Two British airmen, Wilson and Connolly, are incarcerated in a cellar in Bonn: their captor, Corporal Frick, has kept them there ever since the day when he hid them from an infuriated mob and the Gestapo after a raid. He treats his prisoners with kindness, but he has never dared to let them go. Wilson has discovered in himself a talent for writing: Connolly has spent the time brooding about his loved wife and trying to plan an escape. One morning the prisoners realize that al lis not well with their jailer, and when, driven by ill-health, Corporal Frick is compelled to release them, the irony of their imprisonment and escape suddenly dawns on them.