Twelve bearded, filthy GIs wait behind barbed wire, prisoners of their own army. Murderers, thieves, rapists, they wait to be sentenced to death or hard labour for life. They are the damned of the American Army. But at the last moment they are offered the opportunity of salvation: a mission just before D-Day. The chances of their getting away with it are about one in a million, but the damned don't care, and certainly don't count chances...

Major John Reisman is caught in a web of deception and betrayal on a mission to Southeast Asia during the final days of the Second World War