In Eastern France, in the aftermath of WW1, Major Dellaplane's unenviable task of identifying the missing 350,000 French soldiers, the countless dead and the shell-shocked, is continually being diverted by a military establishment bent on glorifying French courage with a funeral ceremony for the Unknown Soldier. The film reveals bureaucratic hypocrisy and corruption, post-war poverty and racism, social inequality and the deceptions of romantic involvement. The major meets and falls in love with a beautiful woman searching for her missing husband in this passionate, noble and humane tale