This movie corners the market on realism. When I was a kid back in the 1950's Mom told me about seeing this film in a first run theater in Washington DC in November of 1943. She said the desert scenes were so real that she became very very thirsty and had to get up to get a long drink of water from the water fountain! She loved this movie. She was a Stenographer for the Government on Pennsylvania Avenue and 12th Street. Dad was fighting in Italy at that time...