Boast Not of Tomorrow

Boast Not of Tomorrow is the fifteenth episode of The Gallant Men. It was written by Ken Pettus and directed by Charles R. Rondeau. It aired on January 12, 1963.

Plot summary
Lt. Dan Latham and his men are pinned down by German fire with no good options for escape. At the command post, Benedict hopes Latham stays put until nightfall, when extricating the squad will be safer. Battalion unexpectedly orders Able Company off the front lines; Benedict, Gibson and Wright are visibly relieved. But before the group can truly relax, German mortars begin raining down on Latham’s group. A radio message from Wziecewski informs them that Latham was killed.

Going through Latham’s personal effects, Benedict and Wright discover the lieutenant planned to marry an Army nurse, Lt. Diane Kirkland. When Able arrives for its respite in Naples, Benedict pays a visit to the military hospital. He tells Kirkland that Latham is officially missing in action, but feared dead. Kirkland hurriedly leaves the room.

At the end of Kirkland’s shift, Benedict meets her outside the hospital and invites her for a drink. When she protests, Benedict brings up her abrupt behavior and insists she join him for a drink. She acquiesces. At the bar, he insists they talk about Latham, though Kirkland finds Benedict’s attitude intrusive and unwelcome. Kirkland says she and Latham have an uneven history that Benedict wouldn’t understand. She tells him off and leaves the bar, but the captain pursues her and apologizes. He then asks her out on a date.

That evening, as Kirkland assists with an operation and Benedict waits in the bar, D’Angelo, McKenna, Hanson and Lucavich arrive at a back alley craps game D’Angelo is fired up about. McKenna, skeptical of the whole thing, holds the money as an honest neutral party. D’Angelo goes on a winning streak, but the sergeant running the game accuses him of using loaded dice. The accusations quickly escalate into fisticuffs, and MPs are summoned. McKenna hustles the Able men out of the room and they dodge the MPs. The group hurries into the café where Benedict has been waiting for Kirkland. When the MPs arrive, Benedict quickly deduces what happened and convinces the policemen to leave. But the MPs also take D’Angelo’s winnings, much to the private’s chagrin.

Kirkland meets Benedict on his way out the café and accepts his offer for a date, with conditions: That they pretend they’ve never heard of Dan Latham, and to forget about their earlier argument. Benedict agrees, and they kiss in his jeep. The two go to a bar, flirt and dance. They decide to leave, and on a rural road outside Naples, they encounter a civilian who says his daughter is having a difficult childbirth. Benedict drops Kirkland and the man off at his house and drives into town to get a doctor.

The next morning, the baby is born, but the mother does not look good. Benedict and the girl’s father arrive with the village doctor. He quickly discovers she is dead. The ordeal deeply upsets Kirkland, but Benedict says the situation has nothing to do with them and chastises her for being scared and angry. He lectures her about being a woman and presses her to make a commitment to him, but she refuses.

Able returns to the battlefield. German and American artillery fire upon each other. Battalion orders the company into territory being opened up as the Germans retreat. As the company struggles with street firefights and German snipers, Kimbro radios Benedict with surprising news: Lt. Latham has been found alive.

Latham tells the men his survival story, and says he needs to get to Naples to see Kirkland. Benedict informs him Kirkland transferred to another unit, but he promises to let the nurse know Latham is alive. The captain drives to a field hospital to talk with Kirkland, but before he can do so, German shells begin to fall on the camp. Kirkland breaks from fear and leaves the operating tent, seemingly dazed. The attack ends and Kirkland is sedated. The major in charge of the field hospital tells Benedict Kirkland “stretched her nerves as far they’d stretch” and says she’ll be sent back to the U.S. for recuperation.

Latham arrives at the field hospital, but Benedict asks for a few minutes alone with Kirkland. He waves away her assertion that she’s not in love with Latham. She immediately brightens when told that he is alive. Benedict counsels her to let herself love Latham and to not disclose their tryst to him. Benedict accepts the end of whatever it was he and Kirkland were doing, and leaves the field hospital.

G-2 Report

 * The episode contains two explicit references to Christian scripture: Wright’s opening narration quotes from Ecclesiastes (3:1-8) and the title is drawn from Proverbs (27:1).
 * Though he had never appeared on-camera before, Lt. Latham is one of the four lieutenants under Benedict’s command in Able Company. In the cold open, Benedict and Wright describe him as cautious, and say he joined Able Company only three weeks prior to the events of this episode. Though he survives and recovers, he is never seen again.
 * In this episode, Pvt. Wziecewski is Latham’s radio operator. Oddly, his line, “Lieutenant Latham, we’re out of range of the CP!” does not match the actor’s mouth movement.
 * This episode contains another example of Benedict’s harsh and highly variable behavior toward women. In the first act, he holds Kirkland responsible for Latham’s death, which is speculative. He makes up his mind about a situation he doesn’t understand, ostensibly out of concern for Lt. Latham, then he asks out the man’s fiancé! By the second act he seems to have forgotten about Latham and is clearly enamored of Kirkland. Characteristically, Benedict vacillates wildly among tenderness, condescension and smug domineering, often within the same scene.
 * “Baby Face,” the song D’Angelo belts in Café Lorenzo, was written in 1926 and became an instant hit. When McKenna asks him to play an Irish song, D’Angelo complies with “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” a song written in 1912, when romantic tunes about Ireland were popular in the U.S. and Great Britain.
 * Benedict mentions taking Kirkland to Sorrento, a resort town on the southern shore of the Gulf of Naples. In the third act, he says the Germans are pulling out of “Trimiti,” which must be a geographical error in the script or a mispronunciation by William Benedict. Trimiti is an archipelago in the Adriatic Sea, off Italy’s eastern coast. He may have meant “Tramonti,” a rugged area south of Naples. Episode writer Ken Pettus typically ignores geographic reality in his scripts (see "A Taste of Peace"). At any rate, German forces cleared out of the Tramonti region in late 1943 and so would not have been present when Able Company was in the area (Wright's narration says only that the episode takes place in winter 1943-44).
 * The exterior shot of the farmhouse housing the CP was also seen in “Robertino.” The house where the Italian man and his daughter live is also seen in “The Warriors.” The well outside the house is seen in numerous episodes. The rocky hillside the Germans surmount in the final act is the same one seen in “And the End of Evil Things” and “Signals for an End Run.” The bombed-out village is seen in multiple episodes.