The Rat Patrol

The British 8th Army sends their desert expert -- Jack Moffitt -- to the Rat Patrol for one very special mission. But Sergeant Troy (the American head of the unit) is very uneasy about this new addition. Moffitt tells Troy that the Germans have buried ammunition and petrol at an abandoned oasis which only the Afrika Korps knows about. It's up to the Rat Patrol to find this oasis and destroy the cache before the Germans can reach it. Dietrich -- familiar with the Rat Patrol's tricks -- devises a trap wherein he will follow the Patrol to the oasis. The Rat Patrol gets delayed, though, by a broken axle and, in the end, it is a race between them and Dietrich to see who will reach the supplies first.

During a desert battle, Hitchcock is badly wounded. Troy decides to risk taking him to a nearby German field hospital as their own hospital is too far away. Upon arriving at the hospital he and Moffitt nearly pull off the masquerade, except for a paranoid patient -- Captain Friedrich -- who tells everyone they are American spies. No one believes him but during the delay the doctor notices a tattoo on Hitch's arm from Ft. Benning, Ga. Troy forces him, at gunpoint, to finish the operation. They escape in a hail of gunfire after the surgery.

As a prequel to capturing General Ernest von Helmreich, the Rat Patrol gets itself captured. They plan to use the general to stop an upcoming attack. However the general manages to attract the attention of a distant Nazi search party and the Rat Patrol ends up trapped in a ravine, cut off. To escape they construct a ""fake panzer unit"" of their own -- tricking the Germans into a retreat. They then make it to the largest of the Germans' ammo dumps which they proceed to blow up.