When I was still at The Grundy Register, I was first introduced to a pair of German immigrants, Bernd Wittneben and Jorg Rochlitzer, who had settled in Wellsburg, of all places — one of the proudest German-American communities in Iowa. They told me they were making a movie. A war movie.

As an aficionado of the genre and a wannabe critic who still frequently claims “Apocalypse Now” as the greatest film ever, I was ecstatic that I might get the opportunity to write about this project, and they even invited me to a trailer shoot in Iowa Falls just a few weeks before I made the jump over to the T-R.

Of course, when we think war movies in America, we think patriotism, heroism and rip roaring action — “Saving Private Ryan” is a frequently cited example — but Bernd and Jorg, both veterans of the German military themselves, let me know very early on that their film, “Reveille,” set during WWII in 1942 in an obscure corner of Italy, would be the exact opposite.

“We really wanted to make an anti-war film by showing the reality of war,” Bernd told me.

Because the film also has Marshalltown connections — MCC students and Conrad natives Dillon Jacobson and Lane Schnathorst were both involved in the production along with their professor Steve Muntz, Grant Gale and some other names I’m probably missing — I’ve been lucky enough to keep following it and writing about it in the year plus I’ve been here. About a week and a half ago, I finally got to sit down and watch it.

Simply put, “Reveille” is a must see for anyone interested in WWII history, war in general or the human psyche when it is pushed to its brink. From the beginning, the details are meticulously researched to a point where 99.9 percent of viewers won’t notice them, but they mattered enough to people like Bernd, Jorg and Writer/Director Michael Akkerman that they were included anyway. Commenting on Netflix’s new adaptation of “All Quiet on the Western Front,” Bernd said he was able to spot numerous historical inaccuracies within minutes of turning it on.

The guns sound real. The atmosphere is drab. The German soldiers are actually speaking German. Interestingly enough (who knew?), the Ozark Mountain area of Missouri resembled northern Italy so closely they were able to film there. While authenticity is important, it has its limits, and anyone who knows anything about war movies probably already knows most of them aren’t shot in the actual locations where the events depicted transpired for a number of reasons.

There are no heroes in this story. Gary Cooper is nowhere to be found. There are men on both the German and American sides doing their best to survive, or, in some cases, begging for death so they won’t have to suffer any longer.

“It feels like the last letter came 100 years ago,” one of the Germans tells his comrade.

Airstrikes force them to spend time together in a cave as Staff Sgt. Walter Brander, Bernd’s character, and one of his young soldiers bleed out together. The German soldiers — along with a Polish conscript — express shock at seeing a real life American Indian for the first time, and they pass around photos of scantily clad women and talk like the men of that era almost certainly did.

There are variations on the classic ragtag bunch of soldiers we’ve seen in a million other movies — the city slicker, the cowboy, etc. — but nothing about “Reveille” feels cliche.

In the end, the men cry together. In a particularly metaphorical moment, an attempted coup de grace to put a dying soldier out of his misery fails, leaving him to suffer ever longer.

I’ve read in a few war memoirs that spending time in a combat zone is about 99 percent unimaginable boredom and one percent of the most intense action a person can possibly experience, and it seems to me that “Reveille” gets this concept right. The men are tired, beaten down physically and mentally and ready to be anywhere other than where they are, and the feeling is universal.

WWII holds a special place in America’s collective psyche as our last clean, heroic war, during which we freed the world from the scourge of the Nazis (with plenty of help from Russia), but, as “Reveille” notes, many of the men fighting for Germany had little affinity for Hitler. Some were even forced in after their armies had been defeated.

I won’t spoil the ending, because I hope the film at some point gets wider distribution and some sort of local premiere like “Little Johnny Jewel” did, but it won’t shock anyone to know it isn’t happy. It’s still the movies — and thus, not reality — but it’s a different kind of movie. It’s the kind of movie that should change the way we think about making war movies, and I’m so proud to know a few of the people involved in it and know that they trusted me to see it for myself.

Keep an eye out for “Reveille,” and please do whatever you can to support this film Renaissance underway in the Marshalltown area.I can’t wait to see what these gentlemen do next.