A partisan unit decides to send home before the winter the boys who have joined them. Little Milan Maljević is returning to his mother in Moldovia accompanied by Raša, a boy from town. Raša gets sick on the way and they have to find refuge in a Banat village inhabited by ethnic Germans. Having hid Raša, Milan goes to the village and under a phoney name finds a job at the house of a rich landowner, Jakob Jerich.