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.