When Captain Edgar Drummond learns he is to serve his first commission in the Crimean war, he brings with him his two sisters, Blanche, the beauty, and Sarah, the bright, eager intelligent one. It will, after all, only be a skirmish. Slowly, as the horrors of the Crimea begin to pervade their lives, the sisters true qualities begin to emerge. Blanche discovers her physical beauty and unabashed frivolity have no place in the harsh world of war and she behaves disgracefully. Edgar, stiff and conventional, finds his obsession with reason and order ineffectual amidst the chaos of war. He cannot cope with his job, not looking after his sisters. Only Sarah finds the courage to take an active role in the war, to protest against the horrors to which the common soldiers are subjected. Her love for the unconventional newspaper man who opens her to reality is thwarted first by her wicked, winsome sister, then by the vagaries of war, but eventually they are brought together in a dirty, slumlike room on the quayside at Scutari.