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Pitching his screen play to the Hollywood studio, Ernest Chapel recounts the story of childhood friends at a little French chateau. The critics insist he move the coming of age story along, not seeing how it’ll work in the market of the day.
The three children part ways, with Ernest leaving to return to the states, and pre-war America. He describes his graduation, the outbreak of war, and putting his writing career on hold. Is Hollywood still making war movies? Bah! Too behind the times. (Yeah, right. The war was a movie topic for twenty years to come.)
As Ernest continues his pitch, he tells how he enlisted, and trained to return to fight in the war. His long training finds him parachuting out to come full circle, and that little chateau he knew so long ago. though he is cut off from his unit, he finds his friends, all grown up, but recognizable. As they send him off on his mission, he relates the eerie ending in his return to that place of innocence.