Edwin, a newly arrived soldier on the Western Front, wakes in a field station, blind and unable to move his legs. A kind nurse, Anna, reassures him and hints at rumours that he is a “miracle soldier,” though she cannot explain why. Edwin’s only concern is finding his friend Jamie, who was with him during their first dangerous wiring-party mission in no-man’s-land.

As the story alternates between the present and flashbacks, we see Edwin and Jamie enduring the terror of their first days at the front under the sardonic guidance of Corporal (later Sergeant) Stone. During a nighttime mission to cut and repair barbed wire before an attack, the three are caught in a grenade blast. Stone is wounded and rescued — but Edwin awakens alone, blinded, legs shattered, and pinned on the wire. Jamie appears to him, helps free him, and guides him back toward the British trenches.

In the hospital, Anna eventually locates the wounded Sergeant Stone. When Edwin visits, Stone — shocked to see him alive — reveals the truth: Jamie died instantly in the crater, throwing himself onto the grenade to save the others. Stone insists there was no one alive with Edwin afterwards; Edwin crawled back alone, dragging his ruined legs across no-man’s-land. The “Jamie” who guided him was not physically there.

Devastated, Edwin is forced to accept that his survival — the so-called miracle — was due to Jamie’s sacrifice and his own desperate crawl through the mud. As he prepares to be evacuated home, he must confront both his grief and the inexplicable experience that brought him back alive.