The BEST Episodes of Combat!
Every episode ever - ranked by fan votes!
Last Updated: Jan 12, 2022
Network: ABC (US)
This WWII show centered on the lives of the men from King Company. For 5 1/2 years the men of King Co. faced the enemy starting with the landing on Omaha Beach-D Day June 6, 1944. You see how they evolved from a squad of men to a family.
#1 - Hills Are For Heroes (1)
Season 4 - Episode 25 - Aired Mar 1, 1966
This two part Combat! episode is the story of the futility of war as viewed through the eyes of surviving infantrymen. An American division of troops is making an assault all along their lines. Lt. Hanley's platoon is ordered to take a strategic hill that overlooks a needed road, but it is protected by two concrete bunkers with machine guns. Saunders gets hit in the first assault while several other GIs are killed. Hanley finds it almost hopeless with Saunders wounded.
13.00 
#2 - The Little Carousel
Season 3 - Episode 8 - Aired Nov 10, 1964
Despite having just having liberated a French town, Saunders is demoralized and angry. In this emotional episode, he lashes out at a 13-year-old girl whose one ambition is to serve the troops as a nurse. After he gets some sleep, she wins over his heart and gains his support, but she still manages to crosses his line.
12.67 
#3 - The General and the Sergeant
Season 2 - Episode 18 - Aired Jan 14, 1964
John Dehner and Vic Morrow have the title roles, but they play two characters from two wars nearly thirty years apart. Upon liberation of a French village by King Company, French General Armand Bouchard, a veteran of WWI, wants to take command of Saunders' squad. While Bouchard apparently suffers from some form of dementia and is the object of ridicule by some of the villagers, he obviously has personal pride and character.
11.67 
#4 - Gitty
Season 4 - Episode 27 - Aired Mar 15, 1966
Establishing an observation post in a deserted church, Saunders meets the daughter of a German soldier.
11.67 
#5 - Hills Are for Heroes (2)
Season 4 - Episode 26 - Aired Mar 8, 1966
In part 2, things look bleak for the men of King Company, but Lt. Hanley's platoon gets the support of a tank to help take the hill. The tank is destroyed by a German bazooka. Now Hanley plans to use the tank as cover to attack the last German bunker.
11.00 
#6 - Jonah
Season 5 - Episode 24 - Aired Mar 7, 1967
A new replacement, Hank Dolan (Tom Simcox), believes he is bad luck. When things start happening to the others in the squad, they start believing him.
10.50 
#7 - Rescue
Season 2 - Episode 29 - Aired Mar 31, 1964
This episode is all Lt. Hanley in a tightly constructed plot. Concussed during an artillery barrage and separated from his platoon, Hanley starts to come out of his daze to find he is being taken prisoner by an SS soldier. The surprising plot twists start immediately and keep on coming, so one needs to pay attention.
10.33 
#8 - The Party
Season 2 - Episode 15 - Aired Dec 24, 1963
This episode is strictly for laughs. The squad is left in a French village to wait for a ride to meet up with Saunders and Kirby is placed in charge. Three good looking gals smile at our guys as they pass by. Kirby, Caje, and Billy immediately want to delay their ride so they can woo the gals. Three Explosive Ordinance Disposal sergeants already have dates with the gals, and our guys connive to beat the sergeants out of their dates.
10.15 
#9 - Barrage
Season 2 - Episode 13 - Aired Dec 10, 1963
Lt. Hanley orders Sgt. Saunders up a hill to locate German artillery that has eluded all attempts to find and destroy it. But the hill is crowned by a dense ring of machine gun nests, and casualties have mounted. They separate and Saunders is wounded in the leg. He crawls until he falls into an abandoned mine, where he has an unusual encounter with Hans Oberst (Alf Kjellin).
10.14 
#10 - Thunder from the Hill
Season 2 - Episode 14 - Aired Dec 17, 1963
Lt. Hanley and the squad are en route to meet a commander of the Free French Army, but require a guide. Massine (Peter Whitney) is a strong-willed, determined man who has a small band of underground fighters. Before Massine will lead Lt. Hanley to Capt. Boulange, he has an agenda of his own to accomplish, and bends Hanley to his will.
10.12 
#11 - High Named Today
Season 1 - Episode 31 - Aired May 7, 1963
Rob Lawson (Dean Stockwell) joins the squad with the belief that his fate his sealed, and with a reputation as a one-man army. Hanley, Saunders and their men are worried that his reckless bravery will get them all killed.
10.10 
#12 - Ambush
Season 2 - Episode 12 - Aired Dec 3, 1963
When the Americans liberate a town, the French shoot a man for collaborating. His daughter, Marie Marchand (Marisa Pavan), is angry at everyone and leaves town. The Americans soon learn her father was actually an undercover allied agent, and Saunders' squad is sent to find her. Saunders needs her help more than he thought, and must overcome her bitterness.
10.03 
#13 - A Distant Drum
Season 2 - Episode 10 - Aired Nov 19, 1963
A wounded Lt. Hanley is pursued by a squad of Germans, and takes refuge in a French farmhouse at great peril to the mother and daughter living there.
10.00 
#14 - The Good Samaritan
Season 4 - Episode 18 - Aired Jan 11, 1966
Marsini, the sole survivor of a squad, blames Saunders for the fate of his fellows after Saunders could not help because he had orders to keep his position. Marsini volunteers to lead the sergeant on reconnaisance of the same deadly area.
10.00 
#15 - No Trumpets, No Drums
Season 1 - Episode 32 - Aired May 14, 1963
Caje must deal with killing a Frenchman. He does this by turning his attention to the dead man's daughter, shirking his duty and worrying the squad. Sgt. Saunders must find a way to bring Caje back to reality before losing him. Saunders finds what he needs when the town is attacked by the Germans.
9.91 
#16 - The Long Way Home (2)
Season 2 - Episode 5 - Aired Oct 15, 1963
Interred in a German P.O.W. camp, Sgt. Saunders and his squad must find a way to escape before they all die in the hands of SS Capt. Steiner. Billy, who escaped, reaches Lt. Hanley, but no help is coming. Saunders plots a scheme to escape. He convinces Sgt. Akers and his men to work with them.
9.88 
#17 - The Little Jewel
Season 2 - Episode 9 - Aired Nov 12, 1963
Saunders' squad encounters orphan boy Bijou (Michel Petit) gobbling rotted food in a bombed-out village. The squad gives him K-rations and chocolate, but Kirby distrusts him and suspects he is feeding information to the Germans. The squad races to bomb an oil depot. When Caje is captured, they begin to think Kirby may be right.
9.88 
#18 - Vendetta
Season 3 - Episode 2 - Aired Sep 22, 1964
Lt. Hanley and his men are rescued by Greek Colonel Kapsalis and his squadron of fast moving jeeps with mounted machine guns. Kapsalis is a gung-ho, no-holds-barred soldier fighting a personal vendetta against the Germans. He orders Lt. Hanley and his men to join him in an attack. Between actions, he shares his gonzo life philosophy with Hanley.
9.88 
#19 - The Quiet Warrior
Season 1 - Episode 25 - Aired Mar 26, 1963
Lt. Hanley is pulled off the line and sent to London, where he is assigned to a secret mission to aid a French physicist to escape occupied France before the Gestapo captures him. Hanley once spent the summer in France at the family's home and is the only man the scientist will trust - especially since it has been discovered that someone in the French resistance is a double agent.
9.82 
#20 - No Hallelujahs for Glory
Season 1 - Episode 24 - Aired Mar 19, 1963
Saunders resents a cold-hearted, reckless photojournalist (Elizabeth Allen) who accidentally causes a town to believe they are liberated. When the Nazis move in and the resistance workers are exposed, she learns the seriousness of human suffering during war.
9.48 
#21 - The Old Men
Season 4 - Episode 10 - Aired Nov 16, 1965
On patrol to snatch an enemy prisoner, the squad is saddled with three over-aged replacements: an injured vet of the Italian campaign who refuses to accept that he is incapable of fighting as he did as a youth, a homesick family man, and a politician with senatorial ambitions.
9.00 
#22 - Ask Me No Questions
Season 4 - Episode 22 - Aired Feb 8, 1966
Saunders is imprisoned in a German POW compound where a German lieutenant poses as an American POW and learns the locations of key American units.
9.00 
#23 - Bridgehead
Season 2 - Episode 2 - Aired Sep 24, 1963
Hanley orders Saunders and his squad to take a bridge which is guarded by a heavily fortified house. Pvt. Mick Hellar (Nick Adams) is a self-centered, wise-cracking private who only cares about saving his own skin. He reveals that he is a jazz drummer and is soon to be leaving the front to play in an army band entertaining troops and wants to be sure he keeps himself in one piece. The mission demands heavy sacrifices from the squad.
8.89 
#24 - Glow Against the Sky
Season 2 - Episode 8 - Aired Nov 5, 1963
Sgt. Saunders and his squad become trapped in a cellar of a French village as the Germans sweep through and capture the town. Billy Nelson is seriously wounded, delirious, screaming, and endangering the squad. Saunders leaves him in the street in hopes the Germans will take care of him. German Captain Neubauer (Kurt Kreuger) is bent on making Nelson reveal the whereabouts of the squad, as Saunders desperately devises an escape plan.
8.89 
#25 - Gideon's Army
Season 2 - Episode 16 - Aired Dec 31, 1963
Saunders' squad finds a concentration camp occupied by a few starving Poles. In their hurry to flee, the Germans left them behind. The squad has orders to move on, but few of the prisoners are able to walk. A German platoon is approaching. The men's leader begs Saunders to stay and protect them, while their former overseer, also a Pole, wants to walk out with the squad before the prisoners kill him.
8.83