On the weekend of the holiday that honors those who lost their lives serving our country, TCM presents a marathon of movies offering a group portrait of U.S. servicemen and women in all their diversity and humanity.

Our tribute includes the TCM premiere of a series of films from the First Motion Picture Unit, or FMPU, which was formed in 1942 and produced some 400 World War II training, morale-building and propaganda films for the Army Air Force. The Unit was eventually located at Hal Roach Studios in Culver City, CA, which became known as "Fort Roach." The FMPU's first production, Winning Your Wings (1942), a recruiting film narrated by Lt. James Stewart, was credited with winning 150,000 new recruits and won an Oscar® nomination as Best Documentary Short. First Motion Picture Unit (1943), with Ronald Reagan as himself, is a brief documentary explaining the Unit's functions. In Resisting Enemy Interrogation(1944), Oscar®-nominated as Best Documentary Feature, Arthur Kennedy plays an American sergeant captured by Nazis.

Other highlights of our salute to servicemen include Sergeant York (1941), the film biography of World War I hero Alvin C. York as passionately played by Oscar®-winner Gary Cooper; They Were Expendable (1945), a documentary-like drama about America's PT boat squadron in the Philippines during World War II, directed by John Ford and starring that most iconic of war-movie heroes, John Wayne; and Stage Door Canteen (1943, TCM premiere), a touching look at the servicemen and women who found a home away from home in the star-filled Manhattan club during World War II.