Set against the backgrou war novel, in the conventional sense, but a character study of the principal characters and their reaction to the stresses and temptations associated with the occupation of an enemy country. Since power determines who gets to do what to whom, as Lord Acton observed, "Power corrupts," so in the military, as with all institutions, power is distributed proportionate to a hierarchy from the highest to the lowest echelons. In the military this is called The Chain of Command. This is a story of how the situation developed in the three months the 1st Battalion of Infantry was the occupying power in a little German town on the Czech border, Waldmunchen.