Meet our heroes: Thomas Wolffe: A New York University student, ran a socialist book club. Joined on to the war after some book club members called him a coward for not doing so when they went off to fight in the International Brigades.  Matthew Birch: The son of a noble, and the product of the last great courtesan, Matthew Birch (Matthew Mowbray Berkeley, son of the Eighth Earl of Berkeley) went off to France, where he joined the French Foreign Legion as a sniper, alongside Otto Schuster. Both were wounded when an overzealous forward observer mistook their squad's position for an enemy position that had circled round, calling down howitzer fire. Joined onto the war because he wants to protect his girl back in France from Nazi aggression, and hopes he can help turn the tide here in Spain, before France becomes the battleground. Carlos Castle (Juan-Carlos Castille): The latest in a long line of Catalan dairy farmers, Juan-Carlos Castille spent his early life at the base of the Pyrenees in Spain. When a series of cattle rustlings were blamed on him, he was driven across the border into France, where he got a job as a factory worker. He became active in the union scene as an anarcho-syndicalist. Joined onto the war because he needs to protect his family in Catalonia, and worries about their future under fascism. Detests all forms of imitation milk. Otto Schuster: The son of a wheat farmer in rural southeastern Germany, whose family wasn't initially poor, but through a series of several poor harvests and financial mismanagement, lost most of their land. In 1914, his father went off to fight on the Russian Front of the Great War, and died in an assault on an artillery position. Otto moved in with another nearby farmer, and learned to shoot. When he was an adult, he went to France and served in the French Foreign Legion alongside Matthew Birch. Joined onto the war because he was a committed anti-fascist. Danil Novak: A Pole, Danil Novak was born in 1883, in Krakow, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was conscripted to fight in the Great War, but spent most of the time between 1914 and 1918 in a POW camp, after being captured during the Siege of Przemysl. Leaving Russia during the Revolution, he arrived in a newly independent Poland just as it began to fight for its life against the new Soviet Union. He's still haunted by the horrors of both wars. Joined onto the war because a resurgent Germany could endanger the independence of his nation. Our heroes meet in France, dispose of pistols in various trash cans, travel to Spain, where they are stripped of their rifles at the border, arrive in a small town the other side of the Pyrenees, where they annoy the local militia, and are forced to travel to another nearby town, whereupon they hitch a ride to Albacete, join on with the Spanish Republican Army, and ship off to boot camp, which, lacking anybody with actual experience, presses into service as instructors the three veterans in return for the promise of an old pickup truck.