According to the officer's handbook, 'an officer will perform whatever task confronts him with whatever men are available' and for Major Bell the men in question are drunks, thieves and deserters. With the German army closing in on his company's position, Major Bell undertakes a suicidal mission to blow up a bridge of strategic importance to the enemy. His only help will come in the form of a rag-tag band of army rejects who must become heroes if they are to fulfil their mission and come back alive.

A man's sanity is a point of contention as he confesses to murdering an elderly man, driven by the victim's pale blue 'vulture eye', culminating in guilt-induced auditory hallucinations of the victim's beating heart.

An American returning home from Baghdad and seeing his girl in Britain on the way agrees to take a message to the secret service. Once in London he is picked up by the gang involved, who have by then killed the original Middle East agent. He escapes, but he and his girl friend are a marked couple as they retreat to Seaford on the south coast to act as bait in an MI5 plan to catch the thugs.