Forced behind British lines by engine problems, the Red Baron camouflages his plane, swaps uniforms with a dead soldier, and, posing as a Belgian, makes his way to a hospital. He discovers that the hospital has a group of nurses dedicated to raising the morale of patients by joining them in a variety of sexual activities.

Based on the Depression-era bildungsroman memoir of writer A. E. Hotchner, the film follows the story of a boy struggling to survive on his own in a hotel in St. Louis after his mother is committed to a sanatorium with tuberculosis. His father, a German immigrant and traveling salesman working for the Hamilton Watch Company, is off on long trips from which the boy cannot be certain he will return.