 A US Army sergeant who participated in the First World War now leads a rifle squad in the same division in which he s served, the First Infantry. The squad participates in combat action from storming Vichy French Africa into the long seige of Sicily and Italy, into D-Day at Omaha Beach, and onward through the push to Germany. Along the way the squad gets involved in several incidents with civilians, such as a French woman about to give birth and also in a firefight in an insane asylum. Throughout the war the Sergeant has engaged in a mini-battle of wills with Pvt. Griff, a semi-pacifist whose convictions are destroyed in a horrific scene amid the human genocide of a concentration camp in 1945.