Gorse

A "coward" as a hero: Ginster is 25 years old when World War I breaks out, and he is a talented architect. He is skeptical of the patriotic enthusiasm of his contemporaries, and so he makes considerable effort to repeatedly defer his military service – after all, the fatherland does not need its architects at the front, but at home, where they are to plan munitions factories and memorial cemeteries for fallen soldiers. However, Ginster eventually receives his draft notice. Far away from the battlefields, he learns to build a bed with military precision, to shoot, and to "peel potatoes against the enemies." He becomes convinced that all these exercises do not serve the war, but rather that the entire war is merely a pretext for these exercises.