France 1940: Paulette, a five-year-old refugee from Paris taken in by a peasant family after her parents are killed during a bombardment of a civilian convoy. Michel Dolle, the family's 11-year-old son, becomes her best friend, and they create a cemetery near an abandoned mill in which Paulette's dog is interred, along with other animals and insects, some of whom the children kill themselves.
The Dolle family is too busy feuding with the Gouards, their neighbors, to notice the absence of the children. Their decesion to take Paulette in is motivated by their fear that if the Gouards do the same, they might earn a civilian medal. Eventually, authorities locate Paulette and insist that she be placed in an orphanage for legal adoption.