Wrong Medals, Wrong Badges, Sloppy Work
I see that some of the sillier errors have been caught -- however, one has to wonder why Hollywood steadfastly refuses to pay any attention to detail with military plots or characters. Does their disdain, if not outright hatred, for things military really need to extend that far, to the point that they won't blow a couple of dollars to at least hire some ex-soldier off the street as an "advisor," just to catch the more ridiculous errors?
As has already been pointed out in the "goofs" section, the Army Blue Uniform that Ed was wearing to the dance didn't even exist then -- and wouldn't have been worn with a Sam Browne belt even if it did. And that blue & silver combat Infantryman badge (above the rows of ribbons) didn't exist until 1943 or '44. And the OSS didn't even exist at the beginning of WW2 -- Donovan headed the COI, which changed to the OSS in mid-'42.
As near as I can tell, whoever dreamed up Ed's uniform & decorations just reached into a box and pulled out some ribbons that looked good together; they have zero basis in reality. The first one (top left) is either a Meritorious service Medal (created in 1969!) or the Legion of Merit (created in '44 or '45).
The green & white one is clearly the Army Commendation Medal, created just AFTER WW2. I didn't get a good enough look to see if Ed was actually wearing ANYTHING that was kosher for 1941, if just by accident.
The Purple Heart he's wearing (just as WW2 starts) is for combat wounds ... and he looks far too young to have gotten multiple wounds in World War One.
After that, I just tried not to focus on any detail, but I'm sure there were more. The round red, white & blue shoulder patch (Army Ground Forces, later CONARC) that Ed & some others were wearing seems dead wrong, too ... but that group technically existed in March of '42 and I suppose some OSS guys MIGHT have worn those patches just to fuzzy up their actual assignment. Considering the sloppiness in the rest of the military detail, though, I suspect it was just another screwup by some guys just too lazy to check anything.
This stuff probably should be in the Goofs section, too, but I find the process for sticking that in to be way too burdensome and confusing.
Others have criticized the basic plot -- OSS using a non-German-speaking officer behind the lines, or a completely untrained secretary. Well, they have a point, but I spent my adult life in intelligence -- was trained by old OSS veterans in the 1960s and am an amateur historian of that period. The OSS flew by the seat of its pants and often cut corners and took chances if an opportunity arose & it seemed worth the risk. Granted, this wasn't the ideal operation by any means, but floating an agent or two in imperfect circumstances was done plenty of times -- which is why the death rate among OSS people was so high.
All this aside, I actually enjoyed the movie.