M*A*S*H

by Richard Hooker

  Hawkeye's spirits plummeted even lower. His head hung. "The bastards are going to beat me up," he thought, "and they got a right to." He walked to the bar and joined them.

  "Captain Pierce," Colonel Slocum said, handing him a drink, "there's something we want to tell y'all."

  "I figured as much."

  "We want to tell y'all that it makes us men up on the line feel mighty good to know that there are doctors like you around to take care of us if we get hurt."

  Hawkeye was dumbfounded. He took a big pull on the Scotch and said, "For Christ sake, Colonel, don't you realize that I blew this one? I almost killed your buddy with bad surgery. I got him out of trouble, but he never shoulda been in it!"

  "We been watchin' you, Pierce," Colonel Slocum said, with Major Lee at his side nodding assent. "Y'all worried about that man like he was your own brother, and he's OK now. That's all we need to know. We don't even care if you're a Yankee. Have another drink, Hawkeye!"

  "Jeezus!" Hawkeye said. He put his glass down on the bar, turned his back on Colonel Slocum and Major Lee, and walked away from them and out the door.

  It was three days later that Trapper John and the Duke caught the kid named Angelo Riccio, out of East Boston.

  Private Riccio didn't look too bad. He was alert. His pulse was a little rapid. His blood pressure was strong enough at one hundred over eighty. He had a variety of shell fragment wounds, only one of which seemed important.

  Duke Forrest, coming in to work the night shift and drifting down the line of wounded, had been unimpressed by Angelo until he saw the X-ray. Angelo's heart looked too big. Examining the wounds again, Duke decided that one of the shell fragments could have hit the heart, causing hemorrhage into the pericardium, which surrounds and contains it.

  Duke found Trapper John in the mess hall, watching a movie he had already seen twice in the States. Trapper came. He looked at the X-ray, and he and Duke sat down next to Angelo.

  "How do you think the Sox'll make out this year?" Trapper asked the kid.

  "Without the big guy they got nothin'," said Angelo, "and the big guy's over here somewhere."

  "That's right," Trapper said. "Does that make you feel good, knowing that even a guy like that is over here?"

  "Are you kiddin', Doc?" Angelo said. "I wouldn't wish this kind of thing on a dog. I'd feel much better if he was back over there bustin' up a few ball games for us."

  "Well, he will be again," Trapper said, "and you'll be there to see him."

  "Where you from, Doc?" Angelo asked.

  "Winchester."

  "You know my cousin, Tony Riccio? He's about your age."

  "Sure I know him, Angelo. He caught for Winchester High."

  "Yeah," Angelo said. "The Sox were interested in him, and then he threw out his arm."

  Old Home Week ended.

  "Angelo, we're going to operate on you," said Trapper.

  "OK," Angelo said, "so operate on me. You're the Doc."

  Trapper and Duke operated on him. Trapper lined it up ahead of time. "He's got blood in his pericardium. Before we open it we've got to have control of the vena cavae. We've got to have plenty of blood. Once we get to the heart we've got to close the holes quick or we lose."

  They did it all as right as they could, but when they opened the pericardium everything went to hell. The shell fragment had made several small holes in the right atrium. Trapper and Duke handled it better than any other two people in Korea could have, but they and Angelo needed three or four more minutes.

  Angelo died. He would never see Ted Williams step to the plate again, and half an hour later Dago Red found Trapper John Mclntyre wandering around in the dark, took him to his tent and gave him a can of beer. Then he went in search of Duke Forrest and found him alone in The Swamp. The Duke had already opened a can of beer, but he wasn't drinking it. He was crying into it.

  "And a Yankee, too," the Duke said, to cover his embarrassment when he looked up and saw Dago Red. "You know somethin'? The way I'm goin' I shouldn't even be operatin' on Yankees."

  It was obvious that something had to be done for the Swampmen. It was obvious, of course, to Dago Red, and it was obvious to Colonel Blake who realized that he had a serious problem on his hands—his problem boys were too exhausted and too dispirited to create their usual problems. It was also obvious to Radar O'Reilly who, tuned in as he was to everyone, was the most empathic member of the 4077th MASH, and who came up with two solutions.

  The first of these was Dr. R. C. Carroll. Dr. R. C. Carroll had arrived at the Double Natural about five weeks before, was from deepest Oklahoma and somehow, while acquiring a medical education and two years of post-graduate training, had remained curiously unexposed to certain elements of human existence. Trapper John, most urbane of the Swamp-men, had put the handle on Dr. Carroll.

  "I thought I lived with the two biggest rubes in Korea," Trapper John said, "until this jeeter came along."

  "Jeeter" became his name. Being new in the outfit he was not yet a member of the inner circle that gathered regularly at The Swamp for a drink before supper, but he did drop in occasionally. One afternoon, during the depth of the depression that followed The Deluge, he knocked on the door and was bade to enter. The Swampmen were alone.

  "Excuse me," Jeeter said, "but Corporal O'Reilly said you fellas wanted to see me,"

  "Radar," said Hawkeye, who had been mooning into his martini, "must have his wavelengths mixed."

  "Don't pay any attention to Captain Pierce," Trapper John said, handing Jeeter a water glass filled with a martini he had mixed for himself. "Sit down and have a drink."

  "What is it?" Jeeter inquired.

  "A martini, more or less," Trapper said.

  "It looks like water," Jeeter said.

  "That's right," Trapper said, "and it's sort of like water, but you don't drink it when you're thirsty."

  "Right," the Duke said.

  "Oh," Jeeter said.

  Perhaps Jeeter was thirsty. He finished the drink in five minutes and indicated his need for another. Trapper gave him another, although somewhat reluctantly.

  "You know somethin'?" Jeeter said.

  "What?" the Duke said.

  "Ah only been here a little over a month," Jeeter said, "but ah'm hornier than a bitch in heat."

  "Good," the Duke said.

  "Yeah," Hawkeye said. "That just indicates you're healthy."

  "Oh," Jeeter said.

  "So what's your problem?" Hawkeye said.

  "Well," Jeeter said, "what do ah do?"

  "Did you ever think of the nurses?" Hawkeye said.

  "All the time, but ah figured they were all took or didn't put out."

  "I'll give you a word on nurses, Jeeter," volunteered Captain Pierce. "They're human, just like us."

  "Oh," Jeeter said.

  "Some of them do all of the time, some of them do some of the time, and observation over a period of many months convinces me that very few of them are queer."

  "Oh," Jeeter said, halfway through his second martini now, "but how do ah go about it?"

  "Don't ask me," said Trapper. "Captain Pierce, here, seems to be the big authority."

  "Well," Hawkeye said, warming to the assignment, "there are two methods. One is the simple, staid, stateside, hackneyed, civilian approach where you devote all your spare time for a week, softening the broad up with drinks, eating with her, taking her to Seoul on her day off, to our so-called Officers' Club on Saturday night, getting her stoned and then escorting her to a tent or down to the river with a blanket."

  "Oh," Jeeter said.

  "But if you go with the blanket," Hawkeye said, "under no circumstances should you proceed more than ten yards north from the O Club because you might place the blanket on top of a mine. An exploding mine may give the protagonist and his partner the impression that he's Thor, the God of Thunder, but actually it's the worst form of coitus interruptus."

  "Right," the Duke said.

  "And, of course," Hawkeye said, "this me
thod doesn't guarantee success. You may strike out. The flower of femininity you select may require not one but two weeks of cultivation, and then you run into the law of diminishing returns. Our leading tacticians recommend a week at the outside for this method."

  "Oh," Jeeter said, indicating a desire for martini number three, "but what's the second method?"

  "The second method is quicker and statistically almost as sound. You talk to the broad for a few minutes in some social situation, preferably over a drink, and you say, 'Honey, let's go somewhere and tear off a piece.' Either she says OK, or she takes off like a candy-assed baboon. The big plus of this method is that you either score fast or lose fast, and if you lose you can go on to the next blossom without further waste of time, effort and good booze."

  "But which do you recommend?" asked Jeeter.

  "Well, I don't really know," said Hawkeye. "This is mostly theory with me. What do you think, Trapper?"

  "Well," Trapper said, "maybe he should announce his availability. Most of them will be in the mess hall swilling coffee, so let's go eat."

  Jeeter, by now finding even ambulation a difficult exercise, was assisted to the door of the mess hall. Most of the nurses were indeed present, and Jeeter, silhouetted in the doorway but with the Swampmen out of sight on either side of him, made his announcement.

  "Ah'm gonna screw every goddam nurse in the place!" he proclaimed loudly.

  "Starting with Hot-Lips Houlihan," Trapper John whispered to him.

  "Startin' with Hot-Lips Houlihan!" Jeeter shouted.

  The Swampmen did not follow him in. They went back to The Swamp, had a short one and ate later. The next morning Jeeter knew only that he felt terrible and, after Colonel Blake had chewed him out, that he was in disgrace. It remained for Roger the Dodger Danforth, in a matter of hours, to take him off the hook.

  Roger the Dodger Danforth was a surgeon at the 6073rd MASH, twenty-five miles to the East. Roger and Ugly John Black had trained together in the States, so Roger and the Swampmen were all well acquainted. In fact, they shared a mutual disrespect for most things held dear by others and a mutual respect for each other, and although Roger the Dodger was not considered, by observers of both phenomena, to be a greater menace than the three members of The Swamp, he was held to be at least their equal.

  "Thank God," Colonel Blake would say, after Roger the Dodger's visits, "that that sonofabitch isn't assigned here, too."

  On the day following Jeeter's pronunciamento in the portal of the mess hall, Roger the Dodger arrived about noon. Hawkeye had just finished amputating the leg of the only customer of the morning—a Korean who had thought himself immune to minefields—and he had gone to the mess tent for a light lunch.

  "Where are the boys?" he asked Dago Red.

  "Roger the Dodger is here," Dago Red said. "He and Ugly and your boys are over in The Swamp, and may the Lord have mercy on us all."

  "Second the motion," Hawkeye said, "and I better have a large lunch."

  After the large lunch, Hawkeye headed for The Swamp with an equal mixture of anticipation and reluctance. Halfway across the ball field that separated The Swamp from the mess tent he was greeted by Roger the Dodger, who stood in the doorway of The Swamp with a glass in his hand and yelled: "Hi, Hawkeye, you old shitkicker! Screw the Regular Army! How they goin'?"

  "Finest kind," Hawkeye said.

  "Have a drink," Roger the Dodger invited. "Brung two bottles of my own."

  "What the hell are you doing here, anyway?" Hawkeye wanted to know.

  "I don't know," Roger the Dodger said. "All I know is, last night I had a call from some goddam Colonel O'Reilly who said to come …"

  "Who?" Hawkeye said.

  "I don't know," Roger the Dodger said. "The only O'Reilly you got in this outfit is some corporal looks like a goddamn weathervane. What difference does it make? Have a drink."

  "I just might," Hawkeye said.

  They all had several, and a glow of amiable incandescence began to suffuse The Swamp. All might have gone well, except that Roger the Dodger, apparently the recipient of a call to take this light out into the world, insisted on stepping to the door every fifteen minutes to yell: "Screw the Regular Army!"

  Daily at 3:00 p.m., and for an hour, the showers at the 4077th MASH were reserved for the nurses. The nurses, some past the first bloom of youth, some not on diets, had to pass The Swamp en route to and from their ablutions, and it was a portion of this processional that crossed the field of vision of Roger the Dodger on one of his trips outdoors to exhort the populace to violation.

  "All the nurses," Roger the Dodger yelled now, "are elephants!"

  Then he switched the call to: "All the elephants have clap!"

  "And Hot-Lips Houlihan," Trapper John suggested, "is the head mahout, and must be held responsible."

  "And Hot-Lips Houlihan," Roger the Dodger yelled, "is the head mahout, and must be held responsible!"

  That had the expected result. For the past two hours Colonel Henry Blake had been sitting in his tent listening to the exhortations and hoping against hope. He had called in Father John Patrick Mulcahy and, over beers, they had discussed possibilities.

  "Frankly," Colonel Blake had said, "I'm scared. Any commanding officer with half a brain wouldn't let this go on."

  "I disagree with you, Colonel," Father Mulcahy had said. "Something had to break, and I was afraid it was going to be our friends over there."

  "I know," the Colonel said. "The other day that Duke called me 'sir.' At any moment I've been expecting Hawkeye Pierce to salute me. They're not well, I tell you. They've been pressed too hard, and that's why I let that Roger the Dodger in there again. Something's got to happen."

  "And it's about to," Father Mulcahy said as the two, aghast, heard Roger the Dodger invoke the name of the Chief Nurse. "I think I'll go over to my place, or would you rather I stay?"

  "No," Colonel Blake said. "It's all my fault, so I'll handle this Amazon alone."

  Father Mulcahy had no sooner departed than Major Margaret Houlihan arrived. She arrived right from the showers, the ends of her hair still wet and the strap of her shower cap trailing from one end of her rolled towel. She was irate, and try as he might, Henry could not tune her out.

  "This isn't a hospital," he heard his Chief Nurse screaming at him. "It's an insane asylum, and you're to blame …"

  "Now, just a minute, Major," Henry started to say. "You …"

  "Don't you minute-major me," his Chief Nurse went on. "If you don't stop those beasts, those THINGS, that one they call Trapper John from addressing me as Hot-Lips and stirring up those others, I'm going to resign my commission and …"

  "Oh, goddammit, Hot-Lips," Henry heard himself saying, "resign your goddamn commission, and get the hell out of here!"

  Five minutes later, Radar O'Reilly was awakened from a sound sleep. He was awakened by a telephone conversation between Major Houlihan and General Hammond, in which Major Houlihan was pouring out a lively story of a military hospital with everything out of control. This was followed by a conversation between General Hammond and Colonel Blake, in which Radar heard General Hammond say: "Henry, for Christ's sake, what the hell's going on up there? You get down here tomorrow morning at 0930, and your story better be a goddamn good one."

  Radar hastened to The Swamp. By now Roger the Dodger, having added another chapter to his legend, had departed for his hospital, leaving the Swampmen and Ugly John to clean up the carnage. Radar filled them in on what he had heard.

  "You know, Henry might really be in trouble," Hawkeye said, after Radar had finished his report and left. "That damn fool nurse has finally become a real menace."

  "That's right," the Duke said.

  "Trapper," Hawkeye said, "why do you always have to call her 'Hot-Lips'?"

  "I don't always have to call her 'Hot-Lips.' This morning I was nice to her. I called her 'Major Hot-Lips'."

  "What'll we do?" asked the Duke.

  "Well," Trapper said, "I guess that if I hadn'
t called that bomber 'Hot-Lips' and then treed her with Jeeter and Roger the Dodger, the General wouldn't be on Henry's ass. Therefore, I'll go down and square it with the General."

  "We'll go with you!" chorused Forrest and Pierce.

  They made an appointment with the General for nine o'clock the next morning but appeared in his outer office at eight-thirty. They were wearing fatigues that had that lived-in look, without insignia, and they sat down on the bench that ran along one wall. Three quite attractive members of the Women's Army Corps—a lieutenant and two sergeants— occupied the working space of this outer part of the General's sanctum.

  "Well," Trapper John said, after a few minutes, "shall we?"

  "Why not?" Hawkeye Pierce said.

  Each of the Swampmen produced from the recesses of his clothing a bottle labeled Johnny Walker Black Label. Earlier, back at the Double Natural, these bottles had been filled with tea by Sergeant Mother Divine, and now Duke Forrest rose from the bench and approached the WAC lieutenant.

  "Y'all got any paper cups, honey?" he asked politely.

  Confused, the lieutenant produced paper cups. The cups were filled, and cigarettes were lighted.

  "Think the broads might like some tea?" wondered Trapper John in a stage whisper.

  "They ain't broads," answered Hawkeye. "They're two sergeants and a lieutenant."

  "Which are higher, sergeants or captains?" inquired the Duke. "Do we outrank them?"

  "I dunno," said Trapper.

  "Even if they outrank us, they might like some tea," said Hawkeye.

  Duke rose again, the complete southern gentleman.

  "Pardon, ladies, but would y'all care for some tea?"

  "No, thank you," the lieutenant answered frostily.

  The Swampmen sipped their tea in silence. Suddenly, the silence was shattered by Trapper John: "I bet generals get plenty."

  The lieutenant shot from behind her desk.

  "Who are you people?" she demanded in great indignation.

  "Don't get overheated, honey," Hawkeye said. "We're just a bunch of screwups from up the line. We gotta see the General at nine o'clock, civilian time, to chew him out."