Jungle Fighters

Jungle Fighters

Sgt. Mitchem

Cpl. Johnstone

L

Pte. Smith

Pte. Evans

Tojo

Pte. Bamforth

Japanese Sniper (uncredited)

Michael Caine was Peter O'Toole's understudy in the London stage production.

The name of the film derives from the second line of the soldier's song "Bless 'em All" which was originally written in 1917, and which is also known as "The Long and the Short and the Tall".

"A handsome young private lay dying ...", recited by Bamforth, is based on 'The Old Stable Jacket' or 'Tarpaulin Jacket' (words by G. J. Whyte-Melville, music by Charles Coote). Various parodies of the song exist, also including another wartime song, 'The Dying Airman'. The Australian bush poem/ ballad, 'The Dying Stockman' is based on this as well.

In the hut the soldiers' clothes become dry very quickly. Even when Laurence Harvey is wringing his shirt to get the water out, the rest of his clothes are dry. In the jungle during the rainy season, clothes would take hours if not days to dry out.

When the Japanese are firing their machine gun at the patrol it is quite clearly a British Bren gun with the characteristic vertical curved top loading 30 round magazine. The Japanese had MGs with short horizontal stiffer bullet clips that fed in from the side.

Pvt. 'Bammo' Bamforth: [to Macleish] I hope they carve your brother up... I hope they carve your bloody brother up!