From the brutal and unforgiving Irish War of Independence are laid the seeds of hatred for a future war... The Spanish Civil War.
Willie Tierney, alongside thousands of his fellow countrymen, fought for the British Empire in the hell of France and Flanders. On his return home he is disillusioned and bitter as he takes up arms against the Empire for which he fought. Twenty years later his young nephew Jack, in an attempt to escape an impoverished and hopeless Ireland of the 1930's, is drawn to another war. This is not a war fought between vast empires. It is a war fought for control of a country from within and for thousands of Irishmen it is merely a continuation of their own bitter Civil War as they flock to fight in it. For the second time in a generation former comrades will fight on different sides. This is the story of Jack Tierney and how his growing awareness of the struggles of a previous generation leads to his political awakening. An awakening that takes him from the poverty and monotony of a fledgling state to the battlefields of Spain and the horrors of the Spanish Civil War as he becomes a member of the International Brigade that chose to fight Fascism as the rest of the world, blinded by appeasement, turned away.