When a 19-year-old pacifist is accepted as a Conscientious Objector in 1940, he is in no way prepared for the animosity and loathing he experiences for refusing to go to war. He is employed on a farm to aid food production but when his best friend is lost, believed killed, he feels compelled to join the RAF. Trained as a navigator and assigned to a Catalina seaplane with Coastal Command in Scotland, his work entails protection from submarine and airborne attack of the convoys bringing supplies across the Atlantic. But then a special assignment requiring a seaplane to fly to Denmark is the beginning of a nightmare mission to return on foot across land, escorted by a German soldier.