They never found her body.

Specialist Hannah Riley was just 24 years old when her convoy was hit outside Kabul. A roadside bomb tore through the armored vehicle like it was paper. What was left was barely enough to bury.

She had volunteered twice. No draft. No pressure. Just a decision to serve a country she believed in — a country she hoped would remember her name.

But today, her apartment is quiet. Her mother still pays the rent so Hannah’s dog won’t be homeless. Her student loans remain unpaid. And her medals — three of them — lie in a shoebox on a dusty shelf.

Her friends say she laughed with her whole body. She planned to become a nurse when she came back. She never did.

And while fireworks light the sky every July 4th, Hannah’s name is rarely spoken. America is loud with freedom, but quiet about the cost.

We don’t see the mothers who sleep in their daughters’ old beds. We don’t hear the voicemails they replay just to remember her voice. We forget the soldiers whose wars continue after death — in empty kitchens, in unopened letters, in debt collectors who don’t care where she died.

Specialist Hannah Riley is not alone.

Thousands of Americans wear uniforms, but only some return home. The rest are left behind, in memories, in debt, in the silence of a nation too distracted to grieve.

This weekend, someone will place a flag on her grave. But flags don’t hug grieving mothers. They don’t pay off student loans. They don’t replace a daughter who gave everything for strangers who will never know her name.

You don’t have to cry. But you should remember.

She died for a country she never stopped believing in.

Even when it forgot her.