[5][6][7] Captain Anson, the officer commanding a British RASC Motor Ambulance Company in Tobruk, is suffering from battle fatigue and alcoholism.

As they depart they come across an Afrikaner South African officer, Captain van der Poel, who carries a large pack, to which he seems very attached.

Pugh, already troubled by van der Poel's lack of knowledge of the South African Army's tea-brewing technique, follows him when he heads off into the desert with his pack and a spade (supposedly to dig a latrine).

During the final leg of the journey Katy must be hand-cranked in reverse up a sand dune escarpment and van der Poel's strength is again crucial to success.

When they reach Alexandria, Anson delivers everyone's papers except van der Poel's to the Military Police check point and (off-screen) reports to the MP's senior officer that "van der Poel" is a German soldier whom they met lost in the desert and has surrendered to them under his parole (word of honour).

Anson secures the MP's agreement to allow the party to enjoy a beer with their ‘captive’ before taking him into custody as a prisoner of war.

Having become friends with van der Poel and indebted to him for saving the group's lives, Anson tells him that if he gives his real name he will be treated as a prisoner of war rather than as a spy (which would mean execution by firing squad).

[11] The producers had intended to shoot the location work for Ice Cold in Alex in Egypt, but they had to switch to Libya because of the Suez conflict.

Syms said that during the scene where the ambulance rolls backwards down the hill narrowly avoiding her, the actors assumed there would be a hawser to stop the vehicle if anything went wrong, but there was not.

The quicksand sequence was filmed in an ice cold artificial bog in an English studio (some scenes were shot at Elstree)[13] and was "very tough" on Quayle and Mills.

[16] The film was one of the twelve most popular at the British box office in 1958 (that list included several other war related movies – The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Camp on Blood Island, Dunkirk, The Key, Carve Her Name with Pride, The Wind Cannot Read – as well as Carry On Sergeant, A Cry from the Streets, Happy Is the Bride and Indiscreet.

[23] Sylvia Syms has said that the Danish beer Carlsberg was chosen because they could never have been seen to be drinking a German lager, since the United Kingdom and Germany are at war during the film.

Each advertisement mixed original footage from a different film (another example was The Great Escape, 1963) with new humorous material starring British comedian Griff Rhys Jones and finishing with the slogan: "A Holsten Pils Production".

[24] In retaliation, rival Carlsberg simply lifted the segment in which Mills contemplates the freshly poured lager in the clearly Carlsberg-branded glass, before downing it in one go and declaring, "Worth waiting for!"