NEW YORK (AP) 鈥 In a famous 鈥淭wilight Zone鈥 episode from the early 1960s, a bloodthirsty World War II commander stationed in the Philippines finds himself transported into the body of a Japanese lieutenant and, to his horror, expected to help kill an entrapped and wounded American platoon.
鈥淲hat you do to those men in the cave, will it shorten the war by a week, by a day, by an hour?鈥 he pleads to a Japanese officer. 鈥滺ow many must die before (we) are satisfied?"
For the show's host and writer, Rod Serling, World War II was a trauma he would re-imagine often.
Serling, born 100 years ago this December, served in the 11th Airborne Division in the Philippines and received a Bronze Star for bravery and a Purple Heart for being wounded. He left the war with lasting physical and emotional scars and, like such fellow veterans as Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut, with a will to find words for what had happened. He wrote war-related scripts for 鈥淧layhouse 90鈥 and other early television drama series and for at least two other 鈥淭wilight Zone鈥 stories, including one in which an Army lieutenant can predict who will die next by looking into his soldiers' faces.
Serling's 鈥淔irst Squad, First Platoon,鈥 a fictionalized take on the war that he worked on and set aside while attending Antioch College, has now been published for the first time. It appears this week in the new edition of which has unearthed pieces by Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and many others. 鈥淔irst Squad, First Platoon鈥 is broken into five vignettes, each dedicated to a fallen peer.
"Serling wrote this story in his early twenties, yet it carries a maturity beyond his years," Strand managing editor Andrew Gulli writes. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a powerful, unvarnished look at war in all its brutality 鈥 an unforgettable study of ordinary people in an extraordinarily hellish situation."
Nicholas Parisi, author of the 2018 biography "Rod Serling: His Life, Work, and Imagination," helped edit the story. Daughters Jodi Serling and Anne Serling each contributed brief forewords. Jodi Serling wrote that the war 鈥渙pened up dark horizons of terror" for her father and left him 鈥済ut-wrenching memories鈥 that influenced his writing and awakened him at night, 鈥渟weating and screaming inconsolably.鈥 Anne Serling told The Associated Press that 鈥淔irst Squad, First Platoon鈥 reminded her of his innocence when he joined the military.
"My reaction was particularly painful because when I read the story, I was writing a memoir about my dad and reading the letters he wrote from training camp before he was sent to the Pacific," she said. 鈥淗e was just barely 18 when he enlisted and sounded like a kid at summer camp in his letters to his parents. He was asking for gum, candy, underwear (because he didn鈥檛 like the GI ones). Like all of the kids we send into the horror of war 鈥 he didn鈥檛 know what was waiting on the other side.鈥
Amy Boyle Johnston, author of the 2015 book 鈥淯nknown Serling,鈥 found the story while looking through Serling's papers at the University of Wisconsin. Serling, who died in 1975, had yet to start a family when he wrote 鈥淔irst Squad, First Platoon.鈥 But he was already thinking about the next generation, including a dedication to his yet-unborn children urging them to remember 鈥渁 semblance of the feeling of a torn limb, a burnt patch of flesh" and 鈥渢he hopeless emptiness of fatigue鈥 were as much part of war as 鈥渦niforms and flags, honor and patriotism.鈥
Parasi says that 鈥淔irst Squad, First Platoon" was an early sign of Serling's ironic touch. One soldier is shot dead as he admires a wooden statuette of Jesus, and another 鈥 a true story 鈥 is killed by a food relief package.
In the opening section of 鈥淔irst Squad,鈥 Cpl. Melvin Levy is introduced as the squad's resident comedian, whose usual barrage of jokes had been silenced by the ongoing starvation that threatened to kill them all. But as Levy slept weakly in the mud, dreaming of pastrami and other treats back home, he is startled by the sound of motors 鈥 airplanes clearly marked as American. Levy shouts with delight as more than 100 heavy boxes of K-rations fall from on high, fatally unaware that one will land right on him.
"The heavy crates were smashing into the earth close to their holes. Men started shouting in alarm," Serling writes. 鈥淟evy just stood where he was, waving his arms and shouting. Sergeant Etherson pulled at him from behind, trying to get him down in a hole. But Levy was oblivious to all around him except the food which poured down.鈥
鈥'It鈥檚 raining chow, boys . . . it鈥檚 raining chow,'鈥 his shrill voice pierced the air."
