M*A*S*H
Page 19
"And now," he said, "as we leave the Beautiful Land of Korea, the grateful natives line the shores and chant: 'Mother— ; Mother—.' "
"Y'all just about said it all," agreed the Duke.
As the ferry approached the Japanese shore, Sasebo materialized from the mist as a pretty town. There were mountains, evergreens and a rocky shoreline that, not that he needed any prodding, reminded Hawkeye of the coast of Maine. There were shops and Officers' Clubs and several thousand troops awaiting transportation home. The Swampmen abandoned fatigue uniforms, donned Ike jackets, adorned them with proper insignia and became recognizable as medical officers.
This was a mistake. Before any group of returnees was allowed to board a troopship, short-arm inspection was mandatory, and properly so. Returning medical officers were drafted for this duty, and when the Swampmen heard about this, they were shaken.
"Not me," said Hawkeye. "Let the pill rollers who been doing it all along do it. After eighteen months of being one of their knife artists, I ain't going to be demoted."
"Me neither," declared Duke.
A sergeant with a pad descended upon them. "You men medical officers?" he asked.
"Yes."
"May I have your names, please?"
"What for?"
"I'm making up the roster for short-arm inspection tomorrow."
"Oh, certainly, Sergeant," Hawkeye said. "My name is Captain George Limburger, and this is Captain Walter Camembert."
The sergeant started to write, and Hawkeye politely assisted him with the spelling.
"What time tomorrow?" Duke asked.
"You'll be notified."
Time passed slowly in the big, bare barracks. No one seemed to know when they'd ship out. After being placed on the short-arm roster, the Swampmen decided to go shopping. Popular items in the local shops were flimsy, transparent negligees known as skin suits. No red-blooded American boy wanted to return to his homeland without several skin suits for his loved one, or ones, and the local shopkeepers were hard put to meet the demand.
"I gotta get me some skin suits," said Hawkeye.
"Me too."
At the nearest shop they looked over the selection. The Duke insisted on having one with fur, preferably mink, around the bottom. After much haggling and consultation between employees and owners, the shop agreed to supply such a garment if given twenty-four hours. Their command of English didn't match their curiosity, and they couldn't completely grasp the Duke's simple explanation that he did not wish his wife's neck to get cold.
The next morning the sergeant who came in search of Captains Limburger and Camembert was a different sergeant. He went through the barracks shouting: "Limburger! Camembert?" Several officers inquired about the price. Some asked for crackers. The sergeant became annoyed. Finally he arrived in the area occupied by Duke and Hawkeye, who had just returned from shaving and had yet to don shirts or insignia.
"What do you want with those two guys?" Hawkeye asked him.
"They're supposed to hold short-arm inspection."
"You can't be serious!"
"Why not?"'
"Don't y'all know," said Duke, "that those guys are the two biggest fairies in the Far East Command? That'll be the longest short-arm inspection y'all ever saw."
The sergeant perceived the logic of their argument. He consulted his list. "You know anybody named Forrest or Pierce?" he inquired
"Yeah," Duke told him. "They shipped out yesterday."
"Well, thanks a lot," said the sergeant
Two days later the word came. They were to board a Marine transport for Seattle. They packed. They had a bottle of V.O. left, and booze was not allowed on troopships.
"What difference does it make?" asked Hawkeye. "How we going to get enough booze on board to last us to Seattle, anyway?"
"I got an idea," the Duke said. "Let's drink this jug and have our next drink in Seattle. If we can go that long without it, we'll know we're not dangerous alcoholics."
"The first sign of a stewbum," said Hawkeye, "but it's OK with me."
They boarded ship carrying pretty full loads. Having been informed that short-arm inspection was also carried out at regular intervals on shipboard, they checked in under their own names, but then assumed new identities. The Caduceus of the Medical Corps was removed from the Eisenhower jackets. The simple cross of the Chaplain's Corps replaced it.
They shared a cabin with four other returning officers who were not particularly pleased to find two chaplains among them. The conversation was slightly stilted until, that evening, Duke and Hawkeye broke the ice.
"Do you gentlemen happen to have any Aureomycin?" asked Hawkeye. "The Reverend here seems to be developing a slight cold. In fact, gentlemen, the Reverend, I fear, has fallen from grace with a large splash."
"What do you mean?" asked one of their cabin-mates.
"The Reverend, God forbid, has come down with the clap."
Incipient laughter was cut short by a stern look from Hawkeye. "Be charitable, gentlemen. Help us. My colleague is a good man. It is just that he has been unusually bedevilled, and I must do something to remedy the tragic results of his excessive libido before he returns to Kokomo, where he is betrothed to the Bishop's daughter. Bishops, as a group, are opposed to gonorrhea, and this one has particularly firm views on the subject."
Meanwhile Duke, looking very pleased, began to leaf through a girlie magazine, a corner of which he had noticed protruding from a barracks bag.
"Stop looking at those pictures, Reverend," commanded Hawkeye.
One of the group, a big, tough, rough-looking first lieutenant, with the crossed rifles of the infantry on his collar and the look of the front line about him, was observing them quizzically. After a little more of the act, he began to grin.
"They ain't no chaplains," he exclaimed in a broad southern accent. "They're Duke and Hawkeye from the 4077th MASH. They saved my brother's life two months ago. What the hell's wrong with you guys?"
"We are traveling incognito," Duke told him. "We will do anything to avoid officiating at short-arm inspection, and we figure if we are chaplains there will be no one demanding that we view three thousand weapons."
"Yeah," quibbled one of them, "but they must have your names. It's a big boat, but in two or three weeks they're bound to track you down."
"Any of you guys want to be Forrest and Pierce of the U.S. Army Medical Corps between here and Seattle?" asked Hawkeye. "Tell you what we'll do. We'll pay you."
"How much?"
"Cent for each one you inspect."
"Pretty low wages," one of them, a red-haired artillery captain from Oregon, said.
"But it's an important contribution to public health," Hawkeye told him.
"I'll do it for two cents a weapon," the infantry man who had recognized them said, "not a penny less."
"You are hired," Hawkeye informed them, handing them their medical insignia. "You are now members of the Army Medical Corps."
"How do we go about it?" inquired the new physicians.
"It is very simple," Hawkeye explained. "You get a chair. You sit on it backwards with your arms clasped behind its back and your chin resting on the top. You gotta have a big cigar in your mouth. You sit there and look. Most of the guys will know what to do. If they don't you growl, 'Skin it and wring it, soldier.' Sound mean when you say it. If you think there is a suspicion of venereal disease, you make a gesture with your thumb like Bill Klem calling a guy out at the plate. Then somebody hauls the guy off somewhere. I never found out what happens to them. Every now and then, just so they know you're alert, you grunt, 'Don't wave it so close to my cigar, Mac!' If you follow these simple rules, you can't go wrong."
Just to be safe, Duke and Hawkeye kept the chaplains' insignia on their collars. Other doctors didn't interest them, and medical insignia invited medical conversation. However, the chaplains' roles soon became as burdensome. One Lutheran parson from central Pennsylvania was particularly interested in talking shop. He asked Duke what h
is reaction had been to his Korean experience. Duke cured him quickly. "Loved it," he answered. "Didn't do nawthin' but hoot, holler, drink rum and chase that native poon!"
On the fourth day out they became captains in the Medical Corps again. Their two new friends had established themselves as short-arm inspectors, and they themselves had tired of being asked for spiritual guidance by soldiers who had flunked inspection.
"Now I know what happens to the guys who get thumbed out of the short-arm line," said Hawk. "They get a shot of penicillin and a ticket to see the chaplain."
The time passed slowly, but it did pass. Nineteen days out of Sasebo, in a fog so dense that nothing, not even Mt. Rainier, was visible, the troopship docked in Seattle.
Ten hours later in a taxi on the way to the airport, Captains Augustus Bedford Forrest and Benjamin Franklin Pierce nursed a fifth of whiskey. At the airport, everything was fogged in, so they went to the cocktail lounge.
As they sat there at the bar, it all seemed unreal. Two people who had been very important to each other were now almost totally preoccupied with thoughts of other people, and their conversation had become sparse and even a little stilted.
"We don't seem to be acting like Swampmen," observed Duke.
"I guess not, but I don't feel like it. It's just as well."
"Probably."
"Flight 401 for Pendleton, Salt Lake City, Denver and Chicago," blared the loud-speaker.
During the early morning hours, with the moon shining on the snow-covered Rockies, the stewardess addressed the former Swampmen, "I'll have to ask you gentlemen to put away that bottle."
"Sorry, miss," apologized Hawkeye. "We sort of don't know any better."
An hour later the stewardess spoke again to Captain Augustus Bedford Forrest. "Sir, if you don't put away that bottle, I'll have to ask the Captain to come back and speak to you."
"That'll be fine, ma'am. We'd be proud to meet him! My buddy here's a Captain, too."
Hawkeye grabbed the bottle and put it away. "Never mind your Captain, honey," he promised. "I'll take care of mine."
At 6:00 a.m., in the men's room of Midway Airport in Chigago, Duke and Hawkeye finished the jug and threw it in a trash can. They were too excited to be drunk. The flight to Atlanta was announced. Duke put his arm around Hawkeye.
"I'll see y'all some time, you goddamned Yankee. Stay loose!"
"Helluva place to end an interesting association, Doctor," said Hawkeye Pierce, "but it's been nice to have known you."
Dr. Augustus Bedford Forrest boarded the plane for Atlanta, where he was met by a big girl and two little ones. Six hours later the valedictorian of the class of 1941 at Port Waldo High School and two small boys watched Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce disembark from a Northeast Airlines Convair in Spruce Harbor, Maine.
The larger of the two boys jumped into his father's arms and inquired, "How they goin', Hawkeye?"
"Finest kind," replied his father.
— The End —
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