
It's Suffolk 1916. The Bailey family's two sons Conrad and Lawrence join the colours and are sent to different theatres of war. Their parents and younger sister Elly stay on a farm belonging to their relations, in West Stow, a few miles outside Bury St Edmunds. Life changes for everyone. Hattie Bailey works as a VAD with the Red Cross at Ampton Military Hospital, while Eric escorts wounded soldiers off trains arriving at Ingham. Letters home bring news from France and from India's North West frontier. Elly, hampered by asthma and often left to her own devices, tries to discover what's happening at Elveden and to make sense of what she reads in the Bury Free Press. The conflict goes on and on, but eventually peace brings hope for the future and new challenges.