Personal Narrative: A Soldier In Vietnam

She was one of the girliest girls I knew since grade school, with her stylish culottes and pink garments of all different shades for all different occasions. She was the epitome of a mixture between pure innocence and quirk that boldly took her rightful place in the middle of my heart. Mary Anne wasn’t just all of that; she was also my affectionate girlfriend, my warm-hearted best friend who I could talk about anything with, from the most trivial things to the very meaning of our whole existence. At the time, all I could feel was the absolute joy that I got from spending my time with her. We had our entire happiness in the future planned out, a dream wedding and all, but maybe that was the reason why I wouldn’t have ever imagined that I would be feeling so lost and empty just a few years later, alone and missing a part of myself. I lost Mary Anne to the war we had to fight in Vietnam, but it didn’t happen in an instant, nor did it happen in a day; I was losing her in pieces and fragments slowly, as time went by. The process of her disappearance wasn’t visible in the beginning; perhaps if I’d detected it in its early stages it could have been stopped, like what doctors would say when talking about someone being diagnosed with a disease early enough for them to provide the treatment needed. I worked with medics in a guarded area in Tra Bong, located in South Vietnam and far away from home. We worked as hard as we were expected to when casualties arrived but slugged around like the bored young men we were when there wasn’t any, which was a lot of the time. Jokes about bringing girls in for our liking could be heard, and plans to actually do just that would be derived. I think it significant the fact that I was one of the guys who came up with the idea, for a couple of days later my high-school sweetheart, Mary Anne, stepped onto the land. I had arranged her entire trip from Cleveland to Saigon thinking it was the most romantic thing a boyfriend could do in a long-distance relationship. Besides, the girlfriend was all up for it, she decided that she could learn a thing or two about the war when she visited. I thought it was more than fine to have her next to me, my inexperienced and simple mind convinced me that no matter how dirty the war was, I would always be able to protect her from harm’s way. The others adored her at first stare. She was indeed strikingly beautiful with her angelic blue eyes, soft blonde hair, not to mention a bubbly personality and an awe-inspiring smile that matched her delicate nails and jewellery; it seemed like they loved her as much as I did. Mary Anne got along very well with them, she danced and bantered around with the guys and made me feel like we were back in Cleveland whenever she was around. Naturally, I figured that her characteristic curiosity would cause her to want to get in on the buzz …show more content…
Mary Anne slightly hesitated when I approached her with the usual topic of what we would do after the war. She crinkled her cute nose for a second, scratched her unusual dishevelled blonde hair with her plain nails and meekly replied, “We still have time to decide later on.” The girl I was so deeply in love with all my life up to this point was slipping out of my grip; and it wasn’t only because of what she said, it was also what she did, or what she didn’t do. Mary Anne’s cancer was the war; it took her laughter away by the day and it turned her innate innocence towards the wild. There was no doubt that she saw things that a young girl shouldn’t have seen. Headless bodies with their insides out were just the surface of the horror I wanted to protect her from. She went out on night ambushes with a group of Greenies and did things that I wouldn’t have been able to comprehend; each time, she came back dirtier than the one