Frustrated with three long years of trench warfare and shell-shocked after a particularly brutal attack, Private Arthur Hamp elects to walk home to London from the front. Subsequently court-martialed, Hamp’s assigned defender Captain Hargreaves slowly begins to understand the helplessness of Hamp and other enlisted men. With his characteristically subtle touch, Losey intensifies the John Wilson play by toying with the "roles" assigned by the British class system, employing a mildly Brechtian emphasis on theatrical artifice and reflexivity.