"Dearest family," Wandrey reported from Germany on April 6, 1945, "It's midnight and the church bell in the village is toiling; it sounds so mournful. At the moment, I'm sitting here alone with Sammy our only patient." Wandrey became especially fond of Sammy, whom she described as a "young, handsome, black-haired, married, Italian-American enlisted infantryman [with] an angelic singing voice." Fragments from a German grenade had ripped through his chest, legs, skull, and right arm, and there was not chance he would survive. The next day, an anguished Wandrey wrote home after Sammy succumbed to his injuries.
4-7-45
Dearest family,
Despite Sammy's desperate battle to live, he slipped away just as morning broke. It broke my heart. Desperately tired, hungry, and sick of the misery and futility of war, I wept uncontrollably, my tears falling on poor Sammy's bandaged remains. Later this morning, our long overdue ambulance came to retrieve us. I couldn't bear to leave Sammy; I sat on the ambulance floor next to his litter and held his corpse as we bounced over the pockmarked roads on his last trip to Graves Registration. When he died, part of me died too. His magnificent singing voice was stilled forever but 'til the end of my days, I will still hear him say, "Nurse, you have a smile like a whooooole field of sunflowers."
So sadly, June.
Carroll, A. (Ed.). (2001). War Letters. New York: Scribner. link.