sentences:  This reaction at first angers him, but in the end he joins army engineer Ceccarelli and sergeant Fornaciari in discarding their uniforms for civilian clothes and heading southwards for a veritable odyssey along the Italian "boot", cut in two by German and Allied occupation and wracked by partisan warfare, bloody reprisals, German press-ganging and other perils.The trio meets a band of anti-fascist guerrillas but decline to join them (while an Italian army captain they met along the road does).Later Innocenzi, caught in the "everybody for himself" mentality which seems to dominate the landscape, succumbs to the temptation of abandoning his mates to help a sultry black marketeer smuggle a load of flour to Rome, as she needs a driver and does not have room for any other passengers.