The story begins on the carrier of Commander Soames. The previous spring, Sergeant Landon was sent on a night reconnaissance patrol, with five men. Somehow the patrol was spotted and all of the men were killed, all but Landon who was wounded, but managed to crawl back to his own lines. Since then, he has been incapacitated, mentally rather than physically, and Soames wants to know why. He then begins to tell his own tale from 1944, during the United States' amphibious invasion of the Mariana Islands during the Pacific War, and the aerial battle which was later nicknamed the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.