The Proud and Profane

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.