The setting is north Italy, and the period just before the Italian armistice. A train carrying prisoners of war towards Innsbruck is caught in an R.A.F. raid and two soldiers who escaped are joined in aa frontier village by a third held by Italian partisans. By themselves they might easily elude the advancing Germans and make their way over the frontier into safety; but at the village they are joined by a band of civilian refugees from all over Europe also waiting their chance to cross the Swiss frontier. They accept responsibility for these hunted people and together they make their way up the snow-covered slopes.