Summary
O’Brien says the most enduring Vietnam stories are those
that are between the absolutely unbelievable and the mundane. Rat
Kiley, who has a reputation for exaggeration, tells a story of his
first assignment in the mountains of Chu Lai, in a protected and
isolated area where he ran an aid station with eight other men near
a river called the Song Tra Bong. One day, Eddie Diamond, the highest ranking
man in his company and a pleasure-seeker, jokingly suggests that
the area is so unguarded and seemingly safe that you could even
bring a girl to the camp there. A younger medic, Mark Fossie, seems
interested in the idea and goes off to write a letter. Six weeks later,
his elementary school sweetheart, Mary Anne Bell, arrives, carried
in by helicopter with a resupply shipment. Fossie explains that
getting her to camp was difficult but not impossible and for the next
two weeks, they carry on like school children. Mary Anne is curious
and a fast learner—she picks up some Vietnamese and learns how to
cook. When four casualties come in, she isn’t afraid to tend to
them, learning how to repair arteries and shoot morphine. She drops
her fussy feminine habits and cuts her hair short.
After a while, Fossie suggests that Mary Anne think about
going home, but she argues that she is content staying. She makes
plans to travel before she and Fossie marry. She begins coming home
later and a few times not at all. One night she is missing, and
when Fossie goes out looking, he discovers that she has been out
the entire night on an ambush, where she refused to carry a gun.
The next morning, Fossie and Mary Anne exchange words and seem to
have reached a new understanding. They become officially engaged
and discuss wedding plans in the mess hall, but over the next several
nights it becomes clear that there is a strain on their relationship.
Fossie makes arrangements to send her home but Mary Anne is not
pleased with the prospect—she becomes withdrawn, and she eventually
disappears.
Mary Anne returns three weeks later, but she doesn’t even
stop at her fiancé’s bunk—she goes straight to the Special Forces
hut. The next morning, Fossie stations himself outside the Special
Forces area, where he waits until after midnight. When Kiley and
Eddie Diamond go to check on Fossie, he says he can hear Mary Anne singing.
He lunges forward into the hut, and the two others follow. Inside
they see dozens of candles burning and hear tribal music. On a post
near the back of the bunk is the head of a leopard—its skin dangles
from the rafters. When Fossie finally sees Mary Anne she is in the
same outfit—pink sweater, white blouse, cotton skirt—that she was
wearing when she arrived weeks before. But when he approaches her,
he sees a necklace made of human tongues around her neck. She insists
to Fossie that what she is doing isn’t bad and that he, in his sheltered
camp, doesn’t understand Vietnam.
Kiley says that he never knew what happened with Mary
Anne because three or four days later he received orders to join
the Alpha Company. But he confesses that he loved Mary Anne—that
everyone did. Two months after he left, when he ran into Eddie Diamond, he
learned that Mary Anne delighted in night patrols and in the fire. She
had crossed to the other side and had become part of the land.
Analysis
In this story, O’Brien paints a highly stylized version
of Vietnam as a world that profoundly affects the foreign Americans
who inhabit it. He portrays a stark difference between the native
world of Vietnam and the world of the Americans. Mary Anne Bell
fully embraces Vietnamese culture, while Mark Fossie ignores it.
The difference between their experiences sets up a world in which
the separate cultures are completely foreign to, and incompatible
with, each other. O’Brien does not suggest that one can assimilate
elements of each culture into a comfortable mix. Rather, the characters must
choose a single cultural identity.
“Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” refutes the idea of
women as one-dimensional beings who serve only to offer comfort
to men. Fossie assumes that if he brings Mary Anne over to the relatively comfortable
quarters he and his men keep, he will gain her comfort and companionship
and she will remain unaffected by her surroundings. This fantasy
is immediately shattered as Mary Anne is instantly curious about
the things surrounding her—from the language and the locals to the
ammunition and the procedures and finally the nature of war itself.
The irony of this story is that Mary Anne’s new reality agrees with
her, perhaps more than her conventional life. She is enlivened and
empowered by war: its influence prompts her to make plans for future
travel and to attempt to steer her path away from the life she earlier
considered desirable. Ironically, although her soldier boyfriend
brings her over to be a comfort while he is in the midst of war,
in the end, Mary Anne’s conversion makes her hungrier for adventure
than he is.
