details
- Series
- Combat!
- Season
- Season 1
- Episode
- Episode 2
- Air date
- 1962-10-09
- Runtime
- 60 min
Episode context
Rear Echelon Commandos is Episode 2 in Season 1 of Combat!. It aired on 1962-10-09. The runtime is 60 min.
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Episode 1: Forgotten Front
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.
Episode 3: Lost Sheep, Lost Shepherd
Jeffrey Hunter stars in "Lost Sheep, Lost Shepherd" as tanker Sgt. Dane, a man mad at the world, mad at the war, and mad at God. He's not too thrilled with Hanley and Saunders, either. During a German breakthrough, Hanley and a squad of men become cut off behind enemy lines. They are saved from a German ambush by the unexpected appearance of Dane and his tank. Their gratitude is short-lived however, as Dane’s recklessness and anger takes on a savage edge and they discover the secret he can’t live with: that he’s a failed priest now turned killer.
More episodes from this season
Episode 4: Any Second Now
While in a French town on leave, Hanley's leg is pinned by some debris during a bombing raid. In the church building with him is an undetonated German bomb which is still timed to explode. Help arrives in the form of an British demolition expert who is suffering battle fatigue and is angry at Hanley for trying to pickup his girl at a local bar.
Episode 5: Far from the Brave
The squad B.A.R. (Browning Automatic Rifle) man who is also Saunder's friend is killed. Kirby believes the Saunders will give him the B.A.R. Saunders decides to give it to the new man, a cook that had qualified on the B.A.R. in basic training. After the new man is killed his reasoning for giving the B.A.R. to the new man didn't matter.
Episode 6: Missing in Action
Retrieving a downed pilot becomes even more nerve-wracking, because Lt. Hanley's battle-fatigued squad mistakenly shoots the messenger who delivered the U.S. war hero pilot's whereabouts to them. Lt. Hanley doesn't want this mission, but he's assured that a grizzled Maquisard truck driver will transport them safely to the farm where the French Resistance have hidden the wounded bomber pilot.
Episode 7: Escape to Nowhere
While playing possum behind enemy lines, the wounded Hanley is captured, then interrogated. A When Hanley won't cooperate, General Von Strelitz takes Hanley away for further questioning. The German general calmly kills his chauffeur and forces Hanley to replace him. Von Strelitz refuses to explain what he's plotting, and Lt. Hanley doesn't appreciate the promotion to Kapitan in the Heer.
Episode 8: The Celebrity
Del Packer is a famous baseball star who was drafted into the army. He winds up as a replacement in the squad. While Kelly looks for a way to make some money by setting up a baseball game with a neighboring outfit, Billy, a devoted baseball fan, is awestruck to be in the same squad as one of his heroes. However, Packer has his own demons to fight, and while the other squad members are too star-struck to notice that something may be wrong, Saunders isn't.
Episode 9: Cat and Mouse
A worn out Sgt. Saunders must lead Sgt. Jenkins and his men into an area that had already seen lots of casualties. All of the men except Saunders and Jenkins are killed before they reach their objective. After his capture Jenkins uses capture to enable Saunders to obtain the information needed.
Episode 10: I Swear by Apollo
A wounded Frenchman has important information. He and another man are injured when a land mind goes off. The squad takes refuge in a Convent of Cloistered Nuns. When Hanley arrives, he brings information that the medic died of a heart attack on the way. Saunders and Caje go to the village in search of the local doctor. The only doctor they find is a German doctor. They take him back with them.
Episode 11: A Day in June
In a flashback story told as the men rest on a rainy night, Sgt. Saunders recalls the experiences of himself and several other men on the day of the D-Day invasion. This includes tales about Braddock, who won the platoon pool on when the invasion would take place; Doc Walton, who was reluctant to go into battle; Caje (called "Caddie" in this episode), who is accompanied by another Cajun; and Lt. Hanley, who at the time was still a sergeant and had little battle experience compared to Saunders. Following the landing, the men move inland and come upon a farmstead held by a squad of German infantry.
Episode 12: The Prisoner
Braddock, while on duty as Lt. Hanley's runner, is "appropriated" by a tough-talking, overbearing colonel as his jeep driver. Unfortunately the colonel decides to drive the jeep himself and his reckless driving results in an accident in which both men are knocked unconscious. When Braddock awakens he is captured by a German patrol, but since he happens to be wearing the colonel's coat--which he put on to keep warm while the colonel was zooming around the countryside--the Germans think that he actually IS a colonel, and nothing Braddock can say or do will convince them otherwise.
Episode 13: Reunion
After the battalion pushes the Germans out of a small French town, Pvt. Paul Villers, a member of Saunders' squad, asks permission to look for his father, a French doctor. Villers' was born in France but his parents divorced when he was four and his mother, an American, took him back to the U.S. He knows the town they're in is where his father was born and looks for him there. It doesn't take him long to find his father, but it takes him a bit longer to find out some things about his father that he wasn't counting on.