Ukraine, 1942. Italian troops are fighting against the Soviet Union. A military chaplain volunteers to stay behind with a badly wounded Italian soldier, even though this means certain capture.
A young Italian pilot is interned in a British prison camp after his plane is shot down during the war against Greece. He falls in love with a doctor's daughter and manages to escape during a bombardment. He reaches home, wounded, just as news arrives of the Greek surrender.
When a dying man receives a kiss from a bereaved man who tries to save him, the man is jailed as a homosexual. He is released from jail, but his life has been ruined by the incident -- and the man eventually is killed by his own father-in-law. The kiss that resulted in the eventual persecution and death of the man is never shown in this plodding, downbeat drama.
