National Service: two years of square-bashing, kit layout, shepherd"s pie "made from real shepherds", PT and drill, relieved only by the occasional lecture on VD. Conscription has made Jonathan Browne and Mike "Ginger" Brady prisoners of the British Army. But reckless, impulsive Mike and pragmatic Jonathan adopt radically different attitudes to this two-year confiscation of their freedom. Where Jonathan chooses to keep his head down, Mike can"t help but rebel against those in charge. Then one day Mike goes too far, with consequences that threaten to overturn Jonathan"s cultivated detachment from the idiocies of military life...