It is November 11, 1968, fifty years to the day since the armistice of the Great War.. The seventy year old German diplomat Jurgen Stern is in Ottawa, Canada on a special assignment. He rescues a portfolio mistakenly left behind in his hotel lobby by a man near his own age. Inside are drawings that are obviously from a soldier's perspective of WW1. One of the sketches is so intriguing he is compelled to find this man and learn the truth about it. The story reverts back to 1916 when Brian MacLennan, a farm boy from northern Ontario joins the Canadian Expeditionary Force. At the same time, young Jurgen Stern has been conscripted by the Imperial German Army. Their experiences in that brutal war are followed until they become entangled in a way that will take fifty years to unravel. The two men face the consequences of those events a half century in the past and must put them right.