In 1971, Roland Bozz is a draftee who has been sent to the Advanced Infantry Training Facility in Fort Polk, LA, where with hundreds of other new soldiers he is to be taught a final course in combat skills before being shipped out to Vietnam. Bozz has no interest in going to war, and is determined to get sent home as a troublemaker. But his plan backfires; his superiors regard his insubordination as a sign of intelligence and independent thinking, and he is told he might some day become an officer. Bozz and his fellow soldiers — aspiring writer Paxton, sensitive Miter, philosophical Cantwell, bloodthirsty Wilson, and heroic Johnson — are taught how to survive as they face their fears of death and wonder if they can somehow escape going to war.