It's 1914 and talk of war feels far away to Henry Gaunt and his boarding school classmates. At seventeen, they're too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle - an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, Sidney Ellwood – completely unaware that Ellwood is in love with him too. When Gaunt's German mother asks him to enlist in the British army to protect the family from anti-German attacks, he signs up immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings for Ellwood.