Uninterested in the official war effort, Kelly recruits a ragtag group of soldiers to embark on an unsanctioned mission to steal the gold for themselves. The team includes:

The long-suffering platoon sergeant who wants to keep his men alive but is eventually won over by the payday.

The story is set in 1944 France during the Allied advance after D-Day. Lieutenant Kelly (Eastwood), a former officer demoted for following bad orders, discovers that a cache of $16 million in Nazi gold bars—worth roughly $121 million today—is hidden in a bank 30 miles behind enemy lines in the town of Clermont .