When a young Polish schoolteacher is conscripted into the Russian Red Army during WWII, his life changes forever. His girlfriend and village fade into the distance as he is transported for two weeks by cattle train into the Soviet Union's southern Caucasus. Sleeping on school floors, in Cossack huts and in peasant/leper villages, he and the soldiers are trained on dodgy mortars and tanks, put to work in a Georgian logging camp and, when winter arrives, must dig trenches on the frozen steppe before being marched 500 km to Stalingrad and then u-turned back. Eventually, Roman escapes under cover of night with a 6" map, a bag of onions and three companions. Thousands of miles later they reach Anders' Army, taking a ship across the Caspian Sea to Teheran and freedom. After recovering from malaria, dysentery and extreme hunger, Roman volunteers for pilot training with the RAF and another journey begins to the UK.