Hello from Lyne. My favorite Combat episode is "The Little Carousel". I've also been just initiated into computers and the internet. E-mailing is VERY new to me. The reason why I love this particular Combat story, I guess, is because of Claudine, the little nurse. What a wonderful character! She darts in and out of firefights, bombings and warring zones as bravely as any soldier. She absolutely holds her own in a discussion with Saunders. She sharply notices the inner workings and the problems of those who surround her. Her clothes are torn but she walks with her head held up high with the greatest dignity. What age would you give her? I have a daughter of thirteen and one of fourteen, just about her age. I think Claudine, as a character, speaks well for anyone who is young or female or french or civilian. The other strong point of this story is Morrow. Viewers have been presented with Saunders the soldier, Saunders the seargent, Saunders the older brother, the leader, the young man, the best friend, the warrior.
Here, I think were shown Saunders the human being. He's just put through the entire gamut of emotions and Morrow, in a great performance, brings it all into view. I just love the scene at the end where he's just laying there, wounded, rubbing Claudine's cheek with his thumb. He's a hero, yes. But he's not above drinking up the comfort she's providing him. His eyes seem to be begging her to stay at his side and not leave him. I cried the first time I saw "The Little Carousel". Do you know what? I cried the tenth time, too. That doesn't happen too often. War itself is the real bad guy here. It's there, these people simply deal with it the best they can. This episode stayhs with you a long time.

By Patricia Sewell (Patsewell) on Unrecorded Date:

I agree with you, Lyne. This is one of the episodes you never forget. It has a haunting quality, especially the final scene where Vic Morrow so honestly portrays Saunder's grief over this innocent, young girl's death and the utter senselessness of war.

By Nathaniel Bridger (Nathaniel) on Unrecorded Date:

I find it chilling that the child literally stumbles across an unexploded land mine: it puts a new urgency on all those television images of blind and limbless children hauling themselves along on canes and crutches.....

By Patricia Sewell (Patsewell) on Unrecorded Date:

Nathaniel, not to dispute the truth and importance of what you said about land mines, but wasn't the young girl killed by a booby-trapped plant from which she picked a flower? Or was the flower connected to a land mine in some fashion?

By Lyne Tremblay (Lyne) on Unrecorded Date:

Pat, this is Lyne. I believe that the mine is hooked up to a tripwire of some sort. It is seen for a second or so, no more. It's the very sudden and ONLY warning that viewers ever get that something very bad is about to happen. The actual explosion is heard only. Cage, Saunders and the rest of the men rush back and find the damage already done. But it does relate, I think to what Nathaniel says. Claudine has weaved her way through danger many times during the episode. Saunders has done all he could to protect her, i.e. by sending her away when things could get rough. War has crashed around her character, and actually, she comes out of it unscathed. It is only AFTER the fighting is basically over, during the saunter through the daisies to pick a bouquet, does she die. It does remind me of those images of children who have been horribly, and irrevocably maimed or killed many many months and even years after a civil war has been resolved in their torn countries. You know, to this day, mines remain where they were planted and continue to make innocent victims.

By Patricia Sewell (Patsewell) on Unrecorded Date:

Yes, I'm very aware of that. A New Zealand contact brought that to my attention this past summer. He served as a medic in North Africa and the Middle East. To this day Arab civilians in the desert areas are maimed and killed by unexploded mines.

By Nathaniel Bridger (Nathaniel) on Unrecorded Date:

Actually, I've always thought of Claudine as not a real but an "allegorical" figure--rather like the young lady in the Rose Garden: Claudine is impossibly crisp and clean throughout, and in the end an ordnance blast that would have shredded a "real" little girl does not so much as disturb her wee cap. I'd suggest Claudine actually represents Saunders' lost Innocence--his "inner child", if you wish--whom he has long suppressed but reluctantly comes to recognize, then embrace--with a consequent "total flowering" of his personality. Saunders is forced to repress Innocence again when circumstance demands it, but is eventually reconciled once more to it--only to lose it finally and totally to the ghastly realities of war. A powerful psychological portarit indeed....

By Patricia Sewell (Patsewell) on Unrecorded Date:

Nathaniel, that is quite a theory, and it is one with which I agree.

By Brenda Koehler (Jasmine) on Unrecorded Date:

Great insights, Nathaniel. Claudine could easily double as Saunders' inner child. She mirrors his character uncannily, especially his empathy, his boundless confidence, and his dauntlessness.

By Lyne Tremblay (Lyne) on Unrecorded Date:

You can add my voice to the chorus of agreement here. I didn't so much see Claudine as a "symbol" of his inner child, but as a reflection of the child he himself had been. Saunders doesn't just like her, he identifies completely with her. Isn't it evident in his expression? When he looks at her, he's seeing himself. She mirrors back all of the characteristics which define Saunders; loyalty, pride, bravery, but also, playfulness, youth, hope and optimism. Even stubborness, I think. When she dies, a huge part of Saunders dies also.

By Ginette Carrier (Ginette) on Unrecorded Date:

Bonjour Lyne, Hello to all of you. I did what you told me to do, I register. The first time I watch Combat! I was eleven and the episode I saw was "The Little Carousel". In the past 35 years, I have never seen something who moved me like Saunders and Claudine. I became at that moment a addict of Saunders never mist an episode as long as it went on and I've never been able to see a rerun of that particular episode. I remember almost all of it and I have flashes of tender moment of those blue eyes, those eyes. I think at eleven, I was in love Saunders. I did not understand every thing they said at that moment because I was learning english. But nobody can make me miss my Combat on friday night.I kept for all those years my Combat's cards. When I discover the site of Combat on internet, I was delited when I find out that Combat will be on History. Two days later, I was registering to have the cable install. And I wait for that moment when... And do you know what I would like to do on my birthday July 25th. I would like to sit in front of my tv and watch "THE LITTLE CAROUSEL" and cry like Lyne, even 30 times. OH! no I can there is only 24 hours in a day. But it will be impossible because the episode will air only around august 8th if they follow the syndication. And if my vcr broke... don't want to think of that.

By Aires (Aires) on Unrecorded Date:

I agree, this is one of the touching episodes that tug at your heart. Sgt. Saunder's emotional side was surely exposed in this episode and portrayed so well by the great Vic Morrow.
Applause, applause, applause for this one.

By Louis Vierne on Friday, April 05, 2002 - 02:51 am:

One of the very best episodes ever - proof positive of why everyone in Hollywood wanted to work with Vic - Dick Peabody referred to him many times as "an actor's actor". The mine scene showed the girl (she was absolutey beautiful - I was 14 and in love with her before the episode was over!) approaching the trip wire. The trip wire was attached to a particularly ghoulish type of mine the GI's called a "Bouncing Betty". The tripwire fired a small charge (not enough to hurt anyone) *under* the mine, propelling it straight up. It detonated exactly 3 feet above the ground. This made it, as I think Braddock observed in one episode, "cut you off at the back pocket" (genital region). GI's were terrified of it. I noticed, too, that she was "untouched" by the mine - except for being killed, of course(!). But I think Nathaniel's comment is a brilliant insight - and I agree.