Meet T.O.M. Gunn, a young infantry lieutenant in the Sherwood Foresters, just back on leave from India as Europe catches ablaze in the chaotic summer of 1914. The British Expeditionary Force is off to France and Gunn is determined to join the war before it's over. He joins a hastily formed mixed battalion of reservists, regular and territorial soldiers to find themselves pitchforked into the mayhem of the Battles of the Marne, the Aisne and then the drawn out agony of Ypres as the high hopes of summer sink into the frozen trenches of the winter of 1914. But by the time of the Christmas Truce with the Germans, Thaddeus Gunn and his men begin to realise that this is going to be a long war – and they will be lucky to survive.