Dec 1942. Robert is eleven months old. His father, killed in the war in Africa, leaves him with wee Jeanie and three siblings; John, five; Jean, eight; and Hetty, thirteen. They live in two dingy ground-floor rooms behind a working men's pub in Glasgow. This is the story of the youngster's fight for survival and dignity; recounting joys and tribulations among his peers, street gangs, bullies, drunks, paedophiles and a dead old woman in a back close. His training in a military boarding school in Perthshire augurs freedom from the degradation of the slums of his birth. But has he changed?