In my experience, many men don’t like to admit when they are scared - especially when they are young...
That said, it is the very lack of honesty as to such an admission (and the submerging of a powerful emotional response such as fear) that might make other observations at that point unreliable.
In fact, a powerful emotion suppressed has a way of scratching itself back to the surface in ways that blur the memory of the experience which caused the emotion to begin with. And the greater the emotion suppressed, the greater the blurring/confusion of the memory of that experience.
Of course, there are exceptions to every rule.