Combat! (TV Series) Glow Against the Sky (1963) User Reviews

Comradery

[claudio_carvalho · 8/10 · 17 July 2017]

While fleeing from the Germans, Billy is wounded and Sgt. Saunders and his squad hide in a basement. The German soldiers do not see Billy in a ditch and Saunders succeeds to bring him to the cellar. Meanwhile the Germans build a hospital close their hideout while the troop searches the village. When Saunders realizes that Billy will not survive without medical care, he decides to dump Billy on the street expecting the Germans take him to the hospital. Littlejohn questions Saunder's orders and does not want to leave his comrade behind. Meanwhile a German Commander asks the doctor to pose of Englishman to ask Billy the whereabouts of his squad.

"Glow Against the Sky" is a tense episode of "Combat!" with a nice story of comradery. The friendship of the giant Littlejohn for Billy is nice to see and the surprising arrival of Sunders and his team is a moment of relief. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Brilho Contra o Céu" ("Glow Against the Sky")

White Rook Carries The Story

[jmarchese · 8/10 · 15 July 2014]

Glow Against The Sky is a well acted episode about the squad's entrapment in a French village basement amongst dozens of German soldiers. I especially like the squad carrying the story without any special guest stars. Private Billy Nelson (excellently played by Tom Lowell) steals the show at times portraying a severely wound GI in enormous pain. For most of the episode squad members interact with each other to develop the story. I'm only critical of the water stealing part in that it was much too far fetched to be believed. The Germans would have torn apart the entire block and found them if the water stealing scene held true.

Sutton Roley did a fine job directing along with the special effects and close-ups. Heavy artillery scenes in the beginning are very well done and stunt personnel are to be commended for their bravery. I'm only critical of the scene whereby Saunders leaves the wounded Nelson to be found by the Germans. Roley cut it much too close to be believable. Saunders would have been easily seen by the Germans in the process.

Screen writers Kay Lenard and Jess Carneol had a good idea except I wish they could have found a better way to obtain water without such a far fetched scene.

The ending sequence is excellently done with Littlejohn and Saunders doing what they do best.

Do no harm

[nickenchuggets · 8/10 · 5 September 2022]

Billy is a character on Combat who was actually killed in an early episode, but because he was already written into the scripts for some later ones, he was resurrected. In this episode, he again comes close to losing his life, and the result is a very tense and well put together 47 minutes. In this episode, Saunders and the rest of the squad are trying to retreat from a town, when an artillery bombardment starts hitting the area and destroying houses. Billy almost takes a direct hit from one of the shells, and is grievously injured, but survives. Saunders and the others take him into the cellar of a demolished house in order to heal him, while German forces rapidly overtake the entire town. The squad now faces a serious problem not only because of Billy's wounds, but also because he becomes delirious and yells out from time to time, threatening to give everyone's positions away. The germans eventually get suspicious about the house and try to enter, which leads to one of them being killed while the squad hides from the rest. After they leave, Saunders feels guilt gnawing away at him, and he knows that Billy will probably die if he doesn't do something fast. Saunders tells everyone else that he's going to do the unthinkable and give Billy to a german field hospital that has been set up a few hundred feet away from the house. Because it's so tantalizingly close, the squad suggests kidnapping a german doctor and bringing him to operate on Billy, but Saunders objects, saying none of the medical equipment would even fit in the basement. Saunders and the others use their bayonets to chip away at the bars on a basement window so they can fit Billy through it, and Saunders carries him into the center of the town and leaves him there. Billy starts yelling again, and the germans discover him and take him to the field hospital. There, he is put under the care of a german doctor who speaks English, and his superior orders him to try and get information out of Billy. The doctor lies and tells a barely lucid Billy that he's in a British hospital, that everyone there is his friend, and that he should reveal the location of his squad mates because they've been hurt too. Billy keeps fading in and out of consciousness, frustrating the physician. Meanwhile, Little John, kind of mad at Saunders for giving Billy to the enemy, tries to sneak into the hospital and hears Billy get interrogated. He ends up killing the doctor while Saunders sets a german petrol dump ablaze to cause a distraction. After stealing a truck, they make their way back to US lines, and Billy is saved. Little John however has been temporarily assigned to a different squad for disobeying Saunders' orders. The other 3 Combat episodes I watched that are featured on the same disc as this one were mediocre in my eyes, but this one, while not able to redeem the faults of the other 3, is quite good. It shows how stressful caring for a wounded person is in a time of war, since the wounded take up more resources than the dead and have to be looked after. Saunders takes one of his most drastic moves yet in the series when he decides to hand over Billy to the Nazis, but he had no other choice. It also shows how even people like doctors can try to get information out of enemy combatants during a war, if they're forced to treat them that is. I also appreciate this episode for showing how far Little John has come as a squad member. He's one of my favorite characters, due to his imposing height but gentle demeanor. Here, Dick Peabody shows how good he is at playing him because he tries to rescue Billy himself at one point. Little John even risks angering his sergeant when he tells Saunders he doesn't want him to give Billy away. Overall, I thought this was a good episode, which is a strange pattern when it comes to medical-focused installments of this show. I Swear by Apollo was also excellent, despite focusing on medical drama and not having a single gunfight.

Littlejohn merited a court martial.

[nickfatooee · 8/10 · 3 April 2024]

I'll only add my one observation to what other reviewers have already done so well: Littlejohn's constant complaining and childish petulance worthy of a 5 year old was tantamount to insubordination and annoying to this viewer. He constantly questions Sgt Saunders orders, glares at him to show how much he disapproves and on more than one occasion directly disobeys specific orders that were crucial to maintaining the safety of the squad. If you have not seen this episode I won't reveal what the good sergeant Saunders decides to do about Littlejohn.

So after over 50 years of watching Combat!, I still feel it was the finest semi-documentary style tv series about the post-D-Day experiences of our typical US soldiers, both heroes and regular Joe's just wanting to survive while eliminating the evil menace to the worlds freedom loving democracies and their citizens.

Im still a huge fan of this show that I watched with my father from its beginning when I was 13 years old. And without a doubt it was another big quality production and typically well acted episode of COMBAT!

No excuse for crap

[lor_ · 18 July 2023]

A raw survival episode, Vic and several of his men hide from the Germans in a basement, with Billy severely wounded. They're vastly outnumbered in this little town.

With nothing much happening, no interesting characters or dialogue, it's as if the creators of "Combat!" are daring you to keep watching. Back in 1963 I would have changed the channel on this one for sure, largely because the notion of suspense is subverted by the obvious necessity of our contract players all needing to return next week in another new episode, hopefully a lot better than this one. Episode title refers to vast explosions that Vic uses to distract the Germans (and the audience).

Whether for budgetary considerations, or merely a lapse in setting the bar too low for a script to be accepted and given the go-ahead to be filmed, I think it's unforgivable for a show that has earned the admiration and gratitude of a loyal audience to foist sheer filler like this on the pubic. In the story the Germans seem asleep at the wheel, when in fact it is the Selmur staff at MGM Studios that went to sleep.