Michael Denby is a boy forced to watch the war from a distance. He is not old enough to fight but he wants to play a part. He gets his chance when the British Army is evacuated from Dunkirk. He discovers that war can injure people in ways he had never imagined. Edward Mann is a captain in the British Expeditionary Force in France. Some of his fellow officers are as dangerous as the enemy. He has become a complication for an army in retreat but the great military machine has a solution. Mann is given an assignment that will allow him to leave the army honorablyalbeit dead.
