Plot

Inge and Sofia reach the front where they come face to face with the harsh realities of war. An encounter with Didrich leaves Inge without any hope of ever seeing Laust or Peter again so she volunteers as a nurse at the camp hospital. Laust is ill and needs his brother but Peter is a changed man - wounded by the horrors of war and Laust's betrayal. In Copenhagen the reality of the situation is beginning to sink in but despite the bombardment of Sønderborg, the government maintains that Dybbøl must be held at all cost.

A German aristocratic commander orders an orchestra to play in the trenches, for moral, which actually infuriates the Danes enough to recruit a maverick captain for a daring mission to eliminate it, which Peter's unit achieves, contributing to its excessive confidence, leading to simpleton Alfred exposing himself and losing both hands in one Prussian hit. Badly wounded Laust is presumed dying in field hospital, so when pregnant Inge and Sofia come looking for him, Ditrich tells him afterwards he 'spared them' his deathbed, turning them away in premature mourning, volunteering as nurses, with Inge morally overruling the doctor in charge feeling women can't handle the bloody mess. Despite the obviously pointless carnage against the superior enemy, Copenhagen still refuses to acknowledge the hopeless odds and its general obliges the demands for hero stories, no desperate truths, so the forces at Dybbøl remain under murderous bombardment.—KGF Vissers