Combat! reviews by Jo Davidsmeyer * Episodes rated from 0 to 4 bayonets 

(102) Evasion

RATING:

Guest star Lloyd Bochner

Written by Esther and Bob Mitchell
Directed by John Peyser
First aired 19-Oct-1965
Episode 6 of Season 4

Hanley escapes from a Nazi prison camp and dons a perfectly tailored Albanian uniform. He is thwarted by sharp-eyed Hitler youth with a passion for arcane military uniforms. Fortunately, Hanley is turned over to a better disguised Allied officer, Major Thorne, who is escaping in an authentic German uniform. In their adventures in France, Thorne and Hanley encounter a real Albanian officer, get captured by the Gestapo, and are rescued by an attractive woman. Plus, Hanley demonstrates his PPT skills (beautiful woman variant) to good result. (PPT -- patented pep talk)

REVIEW:

Lloyd Bochner plays Thorne, a stiff-upper-lip, unflappable British intelligence agent who aids Hanley. I find this character type annoying (as does Hanley). But if a story must have an annoying British twit, he might as well be played by a great actor. Bochner does everything but chew the scenery, but does it so "British" that I applaud his tenacity and verve.

Earl Parker performs a great stunt, climbing out a second-story window, crawling down a long rope, and dropping into a river. He also went over a small waterfall doubling for Rick. The stunt work was filmed in Loire, France.

ABOUT FILMING THE EPISODE:

Rick Jason says, "I tell you, where I'm in the water and you see the back of my head wearing a wool cap, I would swear it looked like me. They intercut that at the studio and you cannot tell the difference ... I remember the intercuts. It stuck in my mind, I thought, 'My God, they're good the way they did this stuff.' And you see me going down through the waterfalls but you never see my face, you only see me wearing a wool cap." He didn't know why they wanted him to wear the cap until he saw the episode.

CAST:

Rick Jason as Lt. Hanley
Vic Morrow as Sgt. Saunders [does not appear]

Related reading:

• Aircraft Down!: Evading Capture in World War II Europe by Philip D. Caine. Six real-life evasion stories, with follow-ups on what happened to the evaders and the civilians who helped them.
• Colditz: The Untold Story of World War II's Great Escapes by Henry Chancellor.