This novel traces the story of the final Scottish Women's Hospital Volunteers Unit, which was set up on the Eastern Front in Russia in 1916. Sent to help the Serbian army, it was largely taken over by the retreating Russian army, and suffered being left to its own devices during three major defeats and retreats. In the process, it coped with unbelievable levels of war casualties, mostly on its own. The novel tells how the Unit survived the war, and the Russian collapse when that country was torn apart by its revolutions, through the eyes of a young doctor surgeon, Anna Hardisty, who as deputy leader found herself in charge of an impossible task - not just to help the war wounded, but to bring the Unit safely home