The film follows an infantry squad fighting its way through the European theatre: from Sicily, to the invasion of France, into Germany, and on to Allied postwar occupation. One man sleeps with an Italian woman whose soldier husband is missing. Cpl. Chase falls in love with a beautiful woman who tries to get him to desert to help in her black market operations. Cpt. Trower falls in love with Regine, who he later discovers is a prostitute. A race riot breaks out between white and black troops. Weaver adopts a dog that other soldiers later shoot for target practice. Cpl. Chase goes to the hospital to visit the wounded Sergeant Wallach with a bottle of whiskey, not knowing the magnitude of the old sarge's wounds, only to find a grotesque remainder of a face shouting at him to get the hell out.
At film's end Trower is living in Berlin with a young woman whose sister has become the mistress of a Russian officer. When his girl friend leaves him to take up with a Russian, Trower stumbles home drunk. He encounters a similarly drunken Russian and the two begin shouting. Unable to understand each other, they pull knives and kill each other.