In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, Airborne Captain Will McBride's plane is badly hit. Most of his men are killed, and he is knocked unconscious in the back of the plane. He awakens sometime later to find that he is alone with the badly wounded pilot, who has been flying without instruments in an unknown direction. Will decides to jump anyway, and finds himself in Brittany, an as yet quiet backwater of the war. Taking refuge in a convent, he encounters Claire, a young postulant and, in his effort to make his way back to Allied lines, encounters the French Resistance, a downed American fighter pilot, and a feisty and beautiful British agent as they make their way through France and ultimately to Paris and the events surrounding the Hitler plot and the Liberation.