France 1954: two officers - one a dashing professional soldier and aristocrat, and one a low-born reservist - celebrate the rekindling of a curious friendship that was once fashioned in the crucible of war. Seven years later, and that friendship has unravelled amidst the bitterness and recrimination of another brutal war that is now tearing France apart.This is the story of that friendship; a story where moments of heroism and idealism alternate with moments when raw and unthinking passion sweeps all before it; a story of love and betrayal, and of a friendship that has all along been conducted unknowingly in the shadow of a cruel and most terrible secret.