Flight-Lieutenant William Simpson DFC was posted to France at the beginning of WWII. He was shot down in Belgium while bombing a German column on the day that the Germans invaded the Low Countries. The author was terribly burned, and spent a year and a half in hospitals in France, mostly in Vichy France, before he was allowed to return to England via Spain and Portugal. He writes very informatively about what it was like in France in the first two years of the war, before and after the Occupation, and in 'unoccupied France' under Marshal Petain, as well as what life was like for ordinary people in Spain and Portugal.

Once back in England he was a member of the Guinea Pig Club of patients treated by McIndoe the pioneer plastic surgeon, although the book does not tell this part of his story.