The film tells about the fate of the British Clive Wine Candy. The life of the protagonist can be traced from 1902, when he is an ordinary soldier, and then a young officer, a participant in the Anglo-Boer War, having gone through the horrors of the First World War of 1918-1919, already being an old man, he talks about the Second World War, about the bombing of the English capital, recalls the times of his military youth and lost love.

The film begins with a story in 1943, in the middle of World War II. Major General Clive Wine Candy is the commander of the militia. He schedules exercises to begin at midnight, but young Lieutenant (Spud) Wilson strikes in a preemptive strike, violating the established rules of war (taking command of the enemy, led by Candy, right in the sauna where he was resting), because he believes that the Germans are so and they fight. He ignores the protests of Candy's outraged supporters that (the war starts at midnight), a fight breaks out between them and they fall into the bath.

The film then shifts the plot to 1902, when Candy was still a young lieutenant, and begins a long flashback from the days of his youth and a rapidly growing military career. The flashback lasts a significant part of the film and covers almost all of Candy's life, coming up to that scene in the Turkish bath.