Why War? is the story of three young Americans fighting in France in the last year of WWI. Apart from patriotism, each has more personal reasons for enlisting. Kent Ward, a law student with a wife and young son, wants to prove his manliness. Wally Patch wants to escape his abusive working-class family. Josh Singer, a philosophy student who claims to be escaping the boredom of Plato, may be mostly looking for his father’s approval. Nothing in their lives to that point prepared them for the hell they encountered in the trenches in France. All three survive, but they return home completely changed by the experience of human slaughter.