Intercutting dramatic vignettes with newsreel footage, the story follows the characters from an infantry squad as they make their way from Sicily to Germany during the end of World War II.

The Duchy of Grand Fenwick decides that the only way to get out of their economic woes is to declare war on the United States, lose and accept foreign aid. They send an invasion force (in chain mail, armed with bows and arrows) to New York and they arrive during a nuclear drill that has cleared the streets.

A bandit kidnaps a Marshal who has seen a map showing a gold vein on Indian lands, but other groups are looking for it too, while the Apache try to keep the secret location undisturbed.

The core of the plot is the romantic triangle formed by the protagonist, a conscripted soldier named Private Brigg, a worldly professional soldier named Sergeant Driscoll, and Phillipa Raskin, the daughter of the Regimental Sergeant Major. The location is a British army base in Singapore during the Malayan Emergency.

A team of allied saboteurs are assigned an impossible mission: infiltrate an impregnable Nazi-held island and destroy the two enormous long-range field guns that prevent the rescue of 2,000 trapped British soldiers.