Plot

A sergeant finds out that a GI hides a child in the military barracks. The boy is the son of another soldier who sings in a night club but due to series of misunderstandings the sergeant believes he is his own son, born from a former love story.—Salvatore Santangelo <pappagone2@libero.it>

Nico Moroni (Remo Germani) an Italian nightclub singer doing his national service of serving with the Italian armed forces, finds out that his estranged American wife Catherine Swan (Alicia Brandet), an actress, plans to return to the USA and take their newborn baby son with her. Incensed, Nick discusses the problem with his exploitative manager, Hamlet (Umberto D'Orsi) who seems interested only in arranging press junkets for his client, no mater how inconvenient.

After performing at the nightclub while on leave, Nick steals his baby son from Catherine's apartment and asks Hamlet to help him hide the child. However, he realizes that Hamlet envisages claiming a reward for turning him in, so he takes the baby to the barracks instead. Nick hides the baby in the storeroom with the assistant of his idiotic friend Franco Piscitello (Franco Franchi), who is hoping Nick will help him for forge a career as an opera singer when they leave the Italian army.

Before Franco can find a more suitable hiding place for the baby, the bullying Sergeant Ciccio Camilloni (Ciccio Ingrassia) shows up and insists that Franco leave camp to help with a deception: he is to dress as a waiter at the Sergeant's home and receive a visitor, who is Camilloni's wealthy fiancee Thaide Bonafini (Moira Orfei), without letting on that they are both just lowly soldiers.

Franco attempts to conceal the child at Camilloni's house while the Sergant's tryst proceeds, but he bungles his role as waiter and drives the poor woman away. Camilloni's furious shouts wake the baby and its cries lead him to the bedroom where it is hidden. Puzzled, he asks Franco where the child came from, but at that very moment, a phone call comes from Thaide, saying that she's leaving for Bologna but has left him a reminder of their love: "A reminder you must keep close to you for the rest of your life". Dropping the telephone in shock, Camilloni mistakenly assumes that she means the baby. Camilloni begs Franco to keep the baby hidden, a turn of events which Franco uses to blackmail his superior in return for preferential treatment.

Meanwhile, Nick returns to the barracks and finds the child gone. After confronting Catherine, whom he suspects of stealing the baby back, the two of them come to the conclusion that their son has been kidnapped. They inform the police and in doing so discover that they are still in love with each other. Returning to the barracks, Nick and Catherine find that neither the baby or Franco can be found.

Everything comes to a head the next day during the monthly military maneuvers run by the tightly wound General MacKee (Luigi Pavese). Franco and Camilloni bring chaos to the proceedings, while Nick and Catherine try to retrieve their son, while General MacKee is driver to a nervous breakdown until at last the baby is reunited with its parents and Thaide arrives to assure Camilloni he is not really the baby's father.