“We all cry in private. But not in front of the boys. Never in front of the boys.”
Those words lived inside June Wandrey Mann long after the guns fell silent.
The shock ward was never truly quiet. Even at night, it breathed—ragged, uneven, stitched together by groans, whispered prayers, and the metallic clatter of instruments moving faster than thought. Canvas walls trembled with distant artillery. The air smelled of antiseptic, blood, and dust carried in from somewhere too close to the front.
That was where they brought him.
He couldn’t have been more than eighteen. Barely old enough to shave, barely old enough to understand what war demanded before it took everything back. Two orderlies carried him in, his uniform torn, his body impossibly light. June saw the look in his eyes immediately—not fear, not yet. Trust. The kind that settles on someone who believes the adults in the room still have control.
As she leaned over him, she felt the familiar tightening in her chest. Nurses learned early how to swallow that feeling. There was no room for it here.
He looked up at her, eyes searching her face for answers he was afraid to ask.
“How am I doing, nurse?” he said.
The question was never really about his wounds. It was about permission—to rest, to let go, to believe someone stronger was holding the line for him now.
June bent down and kissed his forehead. Her lips trembled, but her voice did not.
“You are doing just fine, soldier.”
He smiled. A soft, boyish smile, the kind meant for school dances and summer afternoons, not war tents stitched together under foreign skies.
“I was just checking,” he whispered.
And then, as gently as a candle losing its flame, he was gone.
June did not cry.
Not then. Not there.
She smoothed his hair. She closed his eyes. She signaled to the orderlies with hands that did not shake. Around her, the ward continued to move—another stretcher, another life balanced on seconds. There was no pause for grief. The boys were still watching.
Only later, when the tent finally fell quiet and the lamps dimmed, did June step outside. She pressed her back against the cool canvas, slid down to the ground, and let the tears come. Silent. Private. Heavy with all the names she never knew and all the faces she would never forget.
That was the war she carried with her—from Africa to Sicily, from Italy to France, from Germany back home. Not medals. Not battle stars. But moments like that smile.
She never cried in front of the boys.
But the war cried through her for the rest of her life.