A scholar finds diaries in an old steamer trunk. The diaries tell the story of a young man, Ned Steele, who embarks on a journey from Detroit to Germany.
Ned joins the Army in 1914, earns a commission in 1917, leads a machine gun company on a Flanders hill, and then a machine gun battalion in the AEF in France. In between, Ned finds romance, terror, exhaustion, friendship, death, and the misery of World War One...
