Only chance could have thrown them together. Now, nothing can pull them apart.

A veteran sergeant of World War I leads a squad in World War II, always in the company of the survivor Pvt. Griff, the writer Pvt. Zab, the Sicilian Pvt. Vinci and Pvt. Johnson, in Vichy French Africa, Sicily, D-Day at Omaha Beach, Belgium and France, and ending in a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia where they face the true horror of war.
The Big Red One keeps every mind human — it fights its subject at zero distance. The story fights on E8/E9 of the E0–E14 reality ladder.
Films fighting at the same level of reality, about the same things.
The same preoccupations examined at another scale — one mind versus a nation.