North Africa, WWll, Fall 1941. Jiri Pospichal, 20 years old, signs up as a volunteer in the Czechoslovak army. His naive ideas about heroism are rawly confronted with the hell of the African desert, complicated relationships in his unit and the ubiquitous threat of death. All this takes its cruel toll in the shape of his gradual loss of self respect and courage. He is full of self-confidence and patriotic ideals, yet at the same time is deeply frustrated by his father, whom he views as a collaborator. His closest companion is a Jewish soldier, Jan Lieberman, in many ways more mature. Their opposite, in turn, is Corporal Kohák, a former member of the French Foreign Legion, for whom warfare is above all a profession The psychological drama between these three characters, the differing attitudes and personalities of each of them, are, during the course of the story and most clearly in its dramatic climax, brought into confrontation with a clear and harsh test of the moral character of all.

There are two types of war films. The first is a filmic record of a given historical event, which reflects that event externally, in formal terms, and tends to disregard the individual destinies of the soldiers involved. The other approach (and the one adopted by this film) is to express the inner feelings of people who have found themselves in a tense situation, the story of an individual, in which history serves solely as the setting for an individual destiny. What is essential for a good war film is the representation of real life not through ideas but by means of specific dramatic action whose effectiveness lies in its raw portrayal of imminent death and the reliving of that extreme situation. The dramatic tension derives not so much from the individual battles but from how they are subjectively experienced and perceived by the protagonists. There is no need for an external plot: fear and the overcoming of fear speak for themselves. Some regard truthful war films as an attack on trumpeted patriotism, whereas in fact they are the only way to truly express those values.