In response to Tim O’Brien’s chapter, Sweetheart of the Song tra Bong, from The Things They Carried:

During her time in Vietnam, Mary Anne changed dramatically. When she arrived, she was a typical American girl who was innocent and curious. During her time she spent in Vietnam, she slowly gained an interest in the guns and combat after she began helping the men in the medical unit. She stopped wearing makeup and jewelry and cut her hair showing that she no longer cared about her appearance. She eventually “ended” her relationship with Fossie and actually started going on ambushes and the men even said that her eyes weren’t bright blue anymore, they changed to the green of the jungles.

She changed because she had a different perspective than all of the men which made her more compelled to engage herself in the war. This transformation was very symbolic of the war itself because when she arrived, she immediately began helping with the medical medical unit and only weeks after that she began going on ambushes. Many men went into the war not knowing anything, just like Mary Anne, but they were quickly thrown into the war and had to fight. Not only does she symbolize the innocence of the men in the war, but also the loss of innocence because she wasn’t the ideal American teenage girl anymore. After being in Vietnam, she became a woman, not just a girl because she had been exposed to the horror of war, which consumed her entirely.

It does matter that she was a woman because she changed the perspective of these men on women, and Rat Kiley even tells the men that he’s telling the story to, not be sexist and just listen to the story because the message is what’s more important, the moral. Vietnam’s nature was inevitable and always changing just as the nature of Mary Anne. Things happened that weren’t expected and so many people lost their innocence on both sides.