Richard Hooker - MASH - A Novel About Three Army Doctors

“Stop that, O’Reilly,” Henry said.

“Sir?”

“Oh, get out of here,” Henry said.

Thus it came about that it was Radar O’Reilly, who had been the first to know they were coming, who led Captains Pierce and Forrest to their new home. At the moment, Major Hobson was out, so Hawkeye and Duke each selected a sack and lay down. They were just dropping off to sleep when the door opened.

“Welcome, fellows,” a voice boomed, followed by a medi­um-sized major, who entered with a warm smile and offered a firm handshake.

Major Hobson was thirty-five years old. He had practiced a good deal of general medicine, a little surgery, and every Sunday he had preached in the Church of the Nazarene in a small midwestern town. The fortunes of war had given him a job for which he was unprepared, and associated him with people he could not comprehend.

“You fellows certainly are welcome,” he intoned. “Would you like to look around the outfit?”

“No,” said Duke. “We been stoned all day. Guess we’ll get a little sleep.”

“We’ve gotta fix the President’s hernia at nine o’clock,” Hawkeye said. “We’re Harry’s family surgeons. We’d ask you to assist, but the Secret Service is worried about Chinese agents.”

“Yankee Chinks from the north,” Duke said. “Y’all under­stand.”

Jonathan Hobson was shocked and confused, and there was much he didn’t under­stand. Soon after nine o’clock he under­stood even less. The gooks had indeed hit Kelly Hill, the casualties were rolling in, and the five men on the 9:00 p.m. to 9:00 a.m. shift had their hands full.

When 9:00 a.m. arrived, it was clear that the most and best work had been done by Hawkeye Pierce and Duke Forrest. Among other things, the two, functioning as if they had been working across the table from each other for years, did two bowel resections, which means removing a piece of bowel damaged by such foreign bodies as fragments of shells and mines. Then they did a thoracotomy for control of hemor­rhage, which means they opened a chest to stop the bleeding caused by the entrance of a similar body, and they topped this off by removing a lacerated spleen and a destroyed kidney from the same patient.

The ease with which they handled these and several more minor cases naturally stimulated considerable comment and speculation about them. With their chores done, however, Hawkeye and Duke were too tired to care, and right after breakfast they headed across the compound for Tent Six.

As the components of the 4077th MASH were arranged around the horseshoe, the operating tent, with its tin Quonset roof, was in the middle of the closed end. The admitting ward and laboratory were to the left and the postop ward to the right. Next to the laboratory was the Painless Polish Poker and Dental Clinic, then the mess hall, the PX, the shower tent, the barber shop, and the enlisted men’s tents. On the other side, and strung out from the postop ward, were the tents were the officers lived, then nurse country, and finally the quarters for the Korean hired hands. Fifty yards beyond these domiciles was a lonely tent on the edge of a mine field. This was the Officers’ Club. If one walked carefully and obliquely northwesterly for another seventy-five yards be­yond the Officers’ Club and didn’t fall into old bunkers, he’d reach a high bank overlooking a wide, usually shallow, branch of the Imjin River.

“Southern boy,” Hawkeye was saying as they approached their tent, “I’m going to have myself a butt and a large shot of tax-free GI booze and hit the sack.”

“I’m with y’all,” Duke was saying, as Hawkeye opened the door affixed to the front of the tent. “Look!” Hawkeye said.

Duke looked where Hawkeye was pointing. In one corner, kneeling on the dirt floor with his elbows on his cot, a Bible in front of him, his lips moving slowly, and oblivious to all about him, was Major Jonathan Hobson. “Jesus,” Hawkeye said.

“It don’t look like Him,” Duke said.

“Do you think he’s gone ape?”

“Naw,” Duke said. “I think he’s a Roller. We got lots of them back home.”

“We’ve got some back at the Cove, too,” Hawkeye said. “You’ve gotta watch ’em.”

“Y’all watch him,” Duke said. “It would bore me.” While Major Hobson maintained his position, they had a large drink and then one more. Then, in loud, unmelodious voices, they sang as much as they could remember of “On­ward Christian Soldiers” and crawled exhausted into their sleeping bags.

When they awoke, darkness had come again, and so had another load of casualties. The casualties continued to pour in without letup for a whole week, and the new surgeons did more than their share of the work. This naturally aroused a growing respect among their colleagues, but it was respect mixed with doubt and wonder, for they fitted no recognizable pattern.

Nine days after the arrival of Captains Pierce and Forrest at the Double Natural, as the 4077th was called by the resident crapshooters, two things happened. There came a lull in business, and the shifts changed so that the two were working days. Both men much preferred this combination of circumstances except that now, each morning as they arose for breakfast, they were forced to witness and walk around their tentmate, Major Jonathan Hobson, kneeling in prayer beside his cot.

“Major,” said Hawkeye one morning, as the lengthy ritual came to an end, “you seem to be somewhat preoccupied with religion. Are you on this kick for good, or is this just a passing fancy?”

“Make fun of me all you want,” replied the Major, “but I’ll continue to pray, particularly for you and Captain Forrest.”

“Why, y’all. ..” the Duke started to say.

Hawkeye broke him off. It was obvious that the Duke did not wish to accept salva­tion from a Yankee evangelist, so Hawkeye motioned him to follow and they left the tent.

“Let’s get rid of him,” the Duke said, when they were outside. “I don’t like that man, and he’s stuntin’ our social growth, too.”

“I know,” Hawkeye agreed. “He’s such a simple clunk that I kind of hate to roust him, but I can’t put up with him, either.”

“What are we gonna do?” Duke said.

“We are going to ditch the ’Major,” Hawkeye said, “But let’s be quiet about it. No use kicking up too much of a fuss.”

Hawkeye and Duke knocked on the door of Colonel Blake’s tent and were told to enter. After they had made themselves comfortable, Hawkeye opened the conversation.

“How are you today, Colonel?” he said.

“That’s not what you two came to ask,” the Colonel said, eyeing them.

“Well, Henry,” Hawkeye said, “we don’t wish to cause any trouble, but we strongly suspect that something that might embarrass this excellent organization could occur if you don’t get that sky pilot out of our tent.”

“Your tent?” Henry started to say, and then he thought better of it. He sat there in silence for almost a minute, while the surge and counter-surge of his emotions played across the red of his face in iridescent waves.

“I have been in this Army a long time,” he said finally, measuring his words. “I know just what you guys are up to. You figure you have me over a barrel, and to a certain extent you do. You do your jobs very well. We’re going to lose our other experienced men and get a bunch of greenhorn replace­ments. You two are essential, but you can hold me up for just so much. If I go along with you now, where is it going to end?”

“Colonel,” Hawkeye said, “we appreciate your position.”

“Right,” Duke said.

“I will define ours,” Hawkeye said. “It reads about like this: As long as we are here we are going to do the best job we can. When the work comes our way we will do all in our power to promote the surgical efficiency of the outfit because that’s what we hired out for.”