July 30, 1916. A cataclysmic series of explosions rocks the hot summer night of the Hudson River docks on the Manhattan / Jersey City waterfront - an act of terror not seen before in America! Black Tom Island, a massive storage depot holding tons of munitions to be shipped to our European allies, is obliterated. German saboteurs are suspected! The weeks leading up to this catastrophe were quiet and unremarkable for August Landesmann - a young German immigrant working at the National Docks on the Hudson River - and his pals. The war in Europe was foremost on everyone's mind, yet not even the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 could draw the United States into the fight, as President Wilson vowed to keep America out of the war.

When August's group is transferred to the Kearny Rail Yards to ferry Model-T Ford ambulances to the docks, he meets Doctor Johnson, an American Field Service administrator who is organizing a new volunteer ambulance unit to send to France. The idea of becoming a volunteer ambulance driver appeals to August and is on his mind as he drives a shipment onto the Black Tom Wharf late one hot summer night.

He nearly pays for the trip with his life and makes his life-altering decision from a hospital bed a few days later.