Is wheat in Iowa ripe in early June?

Rating: Null/10 (15 May 1999)

This is the first movie I've seen that Tom Hanks handled remotely well. Many things made it better than most war movies, but the final shoot-out was just like any other war movie. Would all those guys really have been out there without helmets? Did they have to take them off so we could tell which character was which?
I know the English will be upset that there was no reference to the other nations taking part mostly because they ignore even the Scottish in their view of THE war between Germany and England, but that's no excuse for Spielberg to leave out any reference to the many other nations taking part. We don't have to have a whole series of characters but they could have been mentioned in the dialogue. Some of the Irish soldiers used as extras could have been Australians or Canadians or whatever.
Seems like there was good reason to leave out the smoke on the beach but did it have to be replaced with the numerous fires that continued to burn during the pouring rain?
The character of the corporal was well written and acted and the morphing at the end was good, but I would have liked it more if geographical and historical details had been more accurate and the laws of physics hadn't been ignored.