Every moment of life is precious. Every lungful of air, every beat of the heart, priceless and limited and worth protecting. Combat is a series that re-affirms how precious life is, and how quickly it can be cut away. While all the episodes in this epic series are spectacular and worth the price of admission, I'll point out one... one of many... that takes the theme to heart. The episode I have in mind is called The Glory Among Men. Vic Morrow directed it himself.
It takes place in an area that is probably about the size of a football field. The type of area similar to where a lot of the smaller battles of the war were fought , a muddy, filthy area strewn with fallen dead trees, a bleak open expanse of ankle-deep water and a bombed-out fortified wall at one side. Sergeant Saunders and his men are on reconnaissance looking for where the Germans have dug in. They come across this small bleak little stretch of land and slowly begin to cross it. They don't know that a German gunnery crew is watching them from behind the wall with a mounted heavy machine gun aimed at them. When the Americans draw near enough the German Lieutenant gives the command to open fire, and a blanket of bullets rains down on them. Saunders and his men manage to just barely get away from the barrage by ducking behind some fallen logs nearby, but one man wasn't so lucky. His name is Mason, and he was badly injured in the attack. He is laying in the middle of the expanse , face down groaning in agony, an equal distance away from where his fellow troops lay hidden and where the German guns are positioned. The Germans could kill him off easily but they don't, they leave him alive and moaning , hoping to use him as bait to lure the hidden Americans into the open for a resuce attempt. Now, here is the catch that makes it even more dramatic. The wounded soldier is one that everyone in his troop hates. He is a newcomer to the troop, a selfish, self-serving, loud mouthed antagonist who only cares about himself. Some of his fellow soldiers believe he abandonded his post on a prior patrol when the action got too heavy. Needless to say, there aren't a lot of hands going up for men willing to run out there to save him. What ensues next is a genuine struggle of the heart, as the men who are pinned down by heavy fire try to decide if that man's life is worth almost certain death to try to rescue. After some intense argument among them, two initial attempts are made to resuce him, and both times the soldiers who tried were shot dead in the attempt. It brings the moment to a toppling point. Do they abondon him there, or risk more deaths in yet another resuce attempt?
This is the kind of heavy, intense drama that highlights much of this series. It's less about the war itself, and more about the struggle of the people who are in the midst of it, trying to stay alive and trying to make some sense out of it while trying to do the right thing.
The disks worked perfectly, the video image quality and audio quality were perfect, and this has what is probably the best designed storage case of any DVD set I've ever purchased, very easy to remove the disks from and to slide them back into, and comes with a paper listing of all the episodes and chapters.
Also this series comes with some great commentary tracks that you can choose to listen to or not. I especially found the comments by one of the directors , Ted Post, to be very insightful as he discusses the reality of a soldier's life in the war, he being in the war himself.
- Mike S.
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