[1][2] In the 1950s, Jacques, a local school teacher goes back to the small province town where he used to live during the German Occupation of France, Douai.

He goes there every year for the town fair, accompagnied by his wife (Louise) and two children (Françoise and Lucien), in order to perform a clown routine in front of the audience.

Things start to change as the D-Day Landing had just taken place and the General De Gaulle asks the people to take part in sabotage actions to help with the Allied advance through France.

Jacques distracts the German lookout and André blows up the tower using ordonance abandonned at his castle by fleeing French troops years earlier.

Unbeknownst to the two friends, the tower was also occupied by the employee in charge of operating the track switches, a local named Félix, who is gravely wounded in the explosion.

The German troops show up and round up Jacques and André to create a 4-person hostage group to be gunned down should the attack perpetrators fail to come forward within the day.

The sentinel assigned to their suveillance is a fun-loving and kind German soldier named Bernd who starts distracting the hostages by performing a clown act.