Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong

This is the story of Mark Fossie and his childhood sweet heart Mary Anne Bell

Rat Kiley claims that his first assignment at a supply station in the Chu Lai mountains-a station so calm and under control that a civilian (woman) would even be safe.

Rat Kiley and his Stories…

Fossie goes to work appealing to different contacts he has made all over the world

Six weeks later Mary Anne Bell arrives in a helicopter

Immediately, she goes to work learning everything she can about the camp; its men, the day-to-day activities, and its purpose.

I Got This!

Mary Anne Bell proves to be a quick learner.

-She learns how to cook-She learns some Vietnamese-She learns basic battlefield medical

techniques-She cuts her hair short and all but

drops her “womanly” side

Damn Girl!

Fossie grows increasingly uncomfortable with Mary Anne Bell’s behavior…

He suggests that they get married and puts her to work planning the wedding

She soon becomes bored with the busy work and starts disappearing throughout the day, only to return very late at night

Fossie tries to send his now fiancé home… but she disappears.

For three weeks she goes missing-when she returns she walks right passed his tent and doesn’t even acknowledge him.

Instead, she follows the special forces soldiers into their tent….

Ok… GO HOME!

Confused, Fossie and two others wait outside the special forces tent

He begins to hear strange chanting and singing-he identifies Mary Anne’s voice among them

He lunges into the tent to find her and the special forces involved in some tribal ritual

The head of a leopard is on some kind of altar at the front of the room, its skin hangs from the ceiling.

Mary Anne is dressed in the outfit she was wearing when she arrived in camp

Except… around her next she was wearing a necklace made of human tongues.

She berates Fossie for not understanding what was going on outside of camp and that she enjoyed going out on ambush with the green berets.

Kiley stops the story there-as at that point in the story is when he is redeployed to Alpha Company

But he says he later ran into a former soldier in the camp who claimed that she simply disappeared into the night.

Ummmmm, You’ve changed…