What happens
Lieutenant Cohill, a young cavalry officer, rides with Captain Brittles, an older commander, across the Western plains in search of Lieutenant Gresham's missing patrol. The company finds the dead men mutilated and scalped, and Cohill argues for pursuit while the captain insists the cavalry's orders are to observe and report rather than fight. Escape is a radio drama series, and this episode, Command, aired on May 26, 1950, with Harry Bartell as Cohill and John Hoyt as Brittles. Night falls on the prairie as the company moves toward a risky position on a mesa, where Cohill is left to hold a fire as bait.
The Old West prairie west of the Platte River, United States cavalry patrol country, the 1850s frontier
Characters: Lieutenant Cohill, Captain Brittles, Sergeant Utterback, Lieutenant Gresham, Coffin, Sarva, Updike, Mitten Dorff
Listen for: The tension between Cohill's urge to attack and Captain Brittles's insistence on standing orders, and the sudden Apache attack at dawn on the mesa
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.