Pierre is in Hamburg on a merchant ship with his friends Georges and Jean-Marie. While they are just looking for a good time in the twenty-four hours they have to waste in the city, Pierre is seized by the memory of a young German girl, Maria, whom he had known and probably loved when he was a prisoner of war in the bombed-out port of Hamburg. He abandons his companions in search of her, but is unable to trace her, her house having been destroyed and the search services having no record of her.