SYNOPSIS:

Ed Kennedy, among the most experienced correspondents covering World War II in Europe, is an elite reporter with the Associated Press. But even Ed Kennedy is unable to penetrate the maddening military censorship and the bumbling bureaucracy he encounters. The war is ending, Hitler is dead. Rumor of surrender spreads among correspondents working out of Paris and they hustle in vain to get the story. The US military is their primary hurdle. And because it is the job of bungling military bureaucrats to devise top-secret documents to account for every possible scenario, they have created “Operation Jackplane” to micro-manage the handful of correspondents it transports to Reims to witness the surrender ceremony. In its implementation, Operation Jackplane is a comic administrative nightmare. The military bureaucrats frantically shoo away unwanted correspondents who have somehow learned of the “secret” surrender and who have shown up in Reims uninvited. And the correspondents that the military carefully selected to witness the ceremony grow increasingly outraged by the ridiculous, Catch-22 conditions Operation Jackplane places upon them. The most outrageous condition is a command that news of the surrender must not be reported for 36 hours. The correspondents are incensed. But only Ed Kennedy decides to violate the military order. He knows that countless numbers of soldiers and citizens will likely die in battles waged after ¬the surrender is signed. Having witnessed so much killing and so many atrocities during his career, he doesn’t want unnecessary death on his conscience. He ingeniously finds a way around the censors to get the news published a day early. The world celebrates and great happiness prevails. But Kennedy’s violation of the military order destroys his career. The Associated Press sells him down the river and he faces a possible military tribunal. Fellow correspondents vilify him. Kennedy returns to the United States in disgrace. But his action is validated when he is regarded as a hero who gave the world an extra day of peace.