The Ben Engel Story

Long before Kevin Spacey played him, Clu Gallegar did. Only this time the meaning of the limp is explained and the story has a commentary on war, war heroes and greed. The best Wagon Train episode I can think of.

Clu Gulager and John Doucette who both made several Wagon Train episodes are together in this story with Doucette in the title role. Doucette did something that got Grover Cleveland in a political jackpot , he paid a substitute to fight for him. One could do that during the Civil War. Doucette was three days short of 45 when the draft was instituted, a wealthy merchant with no family. He pays Gulager to substitute and Gulager goes on to be a hero with a medal from the Wilderness campaign. What their relationship is and its dynamics is the crux of this episode.

I could identify with Doucette. My granduncle, my grandmother's brother was 44 and unmarried and he had in fact served in World War I. He got a draft notice for the second war. You can imagine it upset him., fortunately he stayed stateside during WW2. Doucette was 3 days short of 45.

Gulager is married and his pregnant wife Katherine Crawford stayed with Doucette during the war and gave birth to their child who grew up to be Darby Hinton.

Gulager is one of those amoral and irretrievably evil people. He really enjoyed the war, he could kill legally. Some are like that. He also had a bad leg and walked with a limp. But physical standards weren't quite as high back in the day. Sergeant Boston Corbett who shot John Wilkes Booth in that burning barn where he was cornered had castrated himself and the Union Army took him, he even enlisted.

Gulager's performance will really creep you out. This is a Wagon Train episode with no happy ending other than the world was better off without Clu Gulager.