Eric Alford's safe and romantic life on the peaceful Gaspe Coast is shattered by his decision to follow his elder brother John into the 1914-18 cataclysm of death and destruction known as the "Great War for Civilisation." By his thundering Howitzer, Gunner Alford assaults the Hun through every major Canadian battle of WWI. Evacuated to a Rouen field hospital, he's surrounded by hellish wounds: blindness, amputations, and gas-inflicted horrors. Finally, back in Blighty among other shell-shock victims, he recovers and returns to his Gaspe home, changed forever.