Question: Rather than sending an army into enemy territory to save a single soldier, wouldn't it have made more sense to put the word out among troops to try find Private Ryan as they found each other? It would have been awfully risky to send an army unit into enemy territory to save a single soldier.
Question: What exactly killed Sergeant Horvath? I reviewed the scene carefully but I couldn't tell what exactly pierced his back - was it a piece of shrapnel, or did he get shot by one of the Wehrmacht German troops?
Answer: Horvath was shot in the back by attacking Germans trying to seize control of the bridge. He was shot a total of 3 times. Once when he went toe to toe with the German. His German attacker's gun was jammed/empty of ammo. The German throws his helmet, so does he, beats the German to a pistol draw and gets shot in the side, then throws his .45 cal at other Germans. Another after he fired a bazooka round and Miller is yelling to get off the bridge - he starts falling back and gets hit in the leg. The 3rd was in the back, right after the 2nd when he stood back up.
Question: What kind of explosive were they putting in the socks when making the sticky bomb?
Answer: They say they have enough Composition-B (RDX and TNT) to blow the bridge twice, but when they take the explosives to put into the socks the crates say TNT. So its either Comp-B or TNT that they use.
Question: Could you really use tracer rounds in the type of machine guns the Germans were firing during the Normandy scene at the beginning of the movie, as seems to be the case?
Answer: Absolutely. There were tracer rounds in ammo belts for the MG42.
Could you fire incendiary rounds as well?
Yes, an MG42 can fire incendiary rounds.
Answer: It's only a squad of soldiers, definitely not an entire army. Word wouldn't spread fast around France during the early stages of an invasion. All original communications were cut and the infrastructure is hell, they had to use pigeons to contact England for a reason. If you want to send word out or find someone you have to send men.
lionhead
It wouldn't have just been dangerous to a squad into enemy territory to save one man at the time which the movie takes place. They would have had to spend what could be many days to trying to locate him since they didn't know what Ryan looked like.