Richard Hooker - MASH - A Novel About Three Army Doctors

“Right,” Duke said.

“We’ll also show reasonable respect for you and your job, but you may have to put up with a few things from us that haven’t been routine around here. We don’t think it will be anything you can’t stand, but if it is you’ll just have to get rid of us in any way you can.”

“Boys,” said the Colonel, after a moment’s reflection, “I’m not sure what I’m getting into, but Hobson will be out of your tent today.”

He reached under his cot and came up with three cans of beer.

“Have a beer,” he said.

“Why, thank y’all,” Duke said.

“Then there’s one other small thing,” Hawkeye said.

“What’s that?” the Duke said to Hawkeye.

“The chest-cutter,” Hawkeye said to the Duke.

“Yeah,” Duke said to the Colonel.

“What?” the Colonel said.

During the quiet period that had settled upon the western Korean front, few shots had been fired in anger, and the only casualties had resulted from jeep accidents and from soldiers invading mine fields in search of pheasant and deer. Hawkeye and Duke had handled the lower extremity and abdominal damage of the hunters with their customary ease. When it came, however, to the depressed fractures of the sternum and multiple broken ribs with attendant complications sustained by the jeep jockeys, they both wished that they had had more formal training in chest surgery.

“That’s right,” Duke said to the Colonel. “Y’all better get us a chest-cutter.”

“Stop dreaming,” Henry said, “and drink your beer.”

“We’ve been thinking,” Hawkeye said, “that maybe you could trade two or three of these Medical Service clowns around here for somebody who can find his way around the pulmonary anatomy when the bases are loaded”

“… and it’s the ninth inning,” Duke said.

“Listen,” Henry said. “I’ll give it to you just the way the General would give it to me. Do you guys think this is Walter Reed? You’re doing fine.”

“We are like hell,” Hawkeye said. “We’re swinging with our eyes closed, and …”

“… and up to now we’ve just been lucky,” Duke said.

“Forget it,” Henry said. “How’s the beer?”

“Forget it, hell,” Hawkeye said. “You’re evading the issue. We have more chest trauma right here than any hospital at home and we need somebody who really knows how to take care of it. We’re learning, but not enough. You know that, just as well as we do.”

“That’s right,” Duke said.

“Forget it,” Henry said, “and by the way, with Hobson out of your tent as of now, please put in a little time for him in the preop ward.”

It had long been customary at the 4077th for the surgeons on duty to spend their time, when not called upon to operate, in the preoperative ward. On quiet days this was unnecessary. The arrival of casualties was always known in advance, no one could get more than three hundred yards away, and thus each doctor was available in minutes.

The logic of this had never gotten through to Major Hobson, however, and as titular head of the day shift he had attempted to impose the useless vigil upon Captains Pierce and Forrest as soon as they had joined his section. Hawkeye and the Duke had failed to comply, letting it be known that they would usually be available at the poker game that ran perpetually in the Painless Polish Poker and Dental Clinic, where Captain Waldow­ski, of Hamtramck, Michigan, and the Army Dental Corps, supplied cards, beer and painless extrac­tion for all comers, twenty-four hours a day.

“I don’t know, Henry,” Hawkeye said now. “That’s asking a lot, but if you get us that chest-cutter …”

“Get out of here!” Henry said. “Just finish your beers and get out of here!”

When not in the poker game, Hawkeye and Duke were likely to be in their tent. That very afternoon, shortly after lunch while all was quiet, Hawkeye was in the game, but Duke was in what was now their private quarters, propped up on his cot, a writing tablet on his knees. Every day he faithfully wrote his wife, a very time-consuming procedure, and he was thus engaged when Major Hobson came charging into the tent and demanded that Captain Forrest come to the preoperative ward immediately.

“Are there any patients?” Duke asked.

“That’s neither here nor there,” the Major replied austerely.

“If there ain’t no patients there I stay here.”

“Come to the preoperative ward immediately!” yelled the Major. “That’s a direct order!”

“Y’all get out of here,” was Duke’s quiet answer.

The Major advanced like an avenging angel. The Duke came off his sack like the Georgia fullback he had once been, and Major Jonathan Hobson found himself prostrate in the snow and slush six feet from the tent door.

“That, you ridiculous rebel,” said Hawkeye when he heard about it and got back to the tent, “was about as bright as Pickett’s Charge. This will be trouble.”

The expected arrival of Colonel Blake was forthcoming within minutes. The door opened, Colonel Blake entered, and the door slammed shut behind him.

“You guys have had it!” he shouted, purple-faced and suffused with military indignation. “I’m having you court-martialed!”

“Henry,” said Hawkeye, “I had nothing to do with it. It was all this dumb southern boy. However, I’ll gladly participate in the consequences. Where do we get court-martialed? Tokyo, or maybe San Francisco?”

“San Francisco, hell. You get court-martialed here and now. You’re both confined to the post for one month. This is a summary court-martial, and I’ve just held it.”

“But y’all can’t…” the Duke started to say.

“Look, Henry,” Hawkeye said, “be reasonable. I wouldn’t know how to get off this post if I wanted to, but I’d like to keep the way open in case they make me Surgeon General of the United States.”

“Me too,” Duke said.

With a grunt, the commanding officer departed, and it is possible that the penalty would have stood, except that the very next day Major Hobson, his ego restored and perhaps even enlarged by the Colonel’s legal action, extended his activities. He began praying in the mess hall for fifteen minutes before each meal.

“That’ll do it,” Hawkeye predicted to the Duke.

It did. Colonel Henry Blake was endowed with more human understanding than is required of a Regular Army Medical Officer, but after three days of this he left his lunch uneaten, went to his tent, called 8th Army Headquarters, arranged orders for Major Hobson, drove him to Seoul and put him on a plane for Tokyo and home where, a few weeks later, the Major’s enlistment would expire. Honorably dis­charged, he would return to his general practice, his occasion­al excursions into minor surgery and his church.

Returning from Seoul on the night of his Great Delivery, Colonel Blake was very tired and slightly mulled, but he mixed himself a drink and then collapsed on his cot. Before he could find sleep, however, Hawkeye Pierce and Duke Forrest entered. Apparently contrite, they silently helped themselves to a drink. Then they knelt in front of their commanding officer and started to pray.

“Lordy, Lordy, Colonel, Sir,” they wailed, “send our asses home.”

“Get your asses out of here!” yelled Colonel Blake, rising in wrath.

“Yes, sir!” they said, salaaming as they went.

Several weeks after the departure of Major Hobson, it was again first reported by Radar O’Reilly and then an­nounced by Colonel Blake that a new surgeon had been assigned to the 4077th MASH. The only available information was that he was a chest surgeon and he was from Boston.

“Great!” exulted Hawkeye.

“Goddam Yankee,” said Duke.