Having already won a screenwriting Oscar for Battleground (1949), Robert Pirosh here came up with an even more uncompromising insight into the terrifying uncertainty and sudden brutality of frontline life. Never one to shy away from violence, director Don Siegel builds steadily towards the pitiless battle sequences by allowing us to get to know the members of the small unit ordered to overpower a German pillbox, whose only hope of survival is to mislead the Germans into believing they are a much more substantial force. Steve McQueen is overly intense and Bob Newhart's comic monologue a mite ill-judged, but James Coburn and the rest of the cast are superb.

World War II drama where the action centers around a single maneuver by a squad of GIs in retaliation against the force of the German Siegfried line. Reese joins a group of weary GIs unexpectedly ordered back into the line when on their way to a rest area. While most of the men withdraw from their positions facing a German pillbox at the far side of a mine-field, half a dozen men are left to protect a wide front. By various ruses, they manage to convince the Germans that a large force is still holding the position. Then Reese leads two of the men in an unauthorized and unsuccessful attack on the pillbox, in which the other two are killed; and when the main platoon returns, he is threatened with court-martial. Rather that face the disgrace, and in an attempt to show he was right, he makes a one-man attack on the pillbox.