The movie starts with a battle against the Turks during the First Balkan War in 1912 and ends with the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and the crucial Battle of Cer, the first allied victory in WW1. It is largely set in and around a small village by the Sava river at Serbia's border with Austria-Hungary. The village is divided between able-bodied men that are potential army recruits and the many invalid veterans from the previous Balkan wars, and there is bitter animosity between the two groups, which don't intermingle much with each other even though they live in the same village.