The Things They Carried

The narrator had not known Curt Lemon very well, and what he had known “was not impressive” (82). Curt often played it tough and was constantly posturing, but “it’s easy to get sentimental about the dead, and to guard against that I want to tell a quick Curt Lemon story” (82).

While working an area of operations along the South China Sea, an Army dentist is helicoptered in to do some work on the soldiers. His setup is minimal. As they sit waiting, Curt begins to get anxious. When someone asks what is wrong, Curt says “that back in high school he’d had a couple of bad experiences with dentists. Real sadism, he said. Torture chamber stuff” (83). He declares that he will not see the dentist, but when his name is called, Lemon stands and goes into the tent. He faints before the dentist touches him. He is so embarrassed when he wakes up that he doesn’t talk to anyone else. Instead, he can be heard “cussing, bawling himself out” (84).

That night he sneaks into the dental tent, wakes up the dentist, and complains of a toothache. The dentist can’t find anything wrong, but Curt insists, and the dentist yanks out a completely healthy tooth: “There was some pain, no doubt, but in the morning Curt Lemon was all smiles” (84).

Rat Kiley has a “reputation for exaggeration and overstatement” (85), yet insists on the truth of this story. Before he joins Alpha Company, Rat is assigned a medical detachment near the village of Tra Bong. He sees casualties before shipping them out to hospitals in Chu Lai. It is a relatively relaxed working atmosphere. He has access to beer, three meals a day, and sleeps under a tin roof. The site is surrounded by wire but otherwise not secured. Green Berets use the compound as a base of operations but mostly keep to themselves.

The outpost rarely sees much action: “On occasion, when casualties came in, there were quick spurts of activity, but otherwise the days flowed by without incident, a smooth and peaceful time” (88). One evening, while drinking, an officer jokingly proposes that they “bring in a few mama-sans from Saigon, spice things up” (88). Although it is mostly a joke, one medic named Mark Fossie begins taking the idea seriously, and six weeks later, his girlfriend arrives at the outpost on a supply shipment helicopter. She’s “[a] tall, big boned blonde. At best, Rat said, she was seventeen years old, fresh out of Cleveland Heights Senior High. She had long white legs and blue eyes and a complexion like strawberry ice cream” (89). Her name is Mary Anne.

During dinner, Fossie explains that it had not been especially complicated to fly her out from Cleveland. Fossie and Mary Anne had dated since elementary school: “From the sixth grade on they had known for a fact that someday they would be married” (90). They sleep together in one of the bunkers along the perimeter and stay side by side for the first two weeks. The medics feel envy. Mary Anne is attractive: She wears cut-off jean shorts and boosts the men’s morale. She becomes interested in her surroundings and the details of the outpost. Although it is very dangerous to do so, she gets Fossie to take her to the neighboring Vietnamese village. On the way back, as Fossie tries to explain the dangers of ambushes and guns, she goes for a swim in the Song Tra Bong.

When casualties come into the outpost, Mary Anne isn’t “afraid to get her hands bloody” (93). She learns how to perform small procedures and seems to become a different person. She falls “into the habits of the bush. No cosmetics, no fingernail filing” (94). She learns how to use an M-16. Her relationship with Fossie changes.

One night, she doesn’t come in. Fossie wakes Rat in the middle of the night, suspecting she is sleeping with someone. Rat checks the men’s tents but doesn’t find her. It turns out she is out on ambush with the Green Berets. She returns to the camp after sunrise with the Green Berets, her face is black with charcoal. After that evening “there was a strained, tightly wound quality” (99) to the way Fossie and Mary Anne treat one another. Although they seem happy from a distance, there is something “tentative and false” (99) to their relationship. After the third week, Fossie arranges to send Mary Anne home, but she disappears with the Green Berets again and doesn’t return for three weeks.

The morning after she returns, Fossie stations himself outside of the Special Forces area where she is staying. Rat brings him some food as he waits into the afternoon, and then late into the night. A strange form of music is playing and someone can be heard singing. Fossie finally enters with Rat and Eddie Diamond right behind. Inside, there is music and candlelight in conjunction with a powerful stench of blood and flesh, and the head of a black leopard in the corner. The narrator says, “[t]he background music came from a tape deck near the circle of candles, but the high voice was Mary Anne’s” (105). She is wearing a necklace of human tongues and tells Fossie that she feels alive in Vietnam. Rat helps Fossie back outside.

Much later, after Rat leaves the outpost, he hears that “one morning, all alone, Mary Anne walked off into the mountains and did not come back” (110). No body or equipment is ever found. Fossie “was busted to PFC, shipped back to a hospital in the States, and two months later received a medical discharge” (110). According to the Green Berets, Mary Anne “was still out there somewhere in the dark” (110).