I hope that it wasn't. If so, the general and the colonel were terrible tacticians. The town, and especially the tower, would have been pre-planned artillery targets with absolutely no need for the Germans to send in tanks nor ground troops. That open field around the abandoned building was surrounded by woods. A Forward Observer and a security team would have sufficed. On the other hand, the acting was done by pros.

@@GeneRoberts1961 : Well, obviously a lot of what’s in the film has been interpreted with very generous dollops of artistic license, it would seem & consistent with other British films of the postwar action or war genre!! I am also quite sure too, that the disused water tower (Observation Post) as depicted in this film, within the defended “farm buildings,” would have been the first of the tactical targets on the German’s list, of either their Krups’-88s artillery units, or as well as MG 34 machine gun teams firing high-arced fusillades at or around the tower & its base! Otherwise, either Wehrmacht infantry, mortar teams would have surely previously zeroed into the structure & destroyed it with a few well-aimed rounds already! However, these such superfluous things notwithstanding, for a 1957 Shepperton or Boreham Woods studios’ film &/or their ilk, it wasn’t a bad film & both Leo Genn & Michael Medway played their parts in it well! Interestingly, as well as being a leading actor for the stage & the ‘big screen,’ Leo Genn was also a qualified & practicing lawyer before the war in London, prior to him then subsequently turning to an acting career, & who had actively taken part in, during his war service, even notably attaining the rank of Lt. Col. in the Royal Artillery by 1943! Before being temporarily seconded to participate in the part/role of “Constable of France,” in Laurence Olivier’s epic wartime film adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Henry V.” He served before at home & later in both in the Army’s NW European Campaign (1944-45) being awarded the French ‘Croix de Guerre” & afterwards also participated in the the British Army’s legal trials & prosecutions of Nazi War Criminals from the ‘Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp’ & elsewhere at their tribunals held at Lueneberg in Lower Saxony from 1945-49, as a prosecution lawyer & court adviser then too!

Yes, and they are impressively protected. Look up Asian and African herds online.

Same here!