Another visit with the Rat Patrol

 

The first of six paperback tie-in novels with the 1966-68 TV series, The Rat Patrol (1966) was written by Norman Daniels. Of the six novels, this is arguably the best. (Though The Two-Faced Enemy (1967), by Tom King, would be a close second.)

An Allied attack against Rommel's Africa Korps fails and several thousand Americans are captured.

 

Fortunately, the Rat Patrol has a plan. The four regular members are reinforced with four more men (who might just as well have been issued Star Fleet Red Shirts--their fates are predicatable from the moment they enter the story). The team will then add six trucks to their regular two jeeps and travel around Rommel's flank. The trucks are stuffed full of weapons and ammo--the idea is to spring the 2000 prisoners captured by the Germans, then use them to raise havok behind German lines while another attack is launched.

 

It's an unlikely plot--but that is typical for a Rat Patrol novel. The action moves along non-stop from start to finish and the novel is a lot of fun. Battle scenes include dodging Stuka dive bombers; using bazookas to ambush a pair of tanks; the mass POW break-out and ensuing battle; desperately taking cover behind an upended jeep while the enemy is charging them; and attacking a caravan of "Arabs" who are really disguised Germans deploying a secret weapon. Along the way, the Rat Patrol also has to deal with a beautiful belly dancer who is probably a German informer.

 

It's all over-the-top, but the author keeps the pace fast and has us believing that maybe the Rat Patrol COULD pull all this off. And, heck, maybe some of it is more plausible than non-combat-veteran me thinks. Does anyone know, for instance, if a German Mark III Panzer could be taken out by a .50 caliber machine gun firing armor-piercing rounds? It's an early model tank with much thinner armor than later Panthers and Tigers, so maybe I was wrong in shaking my head a little when I read that scene.

 

The Rat Patrol, like the TV series on which it is based, is a fun romp that concentrates more on continuous action than on realism.

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." 

I was Meant to Read THIS Book As Well!

 

When I was a kid, one of my favorite novels was the Rat Patrol Tv tie-in novel published by Whitman as a part of a series of such tie-ins written for kids.

I've known there had been a series of six tie-in novels written for adults, but I never ran across them in used book stores or found them at a reasonable price online. So when I discovered that the fourth of these novels, The Two-Faced Enemy (1967), by David King, was available to check out on the Internet Archives... well, I was once again obviously being called to read it. 

And it was worth reading. The premise is that an Allied-held coastal town in North Africa is being attacked by the Germans. The Rat Patrol is ordered to find its way around the attacking force and raise havoc in its rear. 

This is the sort of thing the Patrol was good at. Learning about a little-known trail from Troy's current girlfriend (a half-Arab, half-French native), they do indeed manage to drive their two jeeps around the Germans to their rear. They soon locate and destroy a fuel depot. The Germans are forced to dispatch a convoy of trucks to anaother fuel depot farther to their rear. The Rat Patrol follows the trucks far enough to get an idea of the direction they are going in, then circle ahead of them, find that fuel dump and blow it up.

Their arch-enemy, Captain Hans Dietrich, begins laying traps for them, but Sgt. Troy's sharp tactical mind keeps the Allied team one step ahead of him. In fact, they manage to briefly capture the long-suffering Captain a couple of times. Dietrich is presented here--as he was in the series--as a Worthy Opponent who is difficult to beat, but he quite definitely gets beaten this time around. 

The action stretches over a couple of days, with Troy finding targets while also snitching enough water and gas from the Germans to keep going. They also capture a high-ranking German officer and gather some very useful intelligence to help out an eventual Allied counter attack.

The action here is consistently exciting and the pacing of the novel is very, very fast. In fact, I stayed up far too late to finish reading it simply because there was never a good stopping point. And, within the context of the less-than-realistic Rat Patrol universe, the action plays out in a logical manner that continues to emphasize Troy's skill at planning or (when necessary) improvising sound tactics.

But where does the title The Two-Faced Enemy come from?  Well, while the real Rat Patrol is blowing up stuff behind German lines, Dietrich has dispatched a fake Rat Patrol into the Allied-held town. They are driving jeeps and are dressed just like the real Patrol, right down to the matchstick that Tully Pettigrew is ubiquitously chewing on. 

By wearing goggles and staying on the run so that no one gets a really good look at them, the fake patrol attacks American targets and even manages to incite some rioting among the Arab population. The American commander is soon in a rage, convinced that the Rat Patrol has turned traitor--determined to hunt them down and destroy them.

I actually like the American commander, a colonel named Wilson. At first, he seems like a martinet and he is too quick to believe the Rat Patrol has indeed turned traitor. But we gradually learn that he has personal courage, tactical skill as a commander and a sense of honor that leads him to immediately acknowledge he was wrong when the German plot is finally uncovered. 

The Two-Faced Enemy shows us once again that mounting machine guns on the back of jeeps and sending them out into the desert to fight Nazis is an idea that never gets old. 

...And Not a Drop to Drink

A few weeks ago, we took a look at the first of the two stories featured in The Rat Patrol #3 (May 1967).  That was an entertaining and well-plotted story, so I thought it would be fun to review the other tale as well.

The Rat Patrol is a normally a mobile unit, using their two jeeps to mount surprise hit-and-run raids on the Germans, then get out of Dodge as quickly as possible. But in "...And Not a Drop to Drink," (writer unknown; Jose Delbo is the artist) has them ordered to form a static defense at an oasis. They are expected to hold the oasis so that the water is available when a major Allied attack is launched in two days.

When given the mission, Troy had bragged that his four men were as good as an army, but they are going to have to hold the oasis against a lot of German soldiers who are supported by a tank. So, when the Germans approach, the first task is to get rid of that tank.

An anti-tank mine is buried nearby, then Troy and Hitch use their jeep to lure the tank onto the mine.

That still leaves the Germans. It's here that we might expect an all-out battle scene. And, since Jose Delbo has been giving us some pretty nifty-looking action scenes throughout the issue, an all-out battle scene would have been a welcome addition to the story.

But the writer goes in a different, equally interesting direction, possibly lifted from the 1943 Bogart movie Sahara. The Gerrmans are mad with thirst. Desperate for water, they toss their guns away and charge into the oasis, where they are easily taken prisoner.

Troy has a brief tussle with the German general to capture him and that pretty much wraps up their mission. There's an interesting bit of dialogue at the end, though. Tully muses about how "This sure ain't much of a war," remarking about how its easy to fight a relatively faceless enemy, but seeing the Germans up close has uncomfortably reminded him of their humanity.  It's a nice moment and is effectively presented.

So that wraps up our visit with the Rat Patrol. Next week, we get a reminder that when you take one cool thing (say--Tarzan) and mix it with another cool thing (say--pirates), you pretty much always get a exceptionally cool story.

The Day the Tables Were Turned

When I was a little 'un, I thought the Rat Patrol was the bees' knees. Running on ABC for two seasons starting in 1966, it featured a commando team in WWII North Africa, riding around in a pair of jeeps equipped with .50 caliber machine guns and causing havoc among the Germans. It looked awesome. Heck, it still looks awesome.




Also, a kid's level novelization of the show was one of my favorite books--one that still held up when I found it and re-read it as an adult. Also, the Rat Patrol lunchbox is unquestionable the coolest lunchbox ever.

I would betray mankind to invading aliens for a chance to own this again.

As an adult, I do recognize that the half-hour episodes occasionally suffer from poor plot construction, but it's still visually appealing and Eric Braeden was excellent as the clever Africa Korps officer who clashed with the Rat Patrol in most episodes.

Dell Comics did a five issue series based on the show in 1967 which was also pretty good. The third issue (May 1967), for instance, includes a fun yarn titled "The Day the Tables were Turned." The writer is unidentified and the art is by Jose Delbo.

A German general has been captured and is being transported to another location by the Allies. The Rat Patrol is one of a number of units camped out along the route that the general will be taken, guarding against any rescue attempt. (Sgt. Troy, the Patrol's leader, mentions that the German spy network is good and the Nazis probably know the route.)

The two-car convoy with the general will pass by in the morning, so the Patrol beds down for the night, leaving Hitch--one of the drivers--on guard. But Hitch, though he's a seasoned veteran, gets a little careless during the quiet night and is jumped by Germans. Because he's unable to give a warning, the rest of the Patrol is quickly captured as well.

A German officer named Schmidt has a plan. He and three of his men will dress in American uniforms and use the Rat Patrol's jeep to ambush the convoy and rescue the general. Schmidt, in the tradition of generals everywhere, politely explains this to Troy and his men before sending them back to a German encampment.

For the most part, this is a pretty well-constructed story, but the cliche of the villain explaining his plan is an unnecessary one. When Troy saw Germans in American uniforms, he could have figured it out for himself. Though to be fair, we'll soon see that Schimdt is a bit nuts, so he probably has the villainous personality type that makes him want to gloat.

Hitch feels responsible for the fix they are all in, but helps make up for it by taking the lead in knocking out their two guards after they are brought to a tent. It then proves to be a good day for wearing enemy uniforms--the guards' clothes are used to allow the Patrol to steal a tank and make a getaway. (Actually, the story keep referring the vehicle they steal as a tank, but I think its actually a self-propelled gun.)

This leads to the Rat Patrol using the tank to fight their own jeeps. I really like the above panel, by the way, especially the touch of having the ejected cartridges from the machine gun zip out directly towards the reader. It gives the image a real sense of kinetic energy.

Anyway, tank vs. jeeps isn't that fair a fight for the jeeps--though the Rat Patrol actually does that sort of thing all the time. One of the Germans even mentions this and adds "Maybe it is not so dangerous!"

Well, it is dangerous. Schmidt goes off his rocker during the fight and nearly kills the general he's trying to capture, but the jeeps are knocked out with cannon fire and the Germans captured. It's interesting that there's no body count in the story. It would be interesting to know whether this was an editorial decision to tone down the violence or just the way the story flowed when the writer was putting it together.

As I mentioned above, aside from Schmidt's cliched gloating, this is a fast-paced and well-constructed story. Despite it's flaws, The Rat Patrol is a fun show and its nice to know that the comic book adaptation did it justice. In fact, I think we'll return to this comic in a few weeks to look at the other story in it.

Next week, though, we'll sail with Moby Duck and Donald Duck as they clash with Captain Hook.

Desert warfare, commando raids and books for children

Western Publishing came into existance in 1910 and had a long and fun history before it was bought out, picked apart and absorbed into the bigger publishing houses over the course of the 1980s & 1990s. Western produced comic books (mostly based on characters licensed from movies, cartoons and television) that were distributed first by Dell Comics and later by Gold Key Comics. Western's subsidiary Whitman Publishing produced the wonderful Little Big Books.

When I was a kid, I owned the Fantastic Four Little Big Book (with great art by Jack Kirby throughout) and one featuring Major Matt Mason, an astronaut action figure that was popular at the time. But it was another pair of Whitman books, hard covers based on television shows airing at the time, that really caught my fancy.

Both books were based on World War II-themed shows. Both managed to totally enthrall my 8-year-old mind. I read them over and over until they just fell apart.

One was based on The Rat Patrol, a silly but exciting TV show about commandos battling the Nazis in North Africa. Sgt. Sam Troy and his three men rode around in a pair of jeeps, each with a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on the back. When those jeeps came jumping over sand dunes in the opening credits, it looked awesome.




The book, written by I.G. Edmunds, is titled The Iron Monster Raid. It starts with the Rat Patrol returning from a tough mission. They've only one jeep left and almost no ammo for their few remaining weapons. They stumble into the middle of a tank battle and lose their last jeep. They also get a glimpse of the German's newest weapon--the massive Tiger tank.

Soon after, the Patrol is assigned to escort a couple of officers behind German lines, intending to link up with a secret agent and get some microfilm showing the weak spots on the Tiger tank.


When I acquired this book as an adult, I was curious to how well it would hold up. Looking at re-runs of the TV show as a grown-up, I found it was still visually fun, but marred by poor plot construction and historically inaccurate equipment. (Details that I would have been less aware of as a child.)

The book, though, was still a lot of fun. I'm sure nostalgia was a factor in this, but it turns out that the overall plot was solid, with a fair degree of historical accuracy in its portrayal of weapons and geography.

Of particular note is a couple of the action sequences. One takes place near the beginning, when the Rat Patrol is trying to get home on foot after losing their last jeep. They stumble across a German command post and get temporarily seperated from one another. This leads to a very tense sequence in which they sneak into the command post to steal a vehicle.

Later in the novel, they have sneaked about a German train to get to the occupied city of Tunis. Events force them to try to take over the train while its stopped in a narrow canyon. At the same time, the train is attacked by American fighter planes, forcing our heroes to dodge friendly machine gun bullets while they shoot it out with the Germans. It was an exciting, well-described set piece.

The other Whitman novel was based on a short-lived TV show called Garrison's Gorillas. I don't think I ever saw an episode of this. Using the same concept as the movie The Dirty Dozen, it featured an OSS officer named Garrison who uses a group of reformed criminals on behind-the-lines missions, employing their unique skills to fight the Nazis.

The Whitman version of the show, titled The Fear Formula and written by Jack Pearl, had a science fiction element to it: the Germans have gotten hold of a formula that can be placed in drinking water supplies. Once you drink the tainted water, you become helpless with fear and panic.

Once again, when I returned to this book as an adult, I discovered yet another well-constructed plot. The Gorillas are assigned to rescue the Czech scientist who created the Fear Formula from a German prison camp. There are a couple of fun plot twists and the action sequences are exciting.

Whitman did quite a few of the TV books during the 1960s. Occasionally, I run across one in a used book store and snap it up. So far, I've read The Land of the Giants, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Man from UNCLE, and Combat. Surprisingly, Combat, easily the highest quality TV show of all of these, was the dullest of the Whitman books. The others, though, were all pretty good. None qualify as great literature, but nearly all managed to spin an entertaining yarn.

Best Lunchbox Ever