A British war drama; A story about Royal Army Service Corps field ambulance personnel who become stranded in the desert ahead of the Siege of Tobruk and face a perilous journey back to civilisation as their personal problems come to the fore. The film has the theme of how humanity can prevail in war. The characters, a quaternity against the elements, portray the physical exhaustion from tortuous heat and impending danger and their journey to thirst-quenching deliverance. As an aside, it was avowed by veterans to be realistic to the physical conditions servicemen and servicewomen faced in the Western Desert campaign of World War II.