Boris Lavochkin was a lieutenant in the United States Army, and Chester Martin's platoon leader during the last year of the Second Great War. A young man, Lavochkin was a brutal and vindictive soldier, frequently ordering his men to shoot Confederate civilians in the various towns his platoon passed through. Chester Martin grew more and more uneasy with Lavochkin's tactics. The climax came at Hardeeville, South Carolina, where Lavochkin's murder of the town's mayor touched off a massacre of most of the citizenry.