Richard Hooker - MASH - A Novel About Three Army Doctors

“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 his 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.