User Reviews

In this episode, two foreign legion officers agree to settle a "Matter of Honour" with a traditional pistol duel. One the officers fires hastily and misses. The other officer asks if the rules set any time limit for him to return fire. Seem the "Code Duello" doesn't cover that, so he decides to walk off the field of honor and save his shot for some other time. Years later, the two officers meet at a typical "Beau Geste" fort in the desert surrounded by hostile Arabs. The officer who didn't fire still has his loaded dueling pistol with him. As it is unlikely anyone will ever see this episode, I will give away the ending. As the Arabs come over the fortress walls, and massacre is a certainty, the officer pulls out his dueling pistol and fires, killing the other officer. Host Merle Oberon then explains, that, as the entire garrison was killed, no one knows if the officer shot his opponent in a last act of spite, or in a gesture of mercy to save him from the very unpleasant death he would have at the hands of the Arab women. I only saw a few episodes of this series 50 years ago, understood even fewer at age 10, and remember only this one.