Two women search for the men they love in the aftermath of World War I in France. They encounter an imperious army officer, Major Dellaplane, a man obsessed with accounting for France's war casualities. The army wants to forget the mass of missing men and has ordered Dellaplane to find one certifiably French unknown soldier to honor with burial under the Arc de Triomphe. In the course of his mission, Dellaplane learns the fate of the women's loved ones and a shocking secret that may determine the fate of the women themselves.