Sacrificed love

**Synopsis (Longer Pitch)** In the shadow of World War I, Douglas Care is a hardworking baker in Liverpool, struggling to feed his wife Constance and their two young children. Poverty has tightened its grip so severely that when his friend John Frost suggests enlisting in the British Army, Douglas sees no other choice. The government pay will keep his family alive. With a heavy heart, he leaves home, promising to return. What follows is a descent into a war far removed from the European trenches. Douglas and John sail aboard the RMS Aquitania toward the African front, surviving a terrifying German U-boat attack at sea before landing in the sweltering heat of South Africa and Nigeria. The jungle becomes their new battlefield — dense, humid, and filled with hidden German positions and deadly Askari fighters. Ambush after ambush tests the men’s courage and endurance. Douglas is wounded early, sidelined in a medical tent where loneliness and the kindness of a nurse named Edith briefly threaten his loyalty to the family waiting back home. He resists, clinging to photographs of Constance and the children. As the campaign intensifies, friendship, rivalry, and survival collide. John becomes a scout, risking his life on the front lines, while a bitter fellow soldier named Robert grows resentful of Douglas. After a disastrous battle that leaves the British forces reeling, Robert’s jealousy turns violent. He lures Douglas into the jungle, attacks him, and leaves him for dead at the edge of a roaring waterfall. Douglas plunges into the river, losing an arm in the process. Fate intervenes when Nayeli, a young woman from a remote Nigerian tribal village, finds his broken body on the riverbank. She brings him to her people and risks her own life to gather rare medicinal plants that save him. As Douglas slowly recovers, he confronts the loss of his arm, his identity as a soldier, and the impossibility of returning home the man he once was. In Nayeli’s quiet strength and the acceptance of her village, he discovers an unexpected path forward — one that challenges everything he thought he knew about duty, belonging, and love. What begins as a story of sacrifice for family becomes a powerful journey of survival, betrayal, and redemption set against the rarely seen African theater of the First World War.