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Corporals Trower and Chase, Sergeant Craig, and other members of an American infantry squad in England are shipped to combat assignment in Italy following their training in Britain.  After taking possession of a small town, Baker, one of the G.I.'s, finds a few hours of happiness with Maria, a young mother who has not heard from her soldier husband in many months.  Later, the group arrives in France after the D-Day landing, where Craig spends the evening with a Frenchwoman terrified by the continuous bombing.  Chase is tempted by the wealthy Magda to desert and join her in the enormously profitable black market; instead, he rejoins his outfit and suffers a leg wound in action.

In Belgium, Trower falls in love with Regine, an opportunistic nightclub violinist, but she throws him over for a pimp.  Throughout their ordeal, the men are subjected to strain beyond that brought on by combat or romantic entanglements:  white Southerners in the outfit harass the black soldiers; battle-hardened G.I.'s shoot a puppy for sport; and Trower and Chase befriend an 11-year-old French boy, only to discover that he is baiting them for homosexual relations.

By the war's end, Craig is in the hospital with half his face shot away, Chase still has his leg wound, and Trower is living in the Russian zone of Berlin with Helga, a young blonde whose sister continually boasts of luxuries provided her by a Russian captain.  After a disillusioning evening with Helga, Trower gets involved in a pointless squabble with a drunken Russian soldier; unable to understand each other, the two men pull knives and stab each other to death.