Lieutenant Takala joins a group of war veterans who gather in a restaurant to reminisce their unit's operations on the Finnish-Soviet front. A flashback takes us back to summer 1944 where the unit, led by Takala, performs dangerous guerrilla operations behind enemy lines. A subplot alleges sexual liaisons between soldiers and female volunteers, which caused controversy when the film and the novel it's based on were released in the early 1960s.—Markku Kuoppamäki