[1] Geoffrey Carter (John Sutton), a young British commando officer, is sent into Nazi-occupied France as a one-man raid to help the RAF destroying a munitions factory with help from a patriotic farmer, M. Bonnard (Lee J. Cobb).

Bonnard invents an idea to tell the people in the village that Carter is his missing son, Pierre, who has returned from fighting for the German army.

Bonnard gathers the local farmers in the village to tell them about Carter's plan to set their crops alight in the fields that surround the munitions factory to act as a beacon for an RAF bombing raid.

Most of the farmers agree because of their hatred of the occupation, but Grandet (Marcel Dalio) refuses saying that burning their crops would bring more problems and would only result in them having less food.

Block (Howard Da Silva), who is attracted to Odette, becomes suspicious when he hears that Pierre has returned to the village without registering or showing his papers.