Les conducteurs du diable

There is more to war than just the glory boys; 95% of the GIs in WW 2 (and all other wars) are never in the limelight as heroes, but they did more than their fair share of sacrifice. My father was one of those guys. He landed at Normandy, was with the infantry marching to the Hurtgen Forest, and getting overrun in the Battle of the Bulge. He was there for it all. He might not have been a hero in those battles (he was always looking for dry socks), but he was a hero to me. He and thousands of others, such as the men in The Red Ball Express, doing thankless jobs and sacrificing a lot more than just a few days lost sleep. Try driving 30 hours without sleep sometime. An underrated film, very similar to The Sorcerer, and the French film, Wages of Fear, but a bit more traditional. Good viewing.

I'd have to say that this is a very interesting war time movie. It focuses on not the battle front, but the people who were responsible for the supply line behind the battle front.

The soldiers who are mostly rejects from the battle front are assigned to the Red Ball Express the troops comprising 6000 trucks to bring food, ammunition, and fuel.

This is an innocent looking movie, but it taught me the most important lesson of my life. That everything moves on a commerce. That war is a commerce. It's the delivery of the goods to the points of consumption that is everything. Almost nothing else matters, because if soldiers and tanks didn't have ammo and gas, there's no action. Everything in this world is the same way.

This kind of organized mobility decides the outcome of the war. America had good commander to realize this, and tactical minds to put it into action. Nobody was named a hero, but Patton couldn't have done what he did without the Red Ball Express.

This makes the movie one of the most memorable of all war time movies. I really loved it.

This is not my favourite from Budd Boetticher, not his best either, just a common war flick, but speaking of something rather important for US Army just after D Day for logistics matters, because all the French railway nets were destroyed. It had to be told about, I guess not other film did it. That said the cast is OK, with a convincing Jeff Chandler but not as good as in MERRIL'S MARAUDERS for instance. The real Red Ball Express took many Black soldiers who could not fight in regular troops because of racial segregation in US Army during this period. Yes, this story had to be told, but I guess many things, details have been changed from reality.

It's a sad commentary that before the Armed Services were integrated post World War II by President Truman, the Red Ball Express was one of the few that black American soldiers could fully participate in and that one was relatively behind the lines.

Jeff Chandler plays the steely eyed commander of this bunch of formerly civilian truck drivers now chosen as a unit to supply Patton's advancing army with needed fuel. Among the cast is a young Sidney Poitier as one of the drivers. They may have been behind the lines, but the picture clearly shows their participation in the war wasn't an easy street.

Chandler's job is to weld this disparate bunch into a unit and he succeeds despite a lot of racial tension. The cast performs admirably in this picture.

One of the great stories of World War II was the rapid advance across France of Patton's army after the breakout from the Normandy beachhead. He could have never done it without the heroic efforts of the men depicted in this movie. It was Ike's and Patton's secret weapon and this picture an admirable tribute to them.

RED BALL EXPRESS is alright I suppose . It's no masterpiece just a B war movie produced to be shown before a main feature . It involves a bunch of civilian truck drivers drafted into Uncle Sam's army in 1944 and it's those men who keep the allied front lines supplied . It's a rather predictable story of Americans fighting against Germans and where you think the most likable guy in the squad has bought the farm only for them to appear minutes later alive and well . Like I said very predictable

I guess somewhere the producers wanted to point out ( Though this would probably be known to an American audience in 1952 ) why every American war film made at the time always revolved around white American soldiers fighting . This was because the American army was segregated until 1947 and with very few exceptions black Americans didn't serve in the front lines . Despite the producers wanting to speak up fr the Black American war effort it looks painfully dated now since the blacks have lovely singing voices and sing in unison about beating Hitler which comes across as being very stereotypical and highly patronising and I doubt if a studio would be able to get away with this nowadays . Thankfully it serves to remind a wider audience in the 21st Century why war movie GIs are almost always white