A World War I British Army patrol is crossing the Mesopotamian desert when their commanding officer, the only one who knows their destination, is killed by the bullet of unseen bandits. The patrol's sergeant keeps them heading north on the assumption that they will hit their brigade. They stop for the night at an oasis and awaken the next morning to find their horses stolen, their sentry dead, the oasis surrounded and survival difficult.
The Lost Patrol is a 1934 American pre-Code war film by RKO, directed and produced by John Ford, with Merian C. Cooper as executive producer and Cliff Reid as associate producer from a screenplay by Dudley Nichols from the 1927 novel Patrol by Philip MacDonald. Max Steiner provided the Oscar-nominated score. The film, a remake of a 1929 British silent film, starred Victor McLaglen, Boris Karloff, Wallace Ford, Reginald Denny, J. M. Kerrigan and Alan Hale.
