This is the story of an Italian general, accompanied by his chaplain, charged with the mission of scouring Albania in search of the bones of their fallen countrymen, killed twenty years earlier during World War II. In rain and sleet they dig up cemetery after cemetery, checking teeth and dog tags so as to put names to the bones of the disinterred, and they assemble a dead army in pine-box uniforms. At one point the Italiengeneral meets a German general engaged in an identical mission. Their gruesome business, past and present, comes to fill them with horror, guilt and self-disgust. In a terrible climax, the general, attending a wedding feast, is called upon to answer for the crimes of his country and of all the other nations