The year is 1944 and 19-year-old
paratrooper Rod Serling, under
the command of General Douglas
MacArthur, has landed at Bito Beach as
part of the Battle of Leyte, an offensive
intended to take back the Philippines
from the Imperial Japanese Army.
Conditions are punishing, with temperatures
reaching 100 degrees in the day, and torrential
rain turning the ground into, as one newspaper
painted it, “a gumbo of mud”. Soon after, New
York-born Rod Serling has his fi rst brush with
death when a Japanese soldier emerges from
the jungle and points a gun in his face. Quick
as a fl ash, Serling’s fellow grunt, travelling
behind him, shoots the soldier from over
Serling’s shoulder, killing him instantly. “I have
never been so goddamned scared in all my
life,” he would say, years later.
Serling survived that, but shortly after was
wounded when an exploding mortar shell
blasted shrapnel into his wrist and knee. He
was awarded the Purple Heart for his wounds,
and the Bronze Star for his bravery in Leyte. He
never fully recovered from his injuries that day.
For the rest of his life he would wear a knee
brace – a constant, 24/7 reminder to him of
that devastating, memory-scarring war.WORDS STEVE O’BRIENTHE COMPLETE GUIDE TO
ROD SERLING
THERE’S MORE TO ROD SERLING THAN THE TWILIGHT ZONE.
WE CELEBRATE THE WORK AND LIFE OF THE LEGENDARY
WRITER AND PRODUCERIt’s rare to fi nd writers today who lived
the kind of life the word-slingers of Rod
Serling’s generation experienced. Serling saw
death up close every day in the Philippines,
including when one of his own squadron was
decapitated when a food crate, dropped from
a plane above, fell on him. The theme of the
unpredictability of death would be a common
motif of Serling’s writing, along with prejudice,
greed, militarism, conformity and xenophobia.
There’s a burning morality behind Rod Serling’s
work bourne of his experiences in combat. “I
was bitter about everything and at loose ends
when I got out of the service,” he said later. “I
think I turned to writing to get it off my chest.”
“Beyond his desire to share some sense of
the trauma that a combat soldier experiences,
the war left him with an intense distaste for
violence in all forms,” Nicholas Parisi, author of
Rod Serling: His Life, Work And Imagination,
tells SciFiNow. “In his work, there is often an
implication that violence not only destroys those
on the receiving end of it, but that it is spiritually
destructive to those who perpetrate it. The war
also intensifi ed his feeling of nostalgia, his
desire to return to a more innocent time.”
There are few writers in the history of
American television as revered as Rod Serling.
In those fl edgling days of TV, it wasn’t easy
to be an auteur of the small screen. Sponsors
and advertisers had a stiff grip over the
programmes on TV, and most writers with
something to say found the fi ghts too guelling to
ever win. Yet Serling never seemed to lose the
stamina in kicking against the pricks. Maybe it
was his background as a boxer. He’d startedCOMPLETE GUIDE
ROD SERLING
094 | W W W.SCI FI N OW.CO.U KHis time at war fed
into the work.
The year is 1944 and 19-year-old
paratrooper Rod Serling, under
the command of General Douglas
MacArthur, has landed at Bito Beach as
part of the Battle of Leyte, an offensive
intended to take back the Philippines
from the Imperial Japanese Army.
Conditions are punishing, with temperatures
reaching 100 degrees in the day, and torrential
rain turning the ground into, as one newspaper
painted it, “a gumbo of mud”. Soon after, New
York-born Rod Serling has his fi rst brush with
death when a Japanese soldier emerges from
the jungle and points a gun in his face. Quick
as a fl ash, Serling’s fellow grunt, travelling
behind him, shoots the soldier from over
Serling’s shoulder, killing him instantly. “I have
never been so goddamned scared in all my
life,” he would say, years later.
Serling survived that, but shortly after was
wounded when an exploding mortar shell
blasted shrapnel into his wrist and knee. He
was awarded the Purple Heart for his wounds,
and the Bronze Star for his bravery in Leyte. He
never fully recovered from his injuries that day.
For the rest of his life he would wear a knee
brace – a constant, 24/7 reminder to him of
that devastating, memory-scarring war.WORDS STEVE O’BRIENTHE COMPLETE GUIDE TO
ROD SERLING
THERE’S MORE TO ROD SERLING THAN THE TWILIGHT ZONE.
WE CELEBRATE THE WORK AND LIFE OF THE LEGENDARY
WRITER AND PRODUCERIt’s rare to fi nd writers today who lived
the kind of life the word-slingers of Rod
Serling’s generation experienced. Serling saw
death up close every day in the Philippines,
including when one of his own squadron was
decapitated when a food crate, dropped from
a plane above, fell on him. The theme of the
unpredictability of death would be a common
motif of Serling’s writing, along with prejudice,
greed, militarism, conformity and xenophobia.
There’s a burning morality behind Rod Serling’s
work bourne of his experiences in combat. “I
was bitter about everything and at loose ends
when I got out of the service,” he said later. “I
think I turned to writing to get it off my chest.”
“Beyond his desire to share some sense of
the trauma that a combat soldier experiences,
the war left him with an intense distaste for
violence in all forms,” Nicholas Parisi, author of
Rod Serling: His Life, Work And Imagination,
tells SciFiNowSciFiNowSciFiNow. “In his work, there is often an. “In his work, there is often an
implication that violence not only destroys those
on the receiving end of it, but that it is spiritually
destructive to those who perpetrate it. The war
also intensifi ed his feeling of nostalgia, his
desire to return to a more innocent time.”
There are few writers in the history of
American television as revered as Rod Serling.
In those fl edgling days of TV, it wasn’t easy
to be an auteur of the small screen. Sponsors
and advertisers had a stiff grip over the
programmes on TV, and most writers with
something to say found the fi ghts too guelling to
ever win. Yet Serling never seemed to lose the
stamina in kicking against the pricks. Maybe it
was his background as a boxer. He’d startedCOMPLETE GUIDE
ROD SERLING
094 | W W W.SCI FI N OW.CO.U KHis time at war fed
into the work.