Hailed as a female Journey's End, this is the story of nurses on Bataan. In a sort of dugout subjected to gunfire the individual characters emerge to offer a collective reaction to war. These include the strong minded doctor, her restrained and poised assistant and the volunteer nurses: a vacuous Southern girl, a swaggering bully, a couple of timid aesthetes, an ex burlesque girl and the inevitable spy. They get on each other's nerves, arrest the wrong person for spying and confront the real traitor. They are rescued from their buried dugout only to face the firing squad. This is a compelling, caustic revelation of human beings under fire.