This week’s pick salutes World War II’s most decorated hero. Audie L. Murphy stars as himself in the 1955 film To Hell and Back directed by Jesse Hibbs. The film was based on Murphy’s autobiography of the same name.

The film also stars Marshall Thompson (Pvt. Johnson), Charles Drake (Pvt. Brandon), Jack Kelly (Pvt. Kerrigan), Paul Picerni (Pvt. Valentino), Richard Castle (Pvt. Kovak), and Art Aragon (Pvt. Sanchez).

The film opens up as a young Murphy struggles to keep his family’s farm going during the Great Depression. When Murphy’s father deserts the family, young Audie drops out of school in order to work full time and now become the head of the household for his younger siblings and ill mother.

When World War II breaks out, Audie takes the advice of his friend and neighbor to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corp and go career in order to provide for his siblings and older sister due to the death of their mother. Audie is denied due to his small stature and his boyish looks. After being rejected by the Navy and Paratroopers, he enlists in the U.S. Army to become an infantry man in the 3rd Infantry Division, the “Marne Division”.

Audie hits the beaches of North Africa in November 1942 to help the British and Free French forces drive out the German and Italian forces who are being sandwiched into Tunisia by the advancing British 8th Army moving East from Egypt. As soon as he joins the men of the 3rd Division, he is ridiculed due to how young he appears. The men of his squad soon take a liking to him after he’s proven himself, especially Johnson (Thompson), Brandon (Drake), and Kerrigan (Kelly) who become his pals throughout their campaigns together.

After tackling two contemporary classics (The Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre), a few other popular works (In This Our Life, We Were Strangers, Key Largo), and three war documentaries (Report from the Aleutians, Battle of San Pietro, Let There Be Light), in 1951, Huston delved into America’s literary past and adapted Stephen Crane’s 1895 Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage.

Clocking in at a miniscule 69 minutes and starring war hero Audie Murphy, veteran and two-time Pulitzer-Prize-winning cartoonist Bill Mauldin, Andy Devine, Royal Dano, among others, Badge is among the more forgotten than remembered of Huston’s filmography. It’s more or less faithful to the novel, following the young Henry Fleming from his first experience in combat to his flight, his wounding from the rifle butt of a fellow soldier, on up through his final heroics as flag bearer, and seems appropriate for its time, coming relatively soon after the end of World War II.

Almost everyone, Huston included, speaks of Badge as though it was in line to become his next masterpiece had it not been for the meddling studio and their insistence on cuts. Whether that’s true or not, and whether the excised footage had been restored, honestly, I don’t get much of a sense of greatness from Badge.

For one, this is one Huston film where the narration seems wholly unnecessary. Maybe that was a studio decision, but I have yet to read anything that says it was. Huston’s a talented enough director to show everything the narrator mentions, so when he does, it’s overkill. Fleming has just shown the audience he’s brave by carrying the American flag head first into combat, do we really need this ponderously officious voice to confirm it?  And I’m not one of those viewers who dislikes narration in any form, because I usually don’t mind it—just that here it’s repetitive.

The shortness is a detriment as well. Fleming sort of drifts through the narrative hazily wanting to achieve true courage on the battlefield and going from coward to braggart to hero all in the span of around 20 minutes. This is the main focus of the story—to show Henry’s transformation from recruit to warrior, boy to man—but it just sort of happens. The narrator may make some comment about how it was at this or that moment that Henry understood the nature of war or manhood or whatever, but it feels haphazard.