This year's TCM tribute to Memorial Day encompasses four days, more than three dozen combat films set in various eras, and a variety of perspectives on the subject of war. The Red Badge of Courage (1951), based on Stephen Crane's novel and set during the Civil War, stars Audie Murphy as a Yankee soldier who comes to terms with the nature of warfare after believing himself guilty of an act of cowardice. Murphy, in real life the most decorated combat soldier of World War II, plays himself in To Hell and Back (1955), which documents his record of killing more than 240 of the enemy while wounding and capturing many others. Though not set on a battlefield, Alfred Hitchcock's suspenseful Saboteur (1942, TCM premiere) qualifies as a war film since the villain is a Nazi intent on sabotaging American targets including the Statue of Liberty, with hero Robert Cummings in hot pursuit. World War I forms the backdrop for A Farewell to Arms (1932), the first film version of Ernest Hemingway's celebrated novel about the romance between an American soldier and a British nurse. Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes star in roles originally intended for Fredric March and Claudette Colbert.

by Roger Fristoe