Augustin Renard, a decorated war hero in the First World War, left his Picardy hometown in 1920 and went off against his family's wishes to become a priest. Now he has been appointed parish priest to St.Josse des Bois but his arrival coincides with an exodus south by many of the population, the evacuation of a local airfield by the British and the arrival of the Germans, as Marshal Petain announces an armistice.