I am sure the director and producers of this World War II film had good intentions when they set out to make this but this is one of the worse and incoherent World War II movie I'd ever seen.
Characters appears and disappears or appear later in the film in a different state with no explanation whatsoever how they got there.
The editing and pacing and structuring of the story is terrible.
Also I question some of the historical accuracy of it. The same U.S. Army squad in this film goes from Sicily to Italy to France to the Battle of the Ardennes in Belgium and then to Germany near the Rhine. I am not so sure about that.
The version I watched was about 150 min.
The original version when it was first released at the theaters in limited screens was 175 min.
I hear there is an even longer version that has since been lost.
I found this .PDF outlining some of the stuff that was edited out but even after reading that, it still seem there is more to it that has gone missing from it.
It has a great cast including George Peppard, George Hamilton, Vince Edwards, Albert Finney, Eli Wallach, Elke Sommer, Romy Schneider, Jeanne Moreau, Melina Mercouri and Peter Fonda - who was nominated for a Golden Globe award in 1964 for 'Most Promising Newcomer - Male' for his role in this film. YET for the life of me I couldn't find his character in the version I watched.
It's a shame! This could had been a great World War II film but still, I have no choice to give it:
