Marvin Emerson is a small-town fabulist whose grandest bravery is avoiding trouble...until a hard-drinking bomber crew takes his tall tales at his word and shoves him into a waist gun on a B-17. After a panicked firefight, a lucky (and humiliating) parachute exit, and the realization he's bailed out of a perfectly good airplane, Marvin lands in Normandy with nothing but a bruised ego, and a talent for running.

In a nearby muddy village, a slapdash German security detachment passes the days between executions and tavern rounds. Hans, gawky and anxious; Karl, forever breathless about "boobs"; Michel, officious and slippery; and Oskar, the grumpy corporal; four friends who nurse petty ambitions and follow a plan that may be brilliant or merely disastrous.

Part gallows comedy, part black farce, this wartime romp finds cowardice contagious, heroism accidental, and survival an ugly, ironic punchline. Somewhere between the mud and the sky, bravery is optional, but absurdity is inevitable.