Flanders, 1916: the British trenches grow wet and foul. For Travis Lee Stanhope, an American volunteer - a sniper - in an English regiment, this is not hell but home. Each night he ventures into No-Man's Land and waits. At dawn, he begins the methodical and efficient killing of the enemy. His numbers are exemplary.
But the mud and blood are taking their toll. Travis' senses are ravaged by the unrelenting scream of shells, his mind numbed by too many rations of rum and his soul bled dry by the death that surrounds him. Yet in his dreams, something still lives. In his dreams he walks amongst the still-living dead, friend and foe alike. Some lie at peace in glass-covered graves but others are stranded where they fell. He speaks to them. He tries to ease their pain.
But it will take more than dreams, more than death itself, before this young man comes to understand that, in this war to end all wars, he may have a purpose beyond killing.
