Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong

In this story, Rat Kiley is telling a story (a story within a story, but I forgot what that's called) about Mark Fossie bringing his girlfriend, Mary Anne Belle into the war with him. Mary Anne is described as attractive, although she's "too wide" in the shoulders, and she seems cute and bubbly, which is very contrasting to the scene they're in, full of violence and filth. She starts to become more into the war, and her old habits are left behind. She stops wearing makeup, stops tending to her fingernails, cuts her hair short and wears a dark green bandana around it (Why is it that in stories and movies, when a woman cuts her hair short, it's always this symbol of her tossing out femininity or becoming more masculine, or showing that she stops caring about her apperance. I have short hair, because I want to. It doesn't make me less of a woman because of it. Is it that society can only understand symbols of femininity through shallow things, like hair and makeup? I'm letting my emotions get into this too much. Sorry.)

Mary Anne also starts to change her life plans with Mark Fossie. They're introduced as this couple who knows exactly what they want to do with their life when they get older, but Mary Anne now has some "what if's" and "maybe's" about their future together. Their relationships start to suffer when they get engaged. Their smiles are described as "too intense" and they held hands "as if they were afraid to let go." This part made me so incredibly sad, to see this couple who was so in love before the war have their love destroyed BY the war.
The end of the story wraps up with Mary Anne turning into this entirely new person, wearing a necklace of human tounges and wanting to eat Vietnam, and swallow it whole. She is corrupted fully, and after this encounter that Mark Fossie has with her, she's never seen again.