Trama

In the Pacific during WWII, a Roman Catholic widow falls for a tough lieutenant colonel.

In 1943, war widow Lee Ashley joins the American Red Cross and volunteers for the war in the Pacific where she hopes to find her husband's grave, a U.S. Marines lieutenant killed in battle on Guadalcanal. In Noumea, on the Free French Forces-controlled island of New Caledonia, Lee meets veteran Red Cross nurse Kate Connors, who tells Lee to avoid the romantic advances of the numerous Allied soldiers stationed there. Nevertheless, Lee falls in-love with a roguish battalion leader, Lt. Col. Colin Black, who seduces her by pretending to have been a friend of her late husband. The love affair between Lee and Colin leads to complications, deceit, heart-break and ultimately to tragedy. Transferred with Kate to Guadalcanal, Lee finally discovers her husband's grave in a military cemetery. At her husband's grave-site, Lee learns about her late husband's final moments and about what he thought of her, from a wounded soldier belonging to her husband's company. A shocked Lee returns to the Red Cross base, where the casualties from the latest battles start arriving and where Lee's heart receives another blow yet.—nufs68

1943. Having just started her volunteer stint with the American Red Cross, war widow Lee Ashley - Mrs. Lt. Howard Ashley, USMC - has arrived at her requested first posting, New Caledonia, in the South Pacific, it the closest she could get to her ultimate desired destination of Guadalcanal where Howard was killed in combat and where he is buried. Having lived a genteel country life with who was equally genteel Howard - an architect in civilian life - Lee is ill-equipped emotionally to deal with the horrors of war. She is under the supervision of Kate Connors, who has to coax out of Lee the best she can give despite Lee's apprehensions, Kate, even before her arrival, well aware of Lee's primary mission of this posting as a pilgrimage as opposed to her obligations to the Red Cross and the servicemen they are tasked to aid. What Kate does not know is Lee's primary reason for the pilgrimage is in wanting to understand Howard's mentality in his final few letters having had a change of tone uncharacteristic to him. She catches the attention of many a serviceman, including Pvt. Eddie Wodcik, for him not in a romantic sense but in a protective sense he seeing in her a likeness to his sister, who was killed as a child in a house fire. The person who pursues her in a sexual sense in his position in being able to do so is Lt. Col. Colin Black, the antithesis of Howard in being a hard, war driven man who does not believe in the service of the Red Cross in believing it making the servicemen weak, and who only sees women in war servicing the animal needs of the men. Despite Lee's initial abhorrence of everything related to Colin, Lee tries to understand the nature of their relationship as it begins to morph and as she begins to fall in love with him, something that on the surface makes no sense to her refined mentality.—Huggo

In 1943, Lee Ashley arrives in Noumea, on the island of New Caledonia in the South Pacific, where she has come to work as a Red Cross volunteer. As the island is home to an Allied military base, the attractive Lee quickly draws the attention of the love-starved soldiers, sailors and Marines stationed there, but she is only interested in finding out the plight of her late husband Howard, a victim of the Battle of Guadalcanal. When the latest group of casualties arrive in Noumea, Lee is hesitant to help with the injured soldiers until Kate Connors, the head of the local Red Cross club, reminds her that it is her duty. Later, Eddie Wodcik, an old friend of Kate, arrives at the military base and quickly falls in love with Lee, as she reminds him of his deceased sister, who died tragically in a tenement house fire. Lee, however, falls prey to the roguish Lt. Col. Colin Black, a battalion leader who pretends to have been a friend of her late husband in hopes of seducing her. Though Lee tells him that she has come to New Caledonia to discover if Howard's death was quick and peaceful, Colin declares that what she really wants to know is whether her husband died a soldier's or coward's death. Though seemingly repulsed by the gruff and domineering Marine, Lee admits to Kate that she has fallen in love with Colin, though he is the polar opposite of her late husband. In turn, Colin confesses to the cultured Kate that he joined the Marines to escape his life as a poverty-stricken half-breed. With Colin's unit about to leave Noumea on military maneuvers, the two lovers finally consummate their relationship after seeking shelter from a rainstorm in a French inn. Months later, Lee is offered her long-awaited transfer to Guadalcanal, but she declines, telling Kate that she wishes to stay in Noumea and wait for Colin, to whom she is secretly engaged and by whom she is now pregnant. Lee soon learns from a wounded Marine, however, that Colin is already married. Confronted with the truth, Colin tells Lee that he cannot get a divorce, as his wife is an institutionalized alcoholic, driven to the bottle by his dedication to the Marines. Angered and humiliated, Lee attempts to hurl herself off a cliff, only to be stopped by Colin. In the ensuing struggle, Lee is knocked to the ground and suffers a miscarriage. Thereafter, she refuses to see Colin, who is heartsick. Learning of Lee's plight, Eddie tries to murder Colin, but is quickly subdued by the colonel. Realizing his culpability, Colin refuses to press charges against his love-sick subordinate. Word is received Lt. Col. Black's wife died and, soon after, Lee is transferred with Kate to Guadalcanal, where she is finally forced to confront the grave of her husband. At the cemetery, she meets Eustace Press, a battle-fatigued patient who served with Howard. Unaware of Lee's identity, Eustace tells her that while Howard had nothing but kind words for his wife, he recognized her as the "blood-sucker type" who dominated her husband completely. Acknowledging her own selfishness in the soldier's words, Lee then dedicates herself to her work. Soon thereafter, Colin arrives at the Red Cross station, the victim of a mortar attack. Lt. J. G. Holmes, the chaplain of his unit, tells Lee that Colin has thought of little more than her the last two months, which is why the shell-shocked Marine can has said nothing but the words "forgive me" since his injury. He is expected to take some months of recuperation. Lee has now found the grace to wait and grant forgiveness when he regains full consciousness as she sits at his bedside.