The United States has been plunged into World War II! Gary Cooper is Dr. Corydon Wassell, a simple doctor from Arkansas, who had in the past worked in China (which is shown in the first half of the film as a series of flashback that details his love affair with the lovley Loraine Day). He now finds himself in 1942 a doctor in the US Navy charged with caring for a dozen badly wounded American soldiers on the island of Java. Suddenly it's clear the Japanese are going to overrun the Island and Wassell is placed in charge of evacuating the wounded! But he is shocked to learn that stretcher cases must be left behind to fend for themselves. The wounded men are full of high spirits and hi-jinks but 60,000 Japs have landed nearby and none of the wounded have any chance to escape. Ignoring his orders to abandon his patients, Wassell launches a desperate plan to care for them with little-to-no resources while also leading them through a perilous route where dangers from the jungle and Japanese attack are both ever-present, all in the thin hope they can be evacuated by boat on the other side of the island!

This is the amazing true story of Dr. Corydon Wassell, who in 1942 provided one of the few glimmers of hope as the US floundered in the early states of WW2. President Roosevelt famously told this story via one of his Fireside Chat radio addressees to raise the morale of the nation. As WWII becomes part of 20th Century History, many now sadly look back upon the Hollywood films depicting WWII as over-sentimental and patriotic. But this film is different, it was not about a great Allied victory but an Allied defeat and how one man, an American doctor single-handedly risked his life to save American sailors too injured to be moved during the pending invasion of Java by the advancing Japanese fleet. Gary Cooper did four films with Cecil B. DeMille and this is easily the best of them. Although World War II is now history at the time this film was made, the incidents described were two years old. The Technicolor photography is a big asset in making the war scenes more realistic and the men really look like damaged goods in their bandages and splints--two of whom are played by Paul Kelly and Dennis O'Keefe. O'Keefe shares a wobbly, artificial sub-plot romance with a nurse (Carol Thurston) who looks after him. Ditto for Signe Hasso and Elliot Reid. All of the scenes in the infirmary have an authentic look, thanks to DeMille's eye for detail. DeMille in his autobiography admitted that the romantic flashbacks concerning Dr. Wassell were completely made up. The real Corydon Wassell and his wife were married all the time the action of the film took place.