A Place to Die

A Place to Die is the twelfth episode of The Gallant Men. It was written by Herman Groves and directed by Charles R. Rondeau. It aired on December 21, 1962.

Plot summary
A patrol led by Benedict comes upon a house in the Italian countryside. Benedict, D’Angelo and Kimbro get closer and find three dead Wehrmacht soldiers, but no signs of activity. An American paratrooper opens the front door and bids the men enter.

The paratrooper is Billy Joe Melford, an Arkansas native who jumped into the area with his platoon. His colleagues were all killed, “some before they hit the ground,” leaving Melford as the sole survivor. Benedict allows him (and a stray dog he befriended) to temporarily join Able Company.

Along the way to the company’s next stop, a German air and artillery attack scatters the men. Benedict, Conley Wright, D’Angelo and Melford are separated from the rest of the company and get cut off by a line of German tanks and trucks. Benedict notes there’s a town nearby, and reasons it will be a safe enough place to hide out until Americans re-take the territory. Melford reveals a disturbing enmity toward Germans and Italians. His two brothers were killed in Sicily, and Melford sees his role in the war as exacting personal revenge for their deaths.

Scoping out the area, Benedict and D’Angelo overhear conversation from an approaching German patrol. They hide to avoid a confrontation. The dog starts barking, and when Melford goes to retrieve the animal, he sees the Germans and opens fire. He, Benedict and D’Angelo manage to kill the seven Germans, but not before the patrol leader fires upon and wounds Melford.

The group, now carrying a radio set taken from a dead German solider, hobbles to a well where they stop, rest and attempt to bandage Melford’s abdominal wound. Katarina, a nun, appears to draw water from the well. She offers her assistance, but Melford is suspicious since Katarina is Italian. The convent’s Mother Superior welcomes the Americans, but warns them the area is heavily patrolled by Germans.

Out of earshot of the others, Melford testily asks Katarina why she is helping him. He again expresses his hatred of Italians because of his brothers’ deaths. Melford rejects Katarina’s offer to get a local doctor, saying he will be treated only by an army doctor.

Using a German radio set D’Angelo picked up, Benedict makes contact with Kimbro. The lieutenant informs him a big American push is in the works. Outside, a German patrol notices a cleaning woman removing bloodied cloths. The Germans get back into their jeep and depart. Melford wrests himself from bed and attempts to shoot the German soldiers, but Katarina stops him.

The terrified cleaning woman tells Benedict, D’Angelo and Wright about her encounter with the patrol. D’Angelo suggests they flee the convent, but Benedict think it’s too risky to move Melford. The convent’s Mother Superior urges the men to stay and says she will invent a cover story to explain the bloody bandages.

Katarina comes downstairs and says Melford’s best chance for survival would come from a doctor’s care. But the town’s doctor is gone and the only nearby medical personnel are German. All agree Melford would not consent to being treated by a German medic.

Wright deduces Katarina has taken a special interest in Melford because the soldier reminds her of someone. Katarina admits she had a brother who drowned two years before, and that her care for Melford is both a way to assuage her guilt over not saving her brother and a test of her fitness as a nun.

An SS officer arrives to follow up on the patrol’s report. Mother Superior tells him the blood came from a nun who accidentally cut herself. Two soldiers enter the convent for a closer look. They do not find the Americans, and the group leaves.

Three hours later, Melford is in pain and barely conscious on a cot in the convent basement. Eyes brimming with tears, the paratrooper tells Katarina he knows he is close to death. Benedict comes downstairs to check on Melford. He says an imminent airstrike will likely obliterate the convent, and that the Americans and the nuns must leave.

Melford knows he will be a burden on the group and asks to be left behind. Benedict acquiesces. As the nuns and the Americans leave the convent, Katarina informs the Mother Superior she will stay behind. She returns to the basement; a delirious Melford thinks she is his hometown girlfriend. Katarina takes his hand and prays as the sound of droning airplane engines grows louder. The bombs begin falling and the convent’s lights go out.

In voiceover, Wright notes the town was completely destroyed.

G-2 Report

 * Billy Ray Melford says his hometown is Pine Hollow, Arkansas. There is no such community, but there is a state natural area that bears the name in Newton County, Arkansas. It is within the Ozark National Forest.
 * The timeframe of this episode is muddled. In act one, Melford tells Wright laurel and dogwood in Arkansas “ought to be poppin’ out all over about now.” In the Deep South, dogwood tends to bloom in late March or early April, and laurel tends to bloom in mid-April. However, Conley Wright's closing narration notes that the climactic aerial bombing happened in the winter of 1943.
 * D’Angelo shows a talent for engineering in this episode. He uses the metal pipes of the convent’s plumbing system to extend the radio set’s transmission and reception.
 * When the German artillery attack forces Able Company to scatter, the footage of men diving for cover is drawn from the 1949 Warner Bros. film A Walk in the Sun. The movie is also set in Italy and follows an Army infantry squad during and after the September 1943 landings at Salerno.
 * This episode marks Robert Fortier's final appearance as Maj. Jergens.
 * This was the last episode of The Gallant Men to air in the series’ original Friday night timeslot. The following week, the show was moved into the Saturday night slot vacated when The Roy Rogers Show was cancelled.
 * If the convent basement looks familiar, it should. The same set was used in “One Moderately Peaceful Sunday.” The basement staircase is also seen in "Some Tears Fall Dry" and the final act of "Robertino." The convent’s anteroom/lobby (seen at 24:16) was used in “One Moderately Peaceful Sunday" and "The Bridge." The abandoned farmhouse where Benedict meets Melford is also seen in "The Warriors."