Usually, when you see me designating the year of a movie’s production in the title of a review, it is because it is either an original that was remade, or the remake itself.  This is not always the case as with the 1943 and the 2005 films bearing the title Sahara.  The first is about a lone tank surviving in the wastes of the eponymous desert, and the other has something to do with finding Confederate gold in the same place.  I am not sure if the latter of those is as absurd as it sounds, though I do recall seeing it in the theaters.  I must have deleted from my brain just as quickly because I can tell you little about it.  Perhaps one day I will get around to covering it for The Legionnaire.  Whatever it is, I am sure it does not have as solid connections to Faith as does the 1943 version of Sahara, which I will be addressing today.

On a wrecked battlefield somewhere above the Sahara Desert in North Africa sits a lone American tank.  One of its crew, Jimmy Doyle (Dan Duryea), gets a message over the radio that they are supposed to be retreating.  He reports to Sergeant Joe Gunn (Humphrey Bogart), the crew leader, that the Germans are pressing in on all sides, leaving just one direction of escape: south.  This means venturing into the vast tracks of sand dunes and little else of the eponymous wastelands.  Before commencing their trek in earnest, they come across a field hospital of the British Army run by Captain Jason Halliday (Richard Aherne), with a few healthy soldiers left.  They are initially reluctant to join the tank in the retreat, but eventually relent and climb aboard.  There is also a question of overall command when it comes time to conserve water. Sergeant Gunn demands that everyone hand over their canteens to him for rationing.  The soldiers’ gripes are swiftly overridden by Captain Halliday, who defers to Sergeant Gunn as the tank commander.  Water, though, is going to be a primary concern when it comes to their movements.  The still incredulous British infantry wonder if Sergeant Gunn will be able to make moisture spring from a rock ala Moses.  While they are all hoping for a miracle, the main one is for them to return to friendly lines before they die of thirst.  Sergeant Gunn believes they can make it on the tank, loaded as it is.  A decision must be made, though, when they encounter Sergeant Major Tambul (Rex Ingram), a Sudanese soldier escorting an Italian prisoner named Giuseppe (J. Carrol Naish) through the desert.  Sergeant Gunn is happy to give Sergeant Major Tambul a lift, but he is inclined to abandon Giuseppe to the desert.  They do not go far, however, before Sergeant Gunn has a change of heart and they stop for their enemy.  That is what this Catholic would call being a Good Samaritan.  They continue the charitable work, in a sort of roundabout way, when they take in a downed German fighter pilot, Captain von Schletow (Kurt Kreuger).  With their motley crew assembled, they make their way from one dried up well to another at Sergeant Major Tambul’s direction.  Though the second one appears as dusty as the first, Sergeant Major Tambul climbs down into it and finds a small trickle.  It looks as if Sergeant Gunn is a sort of Moses, leading his people to the promised land.  With the tank being buried in a sand storm and needing to be dug out, there is little else to do but wait while the scant flow fills their buckets and canteens.  Unfortunately, their liquid supply stops coming forth just as they are spotted by a stray German half-track.  They manage to take two of them prisoners and learn that there is a large German detachment heading their way.  The initial thought is to run while there is still time.  While Sergeant Gunn does not put it in Christian terms (far from it, actually), after some thought he decides to stand and fight, potentially laying down his life for the sake of the rest of his comrades.  Jesus did say there is nothing greater a person can do.  The rest volunteer to stay with him, preparing a defense against a force that outnumbers them fifty to one.  Meanwhile, Sergeant Gunn’s other American crewmember, “Waco” Hoyt (Bruce Bennett), is sent to find the British Army and bring back help.  The one potential snag in their new found act of bravery is Captain von Schletow.  While Giuseppe has come over to the Allied side, the German pilot remains staunchly fascist and attempts to thwart their plan.  That scheme, by the way, aside from their weapons, is to trick the Germans into thinking they have all the water one could need.  When the Germans first arrive, Sergeant Gunn offers them access to it in exchange for them throwing down their weapons.  The Germans are tempted since they are out of water, but decide to fight anyway.  Over the course of a couple of days, eight men hold off five hundred, but are slowly whittled down to just Sergeant Gunn and the sole British soldier left, Osmond “Ozzie” Bates (Patrick O’Moore).  As their enemies move en masse one last time towards their lines, Ozzie and Sergeant Gunn brace themselves for the ultimate sacrifice.  Instead, they are greeted by a defeated group of men who frantically make their way to a miraculously full well.  As for Waco, he is found half submerged in a sand dune by a trio of British soldiers.  They are able to save him and take him with them as they join with the rest of the army.  Not long thereafter, they are greeted by Ozzie and Sergeant Gunn in their tank guiding a body of German prisoners.  With this, our tale comes to a close.

Because the sanctity of life is such a key tenet of Catholicism, it is refreshing to see Sergeant Gunn take it seriously in Sahara.  Most of the time, this thinking is applied to the issue of abortion, and Catholics do not (or should not) shy away from the pro-life label.  Taken simply for what those words mean, they can be applied to saving enemy combatants from whatever fate an unforgiving climate like the desert can hold for us frail humans.  The Church and the Bible would agree, telling us that we must love everyone, including our enemies.  War makes following that principle tricky, which makes one appreciate further when Sergeant Gunn and the German battalion commander, Major Hans von Falken (John Wengraf), exchange opportunities for the other side to surrender.  Both sides are bluffing, though perhaps Sergeant Gunn’s men have the weaker position.  What the movie does to get around the trickiness of wanting peace in the midst of armed conflict is painting the Germans as evil Nazis.  Nazism was, and is, evil, a despicable scourge upon humanity that we are still dealing with to this day.  Even the Bible would tell you that standing up to such threats with violence, if unavoidable, is acceptable.  It is not ideal, but that is the nature of war for you.  The film also does something to make the Nazis appear even more terrible and needing to be fought.  Captain von Schletow will have nothing to do with Sergeant Major Tambul, spouting ignorant Nazi propaganda about the inferiority of Sergeant Major Tambul’s race.  It is Sergeant Major Tambul, in a moment of one might call poetic justice, that prevents Captain von Schletow from informing the Germans about the water situation.  God would probably see it differently, but Sergeant Major Tambul’s actions, keeping with the theme of this paragraph, saves lives.  This all comes down to one question, one that theologians have long wrestled with: what are our lives worth?  You can which this film and make calculations.  We are not called to do so, but to simply act, and that is what Sergeant Gun does.

With what I described of Sahara, it is one of those movies that can get you asking yourself what you would do in Sergeant Gunn’s position.  There is no easy answer, and I pray that none of us ever have to make such a decision.  In the meantime, you can have yourself a theological and theoretical exercise by watching a film like this one.  You could certainly do worse.