He realizes he cannot continue as a priest, due to the overwhelming guilt he still feels from accidentally dropping a bomb on an orphanage and killing 37 children, when he was a fighter pilot flying over Germany during World War II.

He promises her he won't see combat, since he will be the senior USAF advisor/Instructor Pilot to the Republic of Korea Air Force, only serving as a teacher and flying F-51D Mustangs.

Soon, he solicits the aid of two Korean adults, En Soon Yang and Lun Wa, and establishes a shelter for the orphans in an abandoned Buddhist temple, which soon has over 400 children.

Hess receives transfer orders and says his farewells to En Soon Yang, but once back in Seoul he learns that the North Koreans are on the verge of capturing the city, and the area around the orphanage has been abandoned to them.

He hurries back and helps En Soon Yang evacuate the four hundred orphans on foot, struggling unsuccessfully to find planes or ships that can rescue them all.

As they shelter at an abandoned airfield, a North Korean jet strafes the refugees, and En Soon Yang is shot as she throws herself in front of a young girl.

Soon after they bury her, when all hope seems nearly lost, a squadron of USAF cargo aircraft suddenly shows up, sent by Hess's commanding officer, to evacuate them all to Cheju island, where En Soon Yang described an abandoned building that could be used as an orphanage.

Some time later, after the Armistice, Hess and his wife return to Cheju to visit the orphanage, which has been dedicated to En Soon Yang and sits next to the two pine trees she spoke of earlier.

Like many biographical and historical films, Battle Hymn takes significant artistic license in depicting the life and wartime activities of Hess and his colleagues.

[2] The film's premiere was held on February 12, 1957 at the Colony Cinema (now the Peoples Bank Theatre), in Marietta, Ohio - the birth city of Dean Hess.

[8] Bosley Crowther wrote about the film in The New York Times, saying, "Perhaps the most candid comment to be made about Universal's 'Battle Hymn' is also the most propitious, so far as its box-office chances are concerned.