From Here to Eternity recap

At Schofield Barracks in 1941, bugler Robert Prewitt transfers into a rifle company and refuses Captain Holmes's demand that he box, enduring an organized campaign of punishment rather than surrender his personal code. He befriends Angelo Maggio and falls in love with Alma, who works as Lorene at a Honolulu club. First Sergeant Milton Warden, the enlisted man who truly runs the company, begins an affair with Holmes's unhappy wife Karen. Army pressure destroys men around them: boxer Isaac Bloom kills himself, Maggio dies after escaping abuse in the stockade, and Prewitt kills the responsible sergeant, Fatso Judson, then hides with Alma. Holmes is forced from command, but Warden will not seek a commission, ending his chance to build a life with Karen. When Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, Prewitt tries to return to his unit and is shot by a patrol. Karen and Alma leave Hawaii on the same ship, each carrying a different version of the men and choices the Army has taken from them.

In February 1941, Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt transfers from the Bugle Corps to G Company at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, after losing a promotion to a less talented but better-connected bugler. Captain Dana Holmes welcomes him because Prewitt was once a leading welterweight boxer and Holmes wants a regimental championship. Prewitt refuses to fight: he quit after accidentally blinding a sparring partner and will not reverse the decision for favors or threats. First Sergeant Milton Warden, who performs most of the real work of command, understands both Holmes's ambition and Prewitt's stubborn pride. When Prewitt still refuses, men loyal to the boxing program begin the Treatment, assigning him exhausting duties and constant petty punishment while staying within the appearance of regulations. Prewitt befriends the quick-tempered Angelo Maggio and resolves to outlast the pressure without complaining or asking for release.

The Treatment continues, with Galovitch and other noncommissioned officers using work details and harassment to isolate Prewitt. He finds relief in friendship with Maggio and in nights in Honolulu. At the New Congress Club he meets Lorene, whose real name is Alma Schmidt. Prewitt is drawn toward love and permanence; Alma carefully separates affection from her plan to save money and establish a respectable life on the mainland. At the same time, Warden begins a dangerous affair with Karen Holmes. Karen's marriage to the captain has been poisoned by infidelity, illness, and the loss of her ability to have more children. Warden despises officers and is attracted to Karen, but their relationship places his career at risk and forces both of them to imagine whether an enlisted first sergeant and an officer's wife can have any future outside secrecy.

Prewitt refuses every route back to privileged status through boxing, even as the sustained punishment wears him down. His resistance exposes the way formal rules and unofficial power reinforce each other inside the company. Isaac Bloom does box, hoping success will secure respect, but his position remains fragile and his fear of humiliation deepens. Warden continues to keep G Company functioning while covering for Captain Holmes, though his affair with Karen increases his contempt for the captain. Karen urges Warden to become an officer so they might marry after a divorce, but he distrusts the officer class and the compromises a commission would require. Prewitt and Alma grow closer, yet their hopes remain mismatched: he wants a shared life rooted in the emotional truth of their relationship, while she fears that his identity as a soldier offers neither security nor the social standing she intends to regain.

The company's tensions become public when Galovitch provokes a fight with Prewitt. Forced to defend himself, Prewitt displays the boxing skill he has refused to use for the team. Captain Holmes witnesses enough to know that Galovitch is responsible but protects the system that has been pressuring Prewitt. Scrutiny of the incident brings the company's abuses to higher attention and weakens Holmes's position. Meanwhile, Bloom's success in the ring cannot resolve his isolation or instability. After a defeat and escalating distress, he kills himself, another casualty of a culture that equates toughness with worth while offering little help for fear or despair. Warden and Karen continue meeting, but Karen's demand that he seek a commission turns their possible future into a direct test of his identity. None of the central characters can escape the institution simply by seeing its damage clearly.

An investigation ends Dana Holmes's command and Army career, removing the officer who initiated Prewitt's punishment but not undoing its effects. Maggio's impulsive defiance leads to absence without leave and confinement in the stockade. There Sergeant James Judson, known as Fatso, subjects him to brutal abuse. Maggio eventually escapes, finds Prewitt, and dies from the injuries and exhaustion of his ordeal. Prewitt grieves for the friend who made company life bearable and becomes fixed on Judson as the person responsible. His desire for private justice follows the same personal code that sustained his refusal to box, but it now draws him toward an act from which Army rules and ordinary civilian life offer no safe return. Warden, still the company's indispensable first sergeant, faces his own decision about whether love for Karen is enough to make him pursue the officer's commission he has always rejected.

Prewitt confronts Fatso Judson in Honolulu. The encounter becomes a knife fight, and although Prewitt is wounded, he kills Judson. Knowing the military investigation will eventually reach him, Prewitt goes absent without leave and hides at Alma's home. Alma cares for him, but concealment makes their differences sharper: she will not abandon her plan for a secure mainland future, and he cannot stop thinking of himself as a soldier belonging to his company. Karen prepares to leave Captain Holmes, but Warden finally refuses to become an officer. His refusal preserves the enlisted identity and independence on which his authority rests, while ending the practical possibility of marriage to her. Both relationships therefore approach separation before any external battle begins. Around them the Hawaiian command continues its peacetime routines, unaware that the wider war is about to transform the meaning of duty, desertion, and survival.

Japan attacks Pearl Harbor and military installations across Oahu. G Company moves from peacetime routine into war, while Prewitt hears the assault from hiding. Whatever the danger of arrest for Judson's death, he cannot remain away when his fellow soldiers are under attack. He leaves Alma and tries to return to Schofield Barracks. Challenged by a military patrol, he runs rather than submit to detention and is shot dead before reaching his unit. Warden identifies him and carries the knowledge of his death as the company prepares for combat. Karen leaves Hawaii after her husband's resignation; Warden's refusal of a commission has ended their affair. On the ship home she encounters Alma and Mrs. Kipfer. Alma invents a respectable story in which her fiancé was a bomber pilot killed during the attack. Karen realizes that the man behind the fiction was probably Prewitt but lets Alma keep the version that makes his death bearable.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor turns the garrison's months of routine, rivalry, and private conflict into war. Prewitt, still absent without leave and hiding with Alma after killing Judson, hears the attack and decides that he belongs with his company. He leaves Alma and tries to return to Schofield Barracks, but a military patrol challenges him. Afraid that detention will keep him from his unit and expose him for Judson's death, he runs and is shot dead. Warden identifies and mourns him while G Company prepares for war. Karen leaves Hawaii after Captain Holmes's resignation; Warden has refused the officer's commission that might have allowed them a future, so their affair ends. On the ship home, Karen meets Alma and Mrs. Kipfer. Alma describes an invented fiancé, a bomber pilot killed in the attack, transforming Prewitt into the socially acceptable hero she wishes to remember. Karen recognizes enough of the truth to suspect that the dead man was Prewitt, but she does not challenge the story.