War

Stanley Kramer’s WW-II character study has Lee Marvin as the Sergeant of a small squad laid over during fighting in Italy.

Members of the French underground resistance, live their “normal” lives during the day, and fight the occupying Nazis in the war-torn Paris after dark. Some will end their lives fighting, and some will find purpose in life once again.

A priest (William Holden) arrives at a mission-post in China accompanied by a young native girl who has joined him along the way. His job is to relieve the existing priest (Clifton Webb), who is now too old and weak to continue with the upkeep of the church. However, Communist soldiers arrive at the mission and seize it as a command post. Their leader rapes the native girl and impregnates her, only later to realise that Communism is no good for him. In the end, the foursome flee to the border, but are pursued by Communist forces along the way.

The island of Ambon in Indonesia, 1945. During the War, the number of Australian POWs on the island had dropped from 1100 to less than 300 due to abuses by their Japanese captors. Capt. Cooper is the chief prosecutor. In a mass grave, the bodies of 300 executed servicemen have been unearthed.

An American newspaperman and his wife, caught in the London blitz, lose their unborn child in an air raid.

It is the Philipines, 1945. The Japanese Imperial Army has been reduced to a ragtag mob hiding in the jungles. Among them is Pvt. Tamura.

While sailing lawfully up the Yangste river in 1949, the British warship Amethyst found its return to the open sea blocked by Communist Chinese shore batteries that unexpectedly opened fire.

Lt. Col. Robert (Dutch) Holland was a third baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals, not a pitcher. While at spring training a B-36 flew over the field and Dutch was standing on third base. Brewster was his third base replacement when he, Dutch was re-called to duty. The movie clearly depicts this.

With her brother killed Sonya is given Turkish captive Mahmud to do the hard work on the farm. After they become fond of each other he strikes a Turkish officer.

In the Atlantic during WWII, a ship and a German U-boat are involved in a battle and both are sunk. The survivors from the ship gather in one of the boats. They are from a variety of backgrounds: an international journalist, a rich businessman, the radio operator, a nurse, a steward, a sailor and an engineer with communist tendencies. Trouble starts when they pull a man out of the water who turns out to be from the U-boat.