World Battlefronts: The Wounded Do Not Cry

Two hours after Lieut. Frances Slanger and other Army nurses waded ashore in Normandy on D-plus-four, they were at work. They slept on the ground, wore the same clothes four days running. In five weeks of rugged going they helped handle 3,000 casualties.

Last month the girls were touched when an article praised them for sharing the G.I.s’ mud and discomfort without a whimper. In Belgium Lieut. Slanger and her tent mates talked it over. That night, by flashlight, she wrote an answer: “We have learned a great deal about our American soldier and the stuff he is made of. The wounded do not cry. Their buddies come first. The patience and determination they show, the courage and fortitude they have is sometimes awesome to behold.”

Stars and Stripes published it under the heading “Nurse Writes Editorial.” But Nurse Slanger never saw it in print. The night after she wrote the piece, a German shell had ripped into her tent and wounded her fatally. She did not cry, died a half hour later.