Combat!

At the platoon level, Lt. Hanley is ordered to take a strategic hill that overlooks a needed road, and the hill is protected by two concrete bunkers with German machine guns and infantry in each bunker. Saunders gets hit in his thigh in the first assault on the bunkers while several other GIs are killed. Hanley asks for artillery support, but his company commander tells Hanley he will have to take the hill without artillery support. Hanley tries several different strategies to take the hill, but each time the men go up the hill, the overwhelming fire from the bunkers stop them, and each time they leave a few more dead GIs on the hill.

Lt. Hanley has the support of a tank to help his platoon to take the hill. However, the tank is destroyed by a German bazooka. Now Hanley plans to use the shield of the tank to attack the German bunker also with a bazooka.

Unearthing a French baby buried under ruins, unites Hanley's men and a Nazi squad. All the troops' hearts go out to the desperate young mother, but as the German lieutenant warns "distrust is a crippling thing." Laying down their arms in an unauthorized truce proves challenging to the frayed nerves of both squads in the village devastated by both sides' heavy artillery. Hanley's squad needs to get out for a rendezvous, the Germans are hustling to re-occupy the ville.