In an era when Hollywood and much of Western media relentlessly project an image of American military omnipotence and invincibility, it is worth recalling that the United States has suffered some of the most significant conventional military setbacks in modern history. Arguably the greatest, in conventional terms, was the loss of the Philippines to the Japanese during the opening phases of the Pacific War. What makes this catastrophe especially curious is that, even as the disaster unfolded, American propagandists and filmmakers were already spinning the defeat into a tale of heroic sacrifice. Among the most celebrated of these efforts is They Were Expendable, a 1945 film directed by the legendary John Ford. Though it remains one of the more obscure entries in Ford’s long and distinguished filmography, it is also widely regarded as one of the more realistic and authentic Hollywood depictions of the Second World War. It is a film that asks its audience to accept that sometimes the best a soldier can do is die—or, if lucky, escape—while those left behind are simply written off as expendable.
The film is based on William Lindsay White’s best-selling 1942 novel of the same name, itself inspired by the real exploits of US Navy Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 3, commanded by Lieutenant John D. Bulkeley, who received the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Philippines. In the film, Bulkeley is fictionalised as Lieutenant John “Brick” Brickley, played by Robert Montgomery—himself a US Navy PT boat veteran who had served under the real Bulkeley during the D-Day landings. Montgomery’s performance carries the weary, professional calm of a man who has seen war first-hand, and it provides the emotional anchor for the film’s grim narrative.
The plot opens at Cavite Naval Base in the Philippines in November 1941, just weeks before the outbreak of hostilities. Brickley’s executive officer, Lieutenant “Rusty” Ryan (John Wayne, in a role that allows him to be fallible and vulnerable rather than the usual swaggering hero), is frustrated by the scepticism of the top naval brass regarding the usefulness of PT boats. Convinced that his career in the squadron is a dead end, Ryan prepares a letter requesting a transfer to a destroyer—a move that would have seemed sensible in any peacetime navy. The letter is never sent, for the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor changes everything.
Brickley scrambles his boats out of harbour, engaging Japanese aircraft at sea. They escape unscathed, but upon returning to Cavite they find the base in ruins. The film wastes no time in establishing that the war is going to start very badly for the Americans. With much of the Pacific Fleet crippled at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invasion of the islands is unstoppable. The small force of PT boats is left to delay the inevitable, using their speed for messenger duties or launching hit-and-run attacks on Japanese shipping. The squadron scores some successes—sinking a Japanese cruiser and several smaller vessels—but the cost in lives and boats is high. Ryan is wounded and nearly loses an arm; he is treated in a military hospital, where he falls in love with Navy nurse Lieutenant Sandy Davyss (Donna Reed).
As the American positions become untenable, orders are given to evacuate the top commanders, including General Douglas MacArthur (Robert Barrat), along with their families. Brickley’s squadron is given this task. Upon reaching its destination, the squadron continues a last-ditch campaign of resistance in Mindanao, but loses all three remaining boats—one to accident, one to Japanese bombers, and one commandeered by the Army. By the end, Brickley and Ryan have proven the effectiveness of PT boats and are summoned to Washington to provide advice. They earn the last seats on the final plane out of the Philippines, leaving their comrades to capture or death. The film closes on a note of bitter relief, not triumph.
What distinguishes They Were Expendable from many wartime propaganda films is its startling authenticity. The production was steeped in real naval experience. Ford himself, a captain in the US Navy Reserve, had famously filmed the Battle of Midway for his Oscar-winning documentary. The script was written by Frank “Spig” Wead, Ford’s friend and a pioneering naval aviator, who died two years after the film’s release and whose own life Ford would later chronicle in The Wings of Eagles (1957), again starring John Wayne. The film was made with the full co-operation of the US Navy, which provided equipment including several genuine Higgins PT boats. The Florida locations near Pensacola stood in convincingly for the Philippines, and the sense of place—sweltering heat, narrow harbours, the omnipresent threat of air attack—is conveyed with documentary precision.
Although originally conceived as a wartime morale booster, They Were Expendable is far more honest and realistic than one might expect. It shows the American side in a position of inferiority, suffering defeat after defeat, despite the heroism and occasional minor success of its protagonists. As the film progresses, things only get worse. Of all the main characters, only two manage to fly to safety; the rest are dead, captured, or left to an uncertain fate—including even Reed’s character, whose last scene is a poignant good-bye to Ryan, with no guarantee she will survive the fall of the islands.
The use of authentic PT boats helps Ford reconstruct naval action in a convincingly gritty manner, with minimal special effects. The combat sequences have a sense of cramped, chaotic urgency that larger-budget films often miss. That said, some of the action scenes rely on a slightly repetitive use of stock shots and an overabundance of pyrotechnics. It is also worth noting that post-war analysis of Japanese archives revealed that many of Bulkeley’s claims about the damage his squadron inflicted were exaggerated. Ford’s film, however, takes the claims at face value, which is a minor historical compromise.
Nevertheless, the film holds together quite solidly. It starts slowly, and viewers accustomed to modern pacing may find the opening hour a little languorous. The running time of just over two hours feels long, and the music by Herbert Stothart is unremarkable, leaning heavily on familiar patriotic tunes rather than a distinctive original score.
But the performances are uniformly strong. Montgomery brings a quiet authority to Brickley, while Wayne, often subjected to Ford’s notoriously abusive treatment on set—the director considered Wayne a coward for not enlisting in the war—delivers a surprisingly nuanced portrayal of a man forced to confront his own impotence. Montgomery, by contrast, received favourable treatment from Ford and even stepped in to direct some scenes when the director suffered a minor injury; this experience helped Montgomery launch his own directing career with Lady in the Lake two years later.
They Were Expendable had the misfortune of being completed shortly after the war ended. Contemporary critics praised it, but the public was more focused on peace and wanted to forget the war—especially its most traumatic episodes of military defeat. The film was a box-office failure and has since slipped into relative obscurity, known mainly to Ford completists and students of war cinema. That obscurity is undeserved. It remains one of the most unflinching Hollywood portrayals of defeat, and a powerful reminder that, for all the cinematic mythology of American invincibility, the road to victory often began with a long, bitter retreat.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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