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Days of Glory

In the wintry Russian countryside of the early 1940s, Vladimir (Gregory Peck) leads a squad of partisan fighters operating behind German lines. The group's routines are disrupted when Nina (Tamara Toumanova), a ballerina, is brought to their hideout after becoming separated from her troupe. She confesses she has neither handled a gun nor learned to fight, cook, mend, or clean. Vladimir doubts she will be of any use. Later, a German soldier stumbles upon the group's lair but is captured. That night, he attempts an escape, but, at gunpoint, Nina shoots him, winning the approval of her new comrades. The next night, when the guerrillas carry out the sabotage of a German munitions train, Vladimir takes Nina along to be initiated. The operation is a success. Yet although she and Vladimir are becoming close, Nina is put off by his ruthlessness. He explains that before the war he, as an engineer, had to destroy the very hydroelectric power plant he had helped build in order to keep the enemy from using it.

The couple's budding romance threatens the stability of the squad. At one point, when Vladimir must enlist someone to pass through Naxi lines to relay a coded message to his superior, he decides a woman would less likely be caught. He chooses the veteran Yelena (Maria Palmer), the only woman in the group besides Nina. When Yelena's horse returns to their hideout with blood on the saddle, Nina volunteers to take her place. Vladimir reluctantly accedes, sending the teen-aged boy Mitya (Glen Vernon) along with her. Upon delivering the message, she is given a coded reply: "The snow will fall tomorrow." This indicates that an anticipated massive Russian counterattack will begin the next day. Vladimir's superiors put him in charge of a merged partisan operation.

Before the fighting begins, however, he orders Nina to take Mitya's younger sister, Olga (Dena Penn), to safety.

Fighting bravely, the group's members are killed one by one, but Nina returns to Vladimir. As they fight on, he administers her the partisan oath of allegiance just before a German tank rolls atop their machine-gun nest and explodes.