M*A*S*H

by Richard Hooker

  Each doctor's tent at the MASH had a young Korean to clean it, keep the stove going, shine shoes, and do the laundry and other chores. He was called a houseboy.

  Naturally The Swamp's houseboy was called a Swampboy. His name was Ho-Jon. Ho-Jon was tall for a Korean. He was thin. He was bright. Prior to the war he had attended a church school in Seoul. He was a Christian. His English was relatively fluent.

  Ho-Jon thought Hawkeye Pierce, Duke Forrest and Trapper John Mclntyre were the three greatest people in the world. Unlike other houseboys, he was allowed to spend a lot of his spare time in the tent. The Swampmen helped him with reading and writing English, had books sent to him from the States, and gave him a good basic education in a few short months. Ho-Jon had a mind like a bear trap. It engulfed everything that came its way. During bull sessions in The Swamp, he sat quietly in a corner and listened. During busy periods, he was brought to the OR and trained to assist the Swampmen as a scrub nurse.

  The Swampmen thought as much of Ho-Jon as he did of them. On his seventeenth birthday, however, despite the attempt of Colonel Blake, urged on by the Swampmen, to intercede with the Korean government, Ho-Jon was drafted into the Republic of Korea Army. Unhappiness and a feeling of despair and frustration prevailed in The Swamp on the day of Ho-Jon's departure. The Swampmen gave him clothes, money, canned food, and cigarettes. Hawkeye himself drove Ho-Jon to Seoul. There the two went to see Ho-Jon's family who lived in a dirty shack on a filthy street and whose reaction to the largesse showered upon their son by the American doctors was awe-inspiring and pathetic.

  Hawkeye left hastily. He found an Air Force Officers' club where he drank moodily and disinterestedly without getting any emotional benefit from the good Air Force Scotch. He never expected to see Ho-Jon again. He thought of Crabapple Cove and wondered how he could ever have thought his material benefits and opportunities limited. Compared to Ho-Jon, he'd had everything.

  As it turned out, Captain Pierce did see Ho-Jon again. It was six weeks later, when Ho-Jon returned in the uniform of a private in the ROK Army. The uniform was covered with blood. Deep in Ho-Jon's chest was a mortar fragment.

  At the Double Natural, as at every MASH, all wounds were first hastily assessed in the admitting ward and then the seriously wounded were brought into the preoperative ward. There blood was typed, nurses and corpsmen took blood pressures, started transfusions, inserted Foley catheters in bladders and Levin tubes in stomachs, and hung the X-rays on a wire in front of each patient's cot.

  Arriving for duty on this morning and finding the preop ward full, Hawkeye, Duke and Trapper John had gone down the row of wounded and started to make their plans. When they reached the last cot a corpsman said, "This kid is pretty bad."

  Hawkeye looked at the X-ray. He saw a large shell fragment deep in the boy's chest.

  "This one's for you, Trapper," he said. "I'll help you, and Duke can take that belly back there."

  Then Captain Pierce took his first look at the patient.

  "Christ!" he said. "It's Ho-Jon."

  Trapper looked.

  "OK. It's Ho-Jon. We'll fix him."

  Ho-Jon opened his eyes. He saw his friends and smiled.

  "You'll be OK, boy," said the corpsman.

  "I know," Ho-Jon whispered. "Captains Pierces and Captains Mclntyres will help me."

  "You know it, Ho-Jon," Captain Pierce said. "You just rest, and we'll do it after you've had one more pint of blood."

  The Duke was about to become occupied in a bad belly, so they decided not to tell him. They went out for a butt.

  "How do we go, Trapper?" asked Hawkeye.

  "Right chest, just like the missile. He's lost some blood. I'm afraid it's hit more than just the lung. It's in deep."

  "Trapper, you remember how we used to wonder what a kid like Ho-Jon might do if he had a chance to get an education?"

  "Yeah," Trapper answered dully.

  "If we squeeze him through, I'm going to get him into Androscoggin College."

  "We'll squeeze him through and right into Dartmouth," said Trapper, grinding out his cigarette. "If all he wants to do is catch lobsters, he can learn that here."

  A grim pair of surgeons went to work on Ho-Jon.

  "We'll need room," said Trapper. "The sixth rib goes."

  "Never mind the conversation. Do it, Dad."

  They opened the pleura, put in the rib spreader, and aspirated the blood from the chest cavity. Ho-Jon's pulse and blood pressure held steady. Trapper reached down toward the inferior vena cava where it empties into the right atrium of the heart. He felt the missile.

  "I got it," he said. "Here, feel."

  Hawkeye felt.

  "I don't feel anything."

  "Oh, Jesus," moaned Trapper, and felt again.

  "What happened?"

  "The mother must have gone in. I can't feel it."

  "I don't get it," said Hawkeye nervously.

  "It must have been in the cava, and the hole sealed itself off. When I felt it I must have jiggled it just enough to turn it loose. I can't feel it in the heart. I don't feel it in the right pulmonary artery. It must be in the left pulmonary artery."

  "Whadda we do?"

  "Close and get an X-ray and fight another day."

  "OK," Hawkeye said unhappily.

  The X-ray confirmed Trapper's guess. The shell fragment was in the left pulmonary artery. Three days later Ho-Jon was out of bed, happy, proud to have been operated on by two of his three heroes and, unaware of the odds against him, not at all upset at the prospect of further surgery.

  Taking a missile out of a pulmonary artery is no great trick, but few surgeons in Korea were familiar with such techniques. Cardiovascular surgery was in its infancy, and such procedures were not usually done in tents. Ordinarily this sort of case would have been evacuated to Tokyo, but no one seriously thought that any other surgeon in the Far East was better equipped to do the job than Trapper John. Colonel Blake did mention the possibility of evacuation once, but dropped the subject when Hawkeye gave him a very direct look.

  In The Swamp the next week the tension grew. Humor was nonexistent. Unmilitary behavior tapered off. One evening Hawkeye passed around a bottle of Scotch, feeling that, for the sake of efficiency, they should attempt some sort of comeback.

  "When do we go for it, Trapper?" he asked.

  "June 2."

  "Why June 2?"

  "That's the day I shut out Harvard on two hits."

  Trapper John did not say another word that night. He lay on his sack, sipped his drink and just looked straight up.

  Ho-Jon, at the start of his big day, lay on the operating table, expectantly but confidently gazing up at Ugly John. Ugly John said, "Now, Ho-Jon, you just take it easy. Everything will be all right."

  Ho-Jon smiled and said, "I know, Captains Blacks."

  Ugly John started the Pentothal and curare, and three minutes later inserted the intratracheal tube through which Ho-Jon would do all his breathing while his friends worked on him. Then Ho-Jon was turned onto his right side and draped, and Trapper John, assisted by Hawkeye and Duke, removed Ho-Jon's fifth rib. With that out of the way, Trapper entered the pleural cavity, and easily located the missile wedged in the left pulmonary artery. After opening the pericardium, which surrounds the heart, he then dissected his way around the origin of the artery and placed umbilical tapes as temporary ties above and below the missile.

  "How is he?" Trapper asked Ugly John.

  "Nice," said Ugly. "Get on with it."

  While Hawkeye applied traction on the tape above the shell fragment and Duke did the same below, Trapper incised the artery, removed the fragment, and resutured the artery with 5-0 arterial silk.

  "Ease off on those tapes, and let's see how much it bleeds," said Trapper. He had to place one extra suture, and then there was no more bleeding.

  "How's he doing?" Trapper asked the anesthesiologist.

  "Nice," Ugly John assured him.

  The Swampmen looked at one another,
and Trapper said, "Boys, we're home free."

  For the rest of the day relaxation ruled, and recollection of it is indistinct in the minds of the survivors, who included Ho-Jon. Soon Ho-Jon was up and around, back at his job as Swampboy, his English improving. He was losing the Korean habit of putting an "s" on the end of every word. He eagerly read all that the Swampmen provided for him.

  "Now," said Hawkeye one day, "I gotta get him into Androscoggin College."

  "Dartmouth," said Trapper John.

  "Georgia," said Duke.

  "Boys," said Hawkeye, "it's gotta be Androscoggin. Dartmouth is too big and too expensive. At Androscoggin he can start a little more slowly and get more attention. If he's as good as I think he is, he can move into the big leagues later, and I don't think Georgia is the place even if the Klan doesn't have a chapter house there any more."

  The Swampmen agreed on Androscoggin College. "Guess I'll write to the Dean," said Hawkeye and sat down to do so. He wrote:

  Dr. James Lodge

  Dean, Androscoggin College

  Androscoggin, Maine

  Dear Mr. Lodge:

  A few years having passed, perhaps you'll be willing to read a letter from me, although I seem to recall that when I left for the Army back in 1943 you indicated no great feeling of loss. The United States Army, in its infinite wisdom, allowed me to partake of the medical education for which I was so well prepared at Androscoggin.

  Now I am in Korea as a surgeon in a Mobile Army Hospital. To make a long story short, I know a Korean kid that I want to get into Androscoggin. You took a chance on me. If you could do that you have twice as much reason to take a chance on my boy, Ho-Jon. He is a winner.

  I'm just as serious as I can be. If you'll consider the deal at all, let me know what it will cost, and I'll see what I can do to get up the loot.

  Your former outstanding undergraduate,

  Hawkeye Pierce

  An answer arrived three weeks later:

  Dear Hawkeye:

  As Dean of the College, I naturally remember you very well. In my job one has to take the bitter as well as the sweet, and I've had my share of both.

  My natural expectation is that, if I accede to your request, I will soon have on my hands some illiterate seventy-year-old refugee from a leper colony. Despite the possibility pf your having matured slightly in the last nine years, that is really what I expect.

  However, this sort of thing is popular these days. If you feel your boy can do college work and if you can get him over here and supply him with a thousand dollars a year, we will give him a chance. Enclosed is an application for Ho-Jon to complete.

  Sincerely,

  James Lodge

  Dean, Androscoggin College

  "Boys," said Hawkeye, "it's going to cost us at least five or six grand, figuring travel and one thing or another."

  "I know we'll get it up, but I don't know how," said Duke.

  Dago Red entered. He had some pictures he had taken of the Swampmen during the winter. At the time Trapper John had been sporting a beard and a large crop of unbarbered hair. Several of the pictures were of Trapper John.

  "Look at The Hairy Ape," said Duke.

  "No," said Red, "he doesn't look like The Hairy Ape. With that thin, ascetic face and the beard and the piercing eyes, he almost looks like our Blessed Saviour."

  Taking another look, he crossed himself and thought better of it.

  "If that's what He looks like," said the Duke, "I'm gonna try Buddha."

  "Lemme see that picture," said Hawkeye Pierce.

  He looked. "By Jesus, it does look like Him," he agreed and lapsed into pensive silence.

  A while later Hawkeye sat up, lit a butt, and said, "Hey, Trapper, how fast can you grow that beard back?"

  "Couple weeks. What do you have in mind?"

  "Money for Ho-Jon."

  "How's that Yankee growin' a beard gonna get money for Ho-Jon?" asked Duke.

  "Easy. We'll get a good picture of him, have copies made, and sell actual photographs of Jesus Christ at a buck a throw. If we make out with that, he can make a few personal appearances."

  Trapper looked interested. "Always knew I'd make good," he said, "but I never thought I'd get to the top so fast."

  "I'm movin' to another tent," wailed the Duke. "You crazy bastards are gonna get me in trouble."

  "Now wait a minute, boys. You can't do this," pleaded Dago Red.

  "Maybe not, Red," answered Hawkeye, "but we gotta get some money. This idea is crazy, but there are a lot of screwballs in an army. Trapper's picture will sell, and a lot of people will buy them for laughs and souvenirs. It won't hurt anybody, and it's a good cause. All we gotta do is work out the details."

  Two weeks later the beard had grown, pictures had been taken and seven thousand prints made. Trapper John spent two days autographing them. Dago Red was frantic. They were ready for action. The enlisted men were fond of the Swampmen and were delighted to buy pictures of Trapper J. Jesus Christ Mclntyre at a dollar a copy.

  "We got us two bills," said Duke who in a day had unloaded 200 copies. "Let's go to Seoul and see if we can run it up in a crap game."

  "Hell with that," declared Hawkeye. "If tomorrow is quiet, we'll get a truck from the motor pool and hit the sawdust trail."

  At eight o'clock the next morning, the Swampmen ate a substantial breakfast. A truck was obtained. A large cross that Hawkeye had commissioned the supply sergeant to construct was hidden under blankets in the rear. Also hidden under the blankets was a nearly naked, bearded, long haired, fuzzy chested Trapper John, two dozen cans of beer and a thermos jug full of ice. In the cab were six thousand eight hundred photographs bearing the signature: Jesus Christ.

  They visited medical corps collecting stations, battalion aid stations, artillery units, and other outfits. As they approached, the cross was erected behind the cab of the truck with straps binding Trapper John in the proper and accepted position. Hawkeye was at the wheel. After a turn or two around an outfit they halted. At nearly every stop, as Trapper peered beseechingly at the sky, an officer would step forward and demand, "What the hell is going on here?"

  "Passion play," Hawkeye would explain. "Raising some dough to send our houseboy to college. For a buck you get an autographed picture of the Man, himself, or a reasonable facsimile thereof."

  Trade was brisk. No one seemed to object to the performance until, late in the afternoon, they hit a Mississippi National Guard outfit. By this time Trapper, spending most of the hot day hidden beneath blankets in the rear of the truck, had consumed a lot of beer. He was still hot and still dehydrated despite the beer, however, when he once again assumed his position on the cross, so while Duke peddled autographed pictures, Hawkeye surreptitiously slipped Trapper a sip from a cool tin of brew. Four Guardsmen, attempting to obtain samples of wood from the cross as souvenirs, and observing this, became indignant. The indignation spread. The Swampmen departed in haste and returned to the 4077th, where the day's take was found to be a satisfying three grand.

  That night they decided to push their luck. The moon was bright, making helicopter flying possible, so the chopper pilots of the Air Rescue Squadron were enlisted. Hawkeye and Duke, with pictures, traveled by jeep to prearranged points where troops were in fair quantity. They announced the availability of personally autographed photographs of Jesus Christ, and their timing was perfect. At each point, as the sales talk ended, a brilliant phosphorus flare would be lit, and a helicopter would appear. Spread-eagled on a cross dangling beneath the chopper and illuminated by the eerie light of the flare was the loinclothed, skinny, bearded, long haired, and pretty well stoned Trapper John.

  Any good act swings. The pictures sold. Back in The Swamp at 1:00 a.m. the loot was counted again. They had six thousand five hundred dollars.

  "Let it go at that," said the Duke. "We got what we need." The next day Hawkeye Pierce arranged for five thousand dollars to be sent to his father, Benjamin Franklin Pierce, Sr., along with a note:

 
; Dear Dad:

  This five thousand dollars is for my friend, Ho-Jon,

  to go to Androscoggin College. Look after him and the

  money until I get home.

  So long,

  Hawkeye

  Within the next month Hawkeye received two letters. The first was from his father:

  Dear Hawkeye:

  I deposited five thousand dollars in the Port Waldo Trust Company for Ho-Jon. How come you can send some foreigner to college and leave me to bail your brothers out of jail? I always encouraged you to go to school, and now look what happens. Your brother Joe got took up for drunken driving. Mother is well.

  Your father,

  Benjy Pierce

  The second letter was from the Dean of Androscoggin College, Dr. James Lodge:

  Dear Hawkeye:

  We have received Ho-Jon's application, and his record appears to be outstanding, although somewhat unusual. The letter accompanying his application was particularly impressive and influenced our decision to accept him. My suggestion that you might have written it for him was quickly squelched by members of the English Department who remember you.

  Yesterday a truckful of lobster bait, departing from campus roads, drove directly to the front door of the administration building. A large gentleman, who identified himself as your father, disembarked and gave us one thousand dollars on account for Ho-Jon. We killed a pint of Old Bantam Whiskey which he happened to have with him. Today I have a big head, and the building smells like a lobster boat. Nevertheless, we look forward to Ho-Jon's arrival.

  Very truly yours,

  James Lodge

  Dean, Androscoggin College

  The money left over bought clothes and tickets for Ho-Jon. On August 20, 1952, he concluded his duties as Swampboy. He arrived at Androscoggin College on September 10. Soon after, Hawkeye Pierce's old fraternity, assured by Hawkeye that Ho-Jon's prep school education had included martini mixing and crapshooting, pledged him.

  8

  Trapper John McIntyre had grown up in a house adjacent to one of suburban Boston's finest country clubs. His parents were members, and, at the age of seventeen, he was one of the better junior golfers in Massachusetts.