Richard Hooker - MASH - A Novel About Three Army Doctors

“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 method 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.”