THE RAT PATROL

 Nope. Not a Goodnight, Fuckers.

I swear.

Do I miss writing them? Yes. Very much so. But nope, this isn't one of those.

But it's gonna feel like it.

Today I finished The Rat Patrol, and it was an excellent series. I disliked the first episode, but I'm glad I stuck with it. It covers a part of WWII that doesn't get talked about much: the battles in North Africa.

But since I watched the end of Dark Shadows I've found myself wondering what happens to characters of a classic show after it goes off the air. Sam Hall gave a synopsis of what would have come next if Dark Shadows had been allowed to continue, so I found myself wondering what happened to these guys after the war. (Assuming, of course, they got to go home.)

Jack Moffitt

(Incidentally, the actor who played Moffitt had a role on House of the Dragon, so it's good to see he's still alive and kicking.)

Judging by a couple of episodes, I'd say that Moffitt is a romantic, but based on some of the decisions he's made over the two years of the show, I'd also say that he tries to suppress that part of him. I think he went back home to England, where he tried to have a go of a normal life. He married and had a couple of kids, but after his time in North Africa he couldn't get used to business as usual. He didn't find family life rewarding. He needed adventure, so he abandoned his family and moved to France, where he tried to find some of the romance he'd found as a spy (as depicted in one episode). He didn't succeed, and many years later his kids tracked him down and held him to account for what he did to their poor mother. He felt legitimately bad about it, and he tried to make it right, but his kids, now adults, couldn't bring themselves to trust him. He moved back to England, where he died an old man who spent most of his time in the pub, drinking what he had last week, as the song says.

Mark Hitchcock

(I'm almost certain this character was the main influence for Breaker from the 'Eighties GI Joe comics. He even blew bubble gum like Breaker did.)

I think Hitch partied like an animal when he got back to the US. Lots of drunken brawls and sex, probably often in the same night. I think he got thrown in a city jail a couple of times, but they always let him slide because he killed so many Nazis. And make no mistake, he killed a shit-ton of Nazis on the show. But eventually the fun had to stop, and he settled down with a wife and kids, and he came to be disgusted with the war, so he never talked about it ever again. When he died of cancer in the early 'Aughts, no one truly knew the extent of his service, but he was given a hero's burial in Arlington.

Tully Pettigrew

Tully is still alive today. He goes out to all the WWII reunions, even though there are fewer and fewer of his fellow soldiers each year. He goes to the local war memorial and traces the names of friends who never came home, people he misses to this day. He's quiet about what he did there, and he tried to get Hitch to see sense and not destroy his life the way he was doing. But all told, he handled his memories the best of anyone on the Rat Patrol, even . . . well, we'll get to him in a moment. Ish.

Sam Troy

Troy went home to his family, surprised by how his sons had grown so much while he was gone. All the same, he missed North Africa. He'd been good at his job, and while he did all right as a contractor back home, he could never quite get the hang of it. It horrified him that he came home, and his brother (seen in one episode) didn't. He blamed himself for not being his brother's keeper. He smoked too much. Drank too much. And eventually his habits caught up with him. Like the actor who played him, he died of a heart attack in the early 'Eighties.

Which brings us to . . .

Hans Dietrich

. . . the villain. Villains are always fun to think about. If you've written them correctly, the readers or viewers will identify with them, up to a point. The best villains have relatable POVs. They're good people who have made tremendously bad decisions, so many of them until they've twisted themselves into bad guys. So naturally I let myself think of his story a lot more than the other guys. And it's a doozy.

In fact, I enjoyed the process so much I'm not going to write about it here. Instead I'm just going to write the story. I've already started structuring it in my head to the point where I've written down some of the points I want to make. How would a Nazi, who gave everything to an empire he thought was noble but turns out to be a sham, end up? I remember clearly the episode where he finds out about the Final Solution, and it horrifies him. It disgusts him.

Yet he doesn't stop fighting. At the same time, he finds himself siding more and more with Troy and the others in the Rat Patrol. How many times did he turn against his superiors after he found out the truth about the Nazi regime? How many times did he save Troy's life?

What would a man like that turn into after the war?

I guess you'll find out when I get the time to write this one.