About the human desire to survive and the fate of the soldiers of the 11th Czechoslovak Infantry Battalion in North Africa in the fall of 1941... A film adaptation of the story of the soldiers of the Czechoslovak 11th Infantry Battalion Východní, who under the leadership of Lt. Col. Karel Klapálek successfully defended the positions near the port city of Tobruk in autumn 1941, it is a tribute to all war veterans of II. world war. The fate of two recruits, recruited in the fall of 1941 before the battle for Tobruk in the Czechoslovak unit, unfolds the drama of selfconfidence and rebellion, heroism and the natural human desire for survival. The two protagonists of the story Pospíchal (J. Meduna) and Lieberman (P. Vaněk) come to the unit just before deployment in combat. In a struggle for bare survival, their ideals are confronted with the raw reality of desert warfare, as well as with the various attitudes and characters conditioned by the horror of handtohand combat.