A mutilated German soldier and a Jewish G.I. race to save the woman they both love from the Nazi onslaught in the Battle of the Bulge.

SYNOPSIS:

Wehrmacht Sergeant Erich Brandt, a dreamer and artist, is felled by a Russian shell in 1944. His face is mutilated and he is mistakenly listed as KIA. Distraught over his horrifying appearance, he becomes slowly unhinged and obsessed with sketching all the dead he's seen in four years of war.

Katherine, an ethnic German farm girl living just inside Belgium in the village of Trois Ponts, is Brandt's young wife. Trapped on the farm by her sense of duty to her bedridden, manipulative mother, Katherine yearns to be free. She is notified of Brandt’s death just before the U.S. Army occupies the area, and the mistake is never corrected.

Sergeant Ben Glassman is a U.S. Army artillery forward observer, a German Jew who was sent to America as a boy to escape the Nazis. He feels more German than Jew and believes the Nazis to be an aberration, a brief madness that has seized Germany. His driver and radio operator, Joe, a NYC Jewish cabbie, an older man who joined the Army to escape a dull, impoverished family life, vehemently disagrees. Joe asserts the only way to fix Germany is to smash them in battle and utterly defeat them. Ben, conflicted, can barely perform his duty as he is reluctant to kill Germans.

Ben meets Katherine as he wanders the Ardennes alone in a jeep, lost in his inner conflict. Starving, she has been trading sex for food with G.I.s. Ben, taking pity on her, brings her food. She is touched by his kindness and they become lovers.

The Germans launch their Ardennes Offensive and Brandt and Ben (and Joe) converge on Trois Ponts one night, both intent on taking Katherine to safety. They must hide in Katherine's cellar when Brandt's force seizes the village. Brandt, realizing he can only offer Katherine madness, relents and insists she go with Ben. But Ben has been wounded in the leg in a shootout with his commander because he refused to execute an artillery strike on the village. He awakens from a faint to discover Joe preparing to call in the strike himself. Joe confesses he really joined the Army to show his young sons he was something more than "a goddamn cabbie." He gives Ben, Katherine, and Brandt five minutes to escape. Their attempt is foiled by a German patrol and Brandt sacrifices himself to enable Katherine and Ben to get away. But Ben is shot and dies just as the barrage falls, obliterating the village. Alone, Katherine flees into the forest, intent on the hiding spot Brandt had meant to share with her.