learned how to clip an artery and pump up a plastic splint and

shoot in morphine...In her second week Eddie Diamond taught her how to disassemble an M-16, how the various parts worked, and from there it was a natural progression to learning how to use the weapon. For hours at a time she plunked away at C-ration cans...There was a new confidence in her voice, a

new authority in the way she carried herself." She is so focused on the war. It is all she cares about as she spends hours learning how to use and practice using weapons.

wearing jewelry, cut her hair short and wrapped it in a dark

green bandanna. Hygiene became a matter of small consequence...She wore a bush hat and filthy green fatigues; she carried the standard M-16

automatic assault rifle; her face was black with charcoal." This is Mary Anne now fully embodying this new side of her. She wants to experience the fullness of the war even physically, changing the way she looks to appear less "feminine". 

"Her body seemed foreign somehow—too stiff in places, too firm where the softness used to be. The bubbliness was gone. The nervous giggling, too. When she laughed now, which was rare, it was only when something struck her as truly funny. Her voice seemed to reorganize itself at a lower pitch." Mary Anne is no longer the classic American woman she used to be, her personality has changed into a more serious, determined one. 

afraid to get her hands bloody. At times, in fact, she seemed

fascinated by it...the adrenaline buzz that went with the job, that quick hot rush in your veins when the choppers settled down and you had to do things fast and right. No time for sorting through options, no thinking at all; you just stuck your hands in and started plugging up holes." Mary Anne loves the excitement and intensity of the war, she loves the rush of adrenaline and how empowering the war experience makes her feel. She is more happier, free to make the decisions she wants to make instead of complying to American's societal obligations of being a woman.