Actor Ernest Borgnine has stated in interviews that he believed that this film, and Widmark's role of CPO Sam McHale, were the basis of the role of Quentin McHale in Borgnine's 1960's television show McHale's Navy.[4]
Plot
The film's foreword reads:
In the Navy records in Washington, there is an obscure entry reading "Saddles for Gobi." This film is based on the story behind that entry, one of the strangest stories of World War II.
The Navy created a meteorology command in order to provide accurate forecasts for operations in the Pacific War. Lt. Cmdr. Wyatt and CPO Sam McHale are detailed to the most remote station in the Gobi Desert deep inside Inner Mongolia. For McHale, who is fresh off a cruise on "The Big E" and itching to get back on the water, the desert is the last place he wants to be.
One evening, Mongolian nomads led by Kengtu set up camp at the station's oasis. Despite cultural differences, the two groups settle into an uneasy co-existence. Seaman Jenkins, an ex-cowboy, muses that the Mongols would make an excellent cavalry troop. Hoping to persuade the Mongols to join them against the Japanese, McHale requisitions 60 Army-issue saddles. They soon arrive and the Mongols appear delighted. Later, however, Japanese planes bomb and strafe the combined oasis camp, killing Wyatt and several Mongols. When the Mongols abandon the camp, the Americans, now alone and defenseless, begin to evacuate 800 miles east across the Gobi to the sea.
McHale and the men reach an oasis where Chinese traders are camped. There, they encounter Kengtu, who explains he abandoned the station to protect his people from the Japanese "birds in the sky". In return for his followers keeping their saddles, Kengtu offers to escort the Americans to the sea if they disguise themselves in Mongol dress. All goes well until they reach the Japanese-occupied city of Sangchien, China, where Kengtu leads McHale's unit into a trap where they are captured by Japanese soldiers, who transport them to a prisoner-of-war camp on China's coast. There, the officer in charge decides that because they are not in uniform, they will be treated as spies.
However, one of Kengtu's men, Wali-Akhun, allows himself to be arrested while wearing a stolen American uniform. Wali reveals to McHale and his men that Kengtu has arranged for their escape and gives them wire-cutters he smuggled in. That night, they break out and head for the docks, where Kengtu is waiting with a Chinese junk. The wily Kengtu explains to McHale that their capture was a ploy to get the Japanese to transport them to the ocean. They set sail for Okinawa and are later spotted by U.S. Navy patrol planes and rescued. McHale is awarded the Navy Cross, and Kengtu and Wali are flown in an admiral's transport plane to re-join their people. There, McHale and his men present the Mongols with 60 brand-new, navy blue saddle blankets emblazoned with the logo: "The First U.S. Navy Mongolian Calvary".
The film is loosely based on actual events. The weather station in the Gobi was considered the "crown jewel" in the operation because it was in "meteorologically uncharted territory".[5] Instead of the air strike by the Japanese depicted in the film, there was a skirmish 25 miles from the camp which helped to scare off the enemy. The story was dramatized by Edmund G. Love and published in Collier's September 6, 1952 issue.[6]
Though most of the actors playing natives were American, some actual Mongolian phrases made their way into the film.[7]
^Solomon, Aubrey. Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series). Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1989; ISBN978-0-8108-4244-1. p. 248
^"The Top Box Office Hits of 1953", Variety, January 13, 1954
