The young actors do a wonderful job of expressing the emotional pain and despair of wartime orphans, while retaining the naive exuberance of children pretending to be soldiers. Rock Hudson's character, an unlikely father figure, is impressed by the sincerity of the boys in their quest for revenge, and reluctantly incorporates their enthusiastic assistance into his plan to complete his mission, which was the destruction of a dam held by the Nazi's. The soldier is torn between protecting the boys, and accomplishing his military objective. The resulting conflict is moving, and fascinating to observe.

Thirty years later, knowing that Rock Hudson was gay, there is a meaning behind this story that was much less obvious to earlier audiences. Not that I would describe the film as intensely homo-erotic, but I think that to remove that element from the equation would make a very different sort of statement, and a very different sort of film.

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