By Andrew Good, Assistant Tempo Editor According to the old soldier’s adage, atheists go AWOL whenever foxholes are around. But under the dim shadows of the battlefield, you can’t expect the light of faith to be quite as bright, or shine quite as steadily. Despite his own strong convictions, Corbin Allred was faced with that same conflict in Saints and Soldiers, a new film in which he plays a religious corporal nicknamed “Deacon,” who struggles through a spiritual crisis. The story revolves around the Malmedy Massacre, one of the first American losses in the German offensive known as “The Battle of the Bulge.” After taking dozens of American soldiers captive, the German army guns down most of its prisoners in a snowy field outside of the Belgium town of Malmedy. Deacon and a handful of other prisoners escape into the woods, hoping to discreetly cross enemy lines, re-join their compatriots and bring them crucial information that could save the Allied forces. It would be a simple enough plot if not for Deacon’s haunting visions of dead civilians, and the constant existential prodding of a cynical Army medic named Gould. This turns the track through the frozen wilderness into more than a mission of survival – it becomes a mission to find a reason to survive. Besides the emotional toll demanded of him for the role, Allred worried the story’s glitz would enshroud the solid core of history the film is based on. “I was concerned throughout shooting the film because I wanted so badly for it to be accurate,” Allred said. “I knew that veterans were going to see this film, and I wanted so badly for them to come away feeling like we did it justice, like we told something that was true, that was accurate. So always in the back of my head, I was thinking, ‘I hope this is true, I hope this is how it really was.'” His apprehension seems futile considering director Ryan Little’s infatuation with detail. Little hired the same military advisers employed for Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, and strained his shoestring budget to be able to purchase two genuine German half-track vehicles. Even Allred himself made a contribution to the film’s authenticity: The photograph of the young woman he carries with him throughout the film is in fact his grandmother, and is the same photograph his grandfather carried into battle. “It was not so much just a tribute to my grandfather, but to that entire generation,” Allred said. “It sounds very clich