Captain Turner
Captain Turner was an American from Troy, New York. When he was a child, his father, an oil well worker, was killed in a well fire. At the time, he later claimed, he could think of nothing but blowing up every oil well he could find in revenge. He later evened out. During World War II, Turner was a US Army Demolitions officer and saboteur. His specialty was blowing up dams behind enemy lines, earning him the nickname "The Dam Buster."
In 1944, he and five of his men were selected to carry out Operation Dam. He and his men - Arnie, Yates, Santelli, Ricci and Lombardi - along with a partisan guide named Bernardo, parachuted into Nazi-occupied Italy. His codename on the mission was Powderman. They were to meet the Italian partisans led by Scarpi, but one of Scarpi's men had been captured by the Germans and forced to give up the location of the air drop.
German forces led by Captain von Hecht ambushed the Americans as they dropped in. Of the partisans, only Scarpi escaped. All of Turner's men were cut down while Turner himself, having jumped from the plane last, ended up dangling in a tree, knocked unconscious. Von Hecht sent Schwalberg to capture the American, but Turner was found by the group of orphans led by Aldo first. He was unconscious and badly wounded, so the boys kidnapped a German doctor named Bianca and tried to force her to tend to him. When she refused, the boys attempted to rape her. Turner regained consciousness at this point, and stopped them.
After regaining his strength, Turner asked about Scarpi, only to be told by Aldo that he had been killed by the Germans while Turner was out. During his time with the boys, he never told them his name, and so Aldo and the others simply called him "Soldier." Deciding to do the mission solo, Turner enlisted the assistance of the boys to recover his slain team's demo gear from von Hecht's headquarters, and, later, at Aldo's insistence, he trained the children in the use of the MP40 machine gun so they could get revenge against the SS for the massacre of their hometown Reanoto.
Initially, Turner was against the idea, but eventually he conceded when Aldo revealed he'd hidden the detonators for Turner's plastic explosives so the American couldn't blow up the Della Norte Dam only after he helped them wipe out the SS at Reanoto. After the successful raid against Reanoto, Turner decided to replace his slain demolitions team with the boys, and, in return for him helping them get their revenge, they were to help him plant the charges which would destroy the Della Norte Dam. Throughout this, Bianca clashed with Turner over the well-being of the children and accused him of corrupting their innocence. Their argument eventually came to blows when she tried to stab him with scissors and he retaliated by forcing himself on her.
Despite interference from the wily Captain von Hecht, Operation Dam went mostly according to plan even with the children replacing the trained soldiers. The dam was destroyed. However, Silvio was killed by attacking German soldiers, and Carlo was cut down by the crazed Aldo's machine gun fire. Their deaths prompted Turner to destroy all the MP40's the boys had been using and deeply regret what he'd done. When Aldo, unremorseful over having accidentally killed Carlo, also attempted to kill a wounded von Hecht, Turner disarmed the boy and let the other children beat him up in revenge for Carlo's death, before pulling them off of him.
With a column of American trucks approaching, Turner, the surviving children, Bianca and the wounded von Hecht went down to meet them. Suddenly the other boys noticed Aldo wasn't with them. He refused to come, declaring Turner a traitor for not letting him kill von Hecht and for usurping leadership of the group from him. He threw rocks at Turner, but eventually broke down as the enormity of what he'd done to Carlo hit him, and Turner, taking pity of the emotionally shattered boy, scooped him up and carried him to join the others.
