Plot

11-year-old Michel, whose father was shot in the wake of the 1917 army mutiny and whose mother is consigned to a mental asylum, escapes from an orphanage, determined to find and take revenge on the man who had his father executed.

WW1:A woman ,whose husband refused to get back on the offensive -for the eleventh time!- and then was shot as an example ,is harassed by her "patriot" neighbors and the Police:she winds up in an insane asylum. Her child is sent to a very harsh orphanage .In order to kill the general Des Gringues -whose nickname is "Le Boucher Des Hurlus" (Hurlus Butcher)- who's responsible for his father's death,he escapes with three mates;So begins a quixotic odyssey,across a country torn by a war that has left nothing but piles of skulls and bones ,ravaged by Spanish flu,where a captain with a desk job-I was told what happened!- harangues the soldiers who look on with wry amusement ,where a madam and her hookers ,go from camp to camp .—dbdumonteil