The privates in an experimental aircraft battery at the start of World War II have defied every effort to bring order into their ranks and deviate them from the unremitting determination to "make love not war". As a last resort, the authorities decide to send well-meaning but bungling little Captain S. Melly to try to knock some shape into the unruly mob. He does not receive the support he expects from his Sgt. Major 'Tiger' Bloomer, whose customary method of exerting authority through a barrage of ear-splitting expletives is gagged by the presence of the battery 'chicks'.Foremost among the ranks who try to foil Melly's every effort at discipline are Bombadier Ready, Sgt. Willing, Sgt. Able and the buxom Pte. Easy. After a disastrous turn-out on the barrack square, which Melly scathingly likens to a 'love parade', he decides to put pressure on his mutinous bunch of recruits by segregating the sexes entirely until they have learned their lesson. He coops up the girls inside a barbed wire perimeter fence. The frustrated troops retaliate by tunnelling under the field to each others quarters. Ready, Willing and Able and their mates are so incensed by Melly's interference that they determine to turn the inspection of the 'reformed' battery into a shambles. At the height of the chaos, the air raid siren wails out over the square as a German air armada, pursued by a squadron of spitfires, approaches overhead. By beginners' luck, the battery brings down every enemy aircraft in triumph, although Captain Melly gets a bit of a battering in the rush to man and fire the gun. He ends up with two splintered fingers in the shape of a V which is thought to have inspired a famous war leader's Victory sign.