Other Confederate troops are encamped there, having a ball - literally. The best part of the film is the Virginia plantation where Brayden shows up, dressed as a Confederate soldier who is lost, trying to get to Spotsylvania. Coop doesn't really get to show too much depth here, but the idea is that he now distrusts all women and feels like he has nothing to live for. Braden asks that he take the younger man's place in the assignment.
Of course, this also means he will be shot as a spy. His bunk mate is a young guy with everything to live for whose assignment is to cross into Confederate territory and be captured as a spy with the Confederate troops lifting deliberately misleading information from him. Brayden rides back to the Union camp, where he has a rather mild punishment meted out to him for being AWOL, given his past exemplary record. Potato Head, I can only assume he is rich or Elizabeth has insanity in her family. Since this fellow looks like a 40ish version of Mr. Brayden risks his career only to see and hear his girl betraying him with another man, a stocky older fellow whom she says she really loves. He decides to take his leave anyways as he desperately wants to see his girl, Elizabeth, played by an unrecognizable Virginia Bruce before her MGM days. Gary Cooper plays Captain James Brayden who joins up with his Union troops but has his four day leave abruptly cancelled. That is as about as violent as this film gets. No explanation is ever given for this short scene. Maybe it was the general's heavy drinking or optimistic thinking, but the war did not end until April 1865. Then there is an odd close up of a mute General Grant writing a letter about how he hopes that the war will be over in August. It has a map of the US as it existed in 1860, and then zooms in on the deep south and shows farming there, then zooms in on Ohio and shows a farmer farming there, shows the lead up to the Civil War, and then goes back to the map with the edges of the old Confederacy ablaze.
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