In 1917, when an arrogant and incompetent British commander turns up dead, a reluctant Joseph Reavley searches for the truth about the crime and about the twelve men accused of the murder, racing against time and journeying behind enemy lines to find the individual responsible, while the fierce fighting continues along the Western front of World War I.

By April 1915, as Chaplain Joseph Reavley tends to the soldiers in his care, the nightmare of trench warefare is impartially cutting down England's youth. On one of his rescue forays into no-man's land, Joseph finds the body of an arrogant war correspondent, Eldon Prentice. A nephew of the respected General Owen Cullingford, Prentice was despised for his prying attempts to elicit facts that would turn publilc opinion against the war.