Eighteen-year-old Carver Brown, a black man in the army, is often picked on by his peers and superiors. More than once a week, Brown forgets to button his jacket correctly, causing Corporal Cherry to remove the button with a razor blade and instruct Brown to sew it back on. One day, after getting his sewing kit from his locker and fixing his button, Carver returns to find his lock has been stolen. So, despite knowing not to bring money to training because it always goes missing, Brown has no choice but to put his change in his pocket. During the first weeks of basic training, Corporal Cherry adds almost thirty dollars to his paycheck by collecting the men's loose change. However, after a while the men catch on and leave their money locked away somewhere safe. So, Cherry is surprised when he hears the clink of coins this late in the year. He then turns to see Carver Brown eyeing fifty pennies now fallen to the ground. Cherry kicks the money away before Brown can collect it and takes it for himself despite the soldier's pleas. Carver Brown's platoon is then selected first for lunch because of their high rating during inspection, but Sergeant Divino quickly changes his mind, claiming he saw Brown move while at attention. Brown's peers all resent him for now making them last to get lunch, but Brown swears he never moved. A white soldier, Frazier, approaches one of his peers, Hines, and asks his opinion on Carver Brown, but Hines avoids the question. Frazier then asks Hines to go into town with him one day to see how black men are treated in the South compared to the North, where he's from. Frazier explains that he is interested in the Negro Problem and might move to New York one day to work in race relations, but Hines quickly responds that he does not share his interests, despite being a black man. Hines has lived a happy life in the North and has no interest in going into a Southern town. To Frazier's dismay, Hines hastily gets up and leaves to avoid finishing the conversation. Later that day, the soldiers are instructed to complete an obstacle course which ended with a climb fifteen feet into the air. While the platoon moves through the course, Carver sneakily avoids the challenges, moving past them without being noticed. However, when he reaches the end, Corporal Cherry finally sees him try to cross the finish line without using the ladders to climb into the air and come back down again. As a result, Cherry singles Carver out and orders him to complete the final obstacle while the rest of the soldiers watch. At first, Carver refuses, telling the corporal about his fear of heights, but Cherry just mocks him and calls him a coward. Carver finally complies, after Cherry threatens to extend his service by at least another decade and flashes his razor in a threatening way. When Brown reaches the top, however, he grows extremely light-headed, and before long he falls down the rungs which break his back and lands in the barbed wire below.