COMBAT!

I was shopping at Sam's Club yesterday and ran down the video aisle looking for a bargain. I spotted a set of DVD's for the first season of COMBAT!, a WWII television drama that ran for five seasons, 1962 to 1967. It was the last set on the shelf and I grabbed it.

COMBAT! chronicles the activities of a squad of GI's that land in Normany on D-Day and fight their way across France and Germany. As the series was filmed in B&W, the producers had no problem using actual WWII footage to give the series a more authentic atmosphere. This series made the actor Vic Morrow famous.

I gotta admit, this was one of my favorite TV show when I was a kid and I was thrilled to hear the theme song again for the first time in over forty years. It was a blast recognizing other bit actors in the first scenes that I recognized from later movies; Tom Skerrit had such a minor role that he never even got his name in the credits.

Good grief these guys were so young... and as WWII had only been over for eighteen years when the series began, many of the older actors were most likely WWII vets.