The film was criticized for being too studio-bound.
This is one of few contemporary World War II films to feature an American soldier who was an African-American, played by Kenneth Spencer. As such, the movie was not shown in parts of the American South. The book "The Films of World War II" notes that producer Dore Schary said that letters of complaint were received by the studio.
The NAACP gave MGM two awards for presenting an African-American in an intelligent and sympathetic manner. Dore Schary deliberately did not tell writer Robert Hardy Andrews he was planning to cast an African-American as one of the soldiers, in order to avoid any racial speeches in the script.
The helmets used by the American soldiers in the film are actually WW1 M1917 helmets. By 1941/42 they would in fact be using the M1917a1 helmet, an improved version of the typical doughboy helmet.
MGM paid RKO $6,500 for the right to use scenes from The Lost Patrol (1934) in this movie. In his autobiography, MGM executive Dore Schary refers to this film as a remake of that one. Even though it was only a very loosely made remake, it was a cheap price to preclude a bothersome lawsuit.