In Cherry Ames, Chief Nurse, Cherry is whisked off to a new assignment on an island in the Pacific close to the battlefront. As Acting Chief Nurse Colonel Pillsbee thinks she is too and "young and pretty and " to successfully supervise sixty nurses and 200 corpsmen. Can she do it? For the first time, Cherry and the nurses of the Spencer unit have to work under fire, in a makeshift tent hospital uncomfortably close to the fighting. When the casualties pour in, the nurses and doctors work night and day, constantly under danger of attack by the Japanese. When the other Lieutenant Ames, Cherry's twin brother Charlie, is unexpectedly stationed nearby, Charlie and Cherry piece together the mystery behind the silence of an injured pilot - which involves a secret enemy weapon.