Accidents Happen

 

The recent death of director Richard Donner got me thinking about his career. He was quite a prolific televison director before eventually moving on to films such as The Goonies, Superman and Lethal Weapon. 

He directed episdes of shows as varied as Gilligan's Island, The Twilight Zone and--my favorite TV series--Combat!

His Combat! episode was the last one of the show's first season, airing on May 14, 1963. "No Trumpets, No Drums" opens with Lt. Hanley's platoon fighting for possession of a bombed out French town. During the battle, Caje (Pierre Jalbert)--arguably the best soldier in the squad after Sgt. Saunders--is taking down several Germans. Then he sees a silhoutte behind a window of a building and immediately tosses a grenade into that building.

Unfortunately, the person in that building is a French civilian.

That opening action scene is superb, especially in the way it clearly establishes that Caje was not being bloodthirsty or irresponsible. He was reacting appropriately as a soldier to the situation as he saw it. But war is war and an innocent man dies.

Caje has a hard time dealing with this. It's a situation made even harder when he learns the man had a young daughter named Micheline (played by then-11-year-old Andrea Darvi, who does an excellent job in the role.) Caje becomes attached to Micheline, at one point ignoring his duties as a soldier in what is essentially a despertate attempt to replace her father.

Saunders tries to be sympathetic--he's had men die while following his orders, so he can to a degree understand what Caje is going through, but when the Germans counter attack, he has to come down hard on Caje. There's a time to mourn, but also a time to man up and do your duty. 

It's an excellent episode. Edward J. Lasko's script is full of great dialogue, while Jalbert, Darvi and Vic Morrow are at the top of their game giving life to that dialogue. "No Trumpets, No Drums" is well-worth 50 minutes of your time.