Teaming with the Enemy to Save a Child--Wash and Repeat.

 

SPOILER WARNING: There is absolutely no way to talk about these two parallel episodes of Combat! and The Rat Patrol without giving away the endings. If you haven't seen them, I recommend you watch them before you continue reading here. As of this writing, The Rat Patrol can be watched for free on Pluto TV. I'm afraid you might have to dig around to find the Combat! episode. 

Anyway, Combat's "A Cry in the Ruins" aired on March 23, 1965 and it is arguably the best episode in one of the best TV series ever aired. The story is by A. Martin Zweiback, who then co-wrote the teleplay with Edward J. Lasko. It is superbly directed by cast member Vic Morrow. Morrow played Sgt. Saunders, but doesn't appear in character in the episode.

Lt. Hanley (Rick Jason) is leading a recon patrol through a French village that has been pretty thoroughly shelled. They meet a French woman who cries that her baby is trapped in a cellar. But before they can help her dig out the child, the shelling begins again. The Americans have to run for it and lose track of the woman.

When the shelling is over, they see that a German squad has arrived and is helping the woman dig out the cellar. Hanley wants to quietly withdraw and "leave the Germans to their good intentions." But one of the Germans spots them. The two squads start shooting out, but the shooting dies down when the woman begins to scream "For the love of God, help my baby!"

Now what? There's a war on. The Germans and the Americans are supposed to be killing each other. But can they simply ignore the pleas of the desperate mother?

After some negotiation, it's decided for the two sides to put up their weapons and dig for the child. This doesn't go smoothly. At one point, a fist fight breaks out and the soldiers nearly go for their guns before Hanley can calm them down. Then, when they find the cellar entrance, a badly wounded German captain shows up with a submachine gun, demanding the truce end and the currently unarmed Americans surrender.

In the end, mercy triumphs over war and the rescue effort continues. But when they get down into the cellar, then can't find a baby. In fact, they learn there never was a baby. The poor woman's baby had been killed several years ago and now, whenever there is shelling, she runs out into the ruins and to desperately try to save her long-dead child.

The two squads pick up their weapons without talking to each other and simpy walk off in different directions.

It's a wonderful ending to a perfectly told story. It's an exploration of basic humanity, with talented character actors showing just the right emotions both through their expressions and their dialogue to make the story work. A lot of little touches add to it. The German officer, played by William Smithers, gives a great performance. But the other German soldiers, even though each has no more than a line or two of German dialogue each, are effectively personalized themselves in subtle ways, such as idiosyncratic differences in their uniforms or the scar that one of them has running down his face. Everyone here is a human being--trained to kill their enemy but willing to put that aside to save an innocent life.

The ironic ending adds to the theme simply by avoiding a possibly corny happy ending and adding an appropriate dose of tragedy that humanizes everything even more.

Two years later, on September 7, 1967, The Rat Patrol aired the episode "The Truce at Aburah Raid." It's written by--yes--Edward J. Lasko, one of the writers involved in "A Cry in the Ruins." It seems that Lasko returned to the "enemies teaming up to save a child" idea one more time.

To be fair, though, Lasko does craft a relatively original story around the same idea. This time, there's no question that the child exists--we can see her lying on a ledge halfway down a well. She falls in when the Rat Patrol, with their arch-enemy Captain Dietrich hard on their heels, barrel into a small oasis. The girl tumbles into the well while trying to get out of their way.

Once again, in response to the cries of a mother, the Germans and the Americans have to figure out how to trust each other long enough to save a child.

And once again, the arrival of Germans not in on the original truce threatens to upset that truce. The Rat Patrol, though, was a show that depended more on action and less on character and thematic depth than did Combat! I don't mean to knock the show by pointing that out. The Rat Patrol is what it is--an action show that had to tell a story in a half-hour and include a lot of gunfire and explosions in that story. It was very good at that.

So, in this case, even though the child is saved, the truce breaks down. The Rat Patrol, though apparently helpless, manage to get the drop on the Germans. The only survivor on the German side is Captain Dietrich, who never loses his job no matter how many times the Allied commando team wipes out his command and accomplishes his mission.

So there you have it. Two different World War 2-themed episodes, both written (or co-written) by the same guy--that use the same basic plot. And I'm not being critical of Lasko. As I said, he gives both episodes their own unique twist. And the two shows are so different that it's not really fair to compare them.

But, by golly, I'm going to compare them anyways. Though The Rat Patrol was an entertaining show in its own right, "The Truce at Aburah Raid" doesn't hold a candle to "A Cry in the Ruins."