Mary Anne Bell would have to be the prime example of the terrible things that war can do to a person. The girl was only 17, fresh out of high school. She should’ve been enjoying her life as a teenager but instead she was exposed to the horrors of war by her boyfriend. I’m sure Fossie didn’t mean any harm but he should have really thought this through. I guess he thought she would be safe because they were living in a medical base. Not much happened around there. Everything started off pretty innocently.
Mary and Fossie flirted and giggled and Mary lifted everyone’s morale. I’m sure she did since she was the only girl in the camp and was quite attractive. Mary was also curious and well they say curiosity killed the cat. She would ask questions about weapons, grenades, and the villages. She just wanted to learn. She wasn’t even grossed out by the casualties that came in. The blood and gore didn’t seem to bother her at all. May be she was already becoming desensitized. These were the first signs of her dramatic change, a warning.
She cut her hair, no more makeup, hygiene was of no importance, and she abandoned her cute clothes. She learned how to shoot a gun and turned out to be really good at it. She gained confidence and voiced her opinion on things. Her muscles became more firm, her voice a bit lower. Her mannerisms became less womanly and more like a soldier’s. Then she disappeared on night only for Fossie to find out she was with the Green Berets. She had been out on an ambush all night. That was too much for Fossie to handle. He put his foot down, made her clean herself up, and put on her normal clothes. He was trying to force everything to be normal again.
She disappeared again for about three weeks. When she was finally found, she wasn’t Mary Anne Bell anymore. She was a hardened killer with human tongues around her neck and smile on her lips. Mary Anne was gone forever mentally and eventually physically. Vietnam swallowed her up and turned her into a killer. It didn’t even matter that she was a girl.
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