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one of the men killed earlier, still holding his Thompson submachine gun lovingly
in his arms. The bridge is destroyed, and the platoon manages to capture the
farm house as well. Then, at exactly noon, Windy, Ward, and the surviving men
wander through the house as Ward fulfills his dream of eating an apple while Tyne
adds another notch to the butt of Rankin’s Tommy- gun.
Reception
Because it was released after the war ended, A Walk in the Sun did not do as well at
the box office as was hoped; having just lived through four savage years of it, Amer-
icans were sick of war— and war films. Most reviews were favorable, but Bosley
Crowther’s assessment in the New York Times was more mea sured. Crowther pro-
nounced A Walk “unquestionably one of the fine, sincere pictures about the war”
but one that “falls considerably short of the cumulative force” of the novel upon
which it was based: “the transcendent bomb- burst of emotion which forms the cli-
max of the book is not achieved” (Crowther, 1946).
Reel History Versus Real History
Due to war time exigencies the U.S. military could supply Milestone’s film with only
a single U.S. Army M3 half- track masquerading (poorly) as a German Sd.Kfz. 251
half- track and a P-51 fighter imitating a German fighter plane. The film gets some
smaller details wrong, for example, the actors keep their helmets on with chinstraps
fastened: a practice shunned by real G.I.s for fear that a strapped-on helmet might
snap a man’s neck if shock waves from a nearby shell explosion pulled it away with
enough force. The film also depicts soldiers pulling out grenade pins with their
teeth. In real ity, strong steel cotter pins made this Hollywood cliché an impossible
feat that would only result in severe dental damage. Sam Fuller, a decorated WWII
veteran (and future director- producer of The Steel Helmet and other war films) found
more egregious violations of verisimilitude. In June 1946 Fuller wrote to Lewis
Milestone to express his “keen disappointment” with A Walk in the Sun. Hoping
A Walk would be a World War II version of Milestone’s superlative All Quiet on the
Western Front, Fuller found the latter movie rife with “shabby forced remarks made
by riflemen,” a lack of suspense, and lots of implausible action: “A bridge? A bridge
six miles from the beach with two Krauts pulling guard duty? On the morning of
the invasion? A house... with Kraut machine- gunners? When the Krauts had
months, years to put up a camouflaged pillbox, move in with women and kids?
A house with Krauts manning a couple of machineguns six miles from the beach the
morning of an invasion? Advance armored recon car tearing through a road, evi-
dently Kraut armor somewhere in the rear— all that hell— and two Kraut guards on
the bridge, goose- stepping. Oh Mr. Milestone!” (Quoted in Cull, 2000, pp. 82–84).
We Were Soldiers (2002)
Synopsis
We Were Soldiers is an American war film that dramatizes the Battle of Ia Drang
in November 1965, during the Vietnam War. Directed by Randall Wallace and