Mon, Feb 28, 1966
This two part Combat! episode is the quintessential story of the futility of war as viewed through the eyes of surviving infantrymen. An American division of troops is making an assault all along their lines. At the platoon level, Lt. Hanley is ordered to take a strategic hill that overlooks a needed road, and the hill is protected by two concrete bunkers with German machine guns and infantry in each bunker. Saunders gets hit in his thigh in the first assault on the bunkers while several other GIs are killed. Hanley asks for artillery support, but his company commander tells Hanley he will have to take the hill without artillery support. Hanley tries several different strategies to take the hill, but each time the men go up the hill, the overwhelming fire from the bunkers stop them, and each time they leave a few more dead GIs on the hill. (see "Hills Are For Heroes - Part 2 for continuation of storyline)
Mon, Mar 22, 1965
Unearthing a French baby buried under ruins, unites Hanley's men and a Nazi squad. All the troops' hearts go out to the desperate young mother, but as the German lieutenant warns "distrust is a crippling thing." Laying down their arms in an unauthorized truce proves challenging to the frayed nerves of both squads in the village devastated by both sides' heavy artillery. Hanley's squad needs to get out for a rendezvous, the Germans are hustling to re-occupy the ville.
Mon, Apr 19, 1965
Sgt. Saunders is wounded and trapped behind enemy lines while trying to provide cover for Doc and Caje as they take a wounded Little John back to their lines. Saunders wakes in a German Field Hospital to find that a French worker has put him in German clothes to prevent him being shipped to a POW Camp. As a result he tries to escape by passing himself off as a shell shocked German soldier. Placed on a train going to the German rear with a German officer who considers many of the wounded as malingerers, Saunders and a captured American flyer manage to jump from the train and escape. As they try to make their way back to their lines the flyer is shot and killed by a German patrol and Saunders is taken with them. He is befriended by a veteran German sergeant who is convinced he is a wounded Afrika Corps soldier and decides to look after him. As they are travelling to their destination they are ambushed by Americans who are looking for prisoners and information and, in the fire fight that follows, Saunders has to shoot and kill the German sergeant.
Mon, Mar 9, 1964
A British captain refuses Allied orders to retreat, delivered by Sgt. Saunders. Instead, Capt. Johns commands Sgt. Saunders' battle-fatigued U.S. squad to dig in at the besieged railhead and help repulse a German advance. Saunders fears it's suicide for all, but the imperial Capt. Johns, a Sandowner and son of a general, insists they can hold the depot against a Nazi offensive.