When Major Charles Davenport is evacuated to England, to recuperate from a battle wound received at Tobruk a letter is awaiting him from his wife in London, informing him that she's in love with another man and wants a divorce. Mary Kennedy is a young Irish-American who has moved to her grandparent's cottage in Ireland to mourn the loss of her husband and infant daughter. Participating in a Red Cross morale-building effort, she corresponds with a young British soldier, but his letters cease abrubtly following the fall of Tobruk. Determined to learn what has become of him she makes her way to the army hospital in Sussex where his commanding officer, Major Davenport, kindly explains the young soldier's fate. Thus begins a love story, carried out almost entirely by letter, crystallized by distance and heightened by the intimacy of the private written word set against the dramatic events of WWII and culminating in the landings on D-Day at Sword Beach.