Combat! Trivia

More than you ever wanted to know about Combat! these archives of King Company contain lists of data, statistics, trivia, and assorted useless information.

Combat Cast Statistics:

	episodes appeared in	episodes wounded in	episodes captured in
Saunders	121 (see list)	40 (see list)	16
Hanley	110 (see list)	36 (see list)	10
Doc (#2)	63 (see list)	6 (see list)	3
Braddock	8 (see list)	2 (see list)	2
Kirby	120 (see list)	37 (see list)	10
Caje	114 (see list)	19 (see list)	10
Billy	27 (see list)	7 (see list)	4
Littlejohn	103 (see list)	15 (see list)	6
Doc (#1)	21 (see list)	0	1
McCall		2 (see list)	0

Often Repeated Dialogue

“Take the point.”
“White Rook, this is Checkmate King Two.”
“How is he, Doc?”
“Kirby, shut up.”

Most Wanted

Braddock appears in only eight episodes. He’s captured by Germans in two, making him (by percentage) the most wanted squad member.
Kirby was arrested by the U.S. Army as often as Braddock was captured by Germans.
Hanley holds the record for most captures in a single episode. In “Escape from Nowhere,” he is captured three times: by Germans, by British, and by a pack of gun-toting French children.

The Cost of Quality

The two-part episode “Hills Are for Heroes” took 21 days to shoot and went $300,000 over budget (twice the usual budget).

The Wisdom of William G. Kirby

Caje: The coward dies a thousand deaths, a hero dies but one.
Kirby: That’s about all it takes, ain’t it?

“Fly Away Home”

Kirby: If the army expects me to crawl around these dirty, damp caves, the least they can do is turn their back if I want to use a little alcohol for medicinal purposes. A fellow could catch his death of cold in a place like this.

“Night Patrol”

Hanley: You know what to do if the Germans attack?
Kirby: Yes, sir. Panic.

“Weep No More”

See more Kirbyisms.

Favorite Bloopers

In the episode “The Impostor,” Rick Jason calls Littlejohn by the actor’s real name. Check out the episode and listen for our favorite blooper, as Rick says “Peabody, take the point.”
In “Ambush,” one of the dead Germans lying face down in the water lifts his head to take a breath. This episode also features a shots of one of the tech people following after the German artillery piece.

Caje is often filmed wearing a wedding ring. It’s easily visible in “The Raider” and “Run, Sheep, Run,” among others. There’s a great closeup of it in “The Ringer.”
During Saunders’ dramatic farewell to the young French boy in the conclusion of “What Are the Bugles Blowin' For,” contemporary traffic whizzes by in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.

Blue Lindy has taken the initiative to annotate those, shall we say, less-than-perfect moments. Want to know which episodes contain such gems as '60s-style traffic in the background? Check out the current list of bloopers.

The Combat! Hour

Combat! originally aired Tuesday nights on ABC. Check this link to see its original competition.

They Were Expendable

Walt Davis and Paul Busch appeared in more episodes than some of the regular cast members.
On at least one occasion, one expendable was in an American uniform shooting Germans in the morning, and by afternoon changed into a German uniform so he could shoot himself!
In Combat’s five seasons, 118 men of King Company’s second platoon were shown killed in action. These valiant men selflessly laid down their lives so that the plot could advance.
Linda Schweitzer (aka Blue Lindy) has assembled a list of those valiant men who gave their blood, and sometimes their lives, so that the plot might progress.
One "expendable" appeared frequently, but rarely received billing in the credits (though he is incorrectly credited in the episode "Nightmare on the Red Ball Run"). Bill Jensen and Don Symonds have assembled a list of all sightings of this extra, once known to us only as MFE/WHN (My Favorite Extra/What's His Name), but now forever honored in the King Company Archives as the one, the only, Walt Davis.

Who’s On First

How did they decide who appears first each week in the opening credits? This is the most frequently asked question among Combat! fans. The contracts of Rick Jason and Vic Morrow stipulated that each would receive equal equal billing. In the course of a season, each should have received top billing half the time, regardless of how many episodes each starred in. At the end of the series, each had received top billing exactly 76 times. Thank you to Jill Pochek who has compiled a list of opening credits for all 152 "Combat!" episodes.