Richard Hooker - MASH - A Novel About Three Army Doctors

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.”

“The General is supposed to see three medical officers at nine o’clock,” she snapped, regaining a trace of composure.

“That’s us, ma’am,” spoke up Duke Forrest. “If you ladies don’t happen to feel well, we’d admire to give y’all an examination.”

Despite the rigid training required to reach officer and upper enlisted rank in the WAC, the lieutenant and her troops were totally unprepared for this sort of situation. They desert­ed in the face of the enemy.

“Must be a coffee break,” observed Hawkeye.

After a few minutes of idle chatter, the Swampmen found time hanging heavy. Hawkeye produced a pair of dice and a crap game started.

At eight fifty-nine General Hammond arrived. As he walked through the outer sanctum toward his inner sanctum he was annoyed to find his secretarial force gone, and the spectacle of three disheveled crapshooters and three bottles of Johnny Walker Black Label annoying him even more.

“Hiya, General, how they goin’?” Hawkeye inquired.

The General stood transfixed.

“The Duke’s trying to make a four,” Trapper John in­formed the General.

“Little Joe,” Duke begged the dice.

“Duke can’t make fours,” Hawkeye assured the General. “He’ll crap out in a minute and we’ll be with you.”

Duke sevened and stood up. “Nice to see y’all, General,” he said. “Y’all sure got it knocked—three nice lookin’ WAC’s workin’ for y’all, and comin’ to work in the middle of the mornin’.”

“We got here early,” Trapper John explained, “because we spent the night in a whorehouse, and we had to get out before the day shift took over. Have a shot of tea?”

He offered his bottle to the General. The General remained transfixed.

“Come in,” he finally commanded. Followed by the Swampmen, the General stalked into his office. Safely behind his desk, the General scowled at them.

“I’ve heard about you people,” he said, “but I didn’t really believe it. Now I do.”

“You got some nice looking stuff working in your office, General,” Hawkeye said.

“Shut up!” roared the General.

“General,” Trapper said, “I’d like to change the tenor of this interview and be very serious. We’ve been in every hospital you have. The 4077th is the best you’ve ever had, and the biggest reason is Colonel Henry Braymore Blake. It was me that got that dizzy nurse mad when Henry had already had more than any of us needed. Do anything you want with us, but you’d be a damn fool to get rid of your best MASH commander because Hot-Lips Houlihan doesn’t like her name.”

The General grunted, took a nervous sip of water and lit a cigarette.

“Do you men really mean it?”

“General,” said Hawkeye, “we know what we’re talking about. We’ve seen more of the inside of these places than you have. We wouldn’t be going out of our way for a Christless Regular Army Colonel if we didn’t mean it! Begging your pardon, of course, General. I forgot.”

“I’ll bet,” said the General, thinking hard now. “Suppose I replaced Henry with someone else? What would happen?” “The guy’d never last,” Trapper John informed him. “Positively not,” Hawkeye said. “Right,” the Duke said.

“OK,” said the General. “I appreciate your coming. Don’t worry about Henry.”

The Swampmen scurried out one door, just before a harassed, scared and premature Henry, seemingly hurrying to his own execution, burst through another.

“Glad to see you, Henry,” the General greeted him. “I probably shouldn’t have made you come all the way down here. Fact is, I’m bored with the company around here. I wanted someone to have a couple of drinks and some lunch with.”

“But what about Major Houlihan?” gulped Henry.

“You mean Hot-Lips?” asked the General. “Screw her.”

“N-n-no th-thanks, G-General,” replied Henry.

the temperature at noon, day after day, was between 95° and 100°. The temperature at midnight, night after night, was between 90° and 95°. As the tempo of the war picked up again, the wounded soldiers kept corning by ambulance and helicopter, and the Double Natural was too busy and too hot.

Surgery in the steaming heat beneath the tin roof of the Quonset hut was hard on the surgeons and not good for the patients. Both lost fluids and electrolytes. Captain Ugly John Black, the anesthesiologist, claimed that after any long case the patient, who’d been receiving the appropriate intravenous fluids, was usually healthier than the surgeon. Sleep for the weary workers was absolutely necessary but nearly impos­sible, particularly for the Swampmen, who were working the night shift and trying to sleep during the day. They gave up any idea of sleeping in The Swamp. Instead they went to the river a few hundred yards north, launched air mattresses, and slept half submerged, in the shade of the railroad bridge where the gentle current kept them wedged against the pilings.