Mash (2 page)

“You need anything here?” asked Hawkeye, noting the Duke saluting and nodding as the jeep chugged through the waving, cooing colorama.

“No,” the Duke said. “I shopped in Seoul last night, but something else bothers me now.”

“You should know better, doctor,” Hawkeye said.

“No,” Duke said. “I’ve been wondering about this Colonel Blake.”

“Lieutenant Colonel Henry Braymore Blake,” Hawkeye said. “I looked him up. Regular Army type.”

“You need a drink?” Duke said.

Out of sight of the sirens now, Hawkeye pulled the jeep to the side of the road once more. By the time they had finished the bottle the cold, slanting rain was mixed with flat wet flakes of snow.

“Regular Army type,” the Duke kept repeating. “Like Meade and Sherman and Grant.”

“The way I see it, though, is this,” Hawkeye said, finally. “Most of these Regular Army types are insecure. If they weren’t, they’d take their chances out in the big free world. Their only security is based on the efficiency of their outfits.”

“Right,” the Duke said.

“This Blake must have a problem or he wouldn’t be sending for help. Maybe we’re that help.”

“Right,” the Duke said.

“So my idea,” Hawkeye said, “is that we work like hell when there’s work and try to outclass the other talent.”

“Right,” the Duke said.

“This,” Hawkeye said, “will give us enough leverage to write our own tickets the rest of the way.”

“Y’all know something, Hawkeye?” the Duke said. “You’re a good man.”

Just beyond a collection of tents identified as the Canadian Field Dressing Station, they came to a fork in the road. The road to the right led northeast toward the Punchbowl and Heartbreak Ridge; the road to the left took them due north toward Chorwon, Pork Chop Hill, Old Baldy and the 4077th MASH.

About four miles beyond the fork, a flooded stream had washed out a bridge, and a couple of M.P.‘s waved them into a line with a dozen other military vehicles, including two tanks. They waited there for an hour, the line lengthening behind them until the line ahead began to move and Hawkeye guided the jeep down the muddy river bank and across the floorboard-deep stream.

As a result, darkness was settling on the valley when, opposite a sign that read “THIS IS WHERE IT IS – PARALLEL 38,” another, smaller marker reading “4077th MASH, WHERE I AM, HENRY BLAKE, LT. COL. M.C.” directed them to the left off the main road. Following directions, they were confronted, first, by four helicopters belonging to the 5th Air Rescue Squadron and then by several dozen tents of various shapes and sizes, forlornly distributed in the shape of a horseshoe.

“Well,” Hawkeye said, stopping the jeep, “there it is.”

“Damn,” Duke said.

The rain had changed to wet snow by now, and off the muddy road the ground was white. With the motor idling, they could hear the rumble of artillery.

“Thunder?” Duke said.

“Man-made,” Hawkeye said. “They welcome all newcomers this way.”

“What do we do now?” Duke said.

“Find the mess hall,” Hawkeye said. “It figures to be that thing over there.”

When they walked into the mess hall there were about a dozen others sitting at one of the long, rectangular tables. They chose an unoccupied table, sat down, and were served by a Korean boy wearing green fatigue pants and an off-white coat.

As they ate they knew they were being looked over. Finally one of the others got up and approached them. He was about five feet eight, a little overweight, a little red of face and eye, and balding. On the wings of his shirt collar were silver oak leaves, and he looked worried.

“I’m Colonel Blake,” he said, eyeing them. “You fellows just passing through?”

“No,” replied Hawkeye. “We’re assigned here.”

“You sure?” the Colonel asked.

“Y’all said you all needed two good boys,” Duke said, “and we’re what the Army sent.”

“Where you guys been all day? I expected you by noon.”

“We stopped at a gin mill,” the Duke told him.

“Let me see your orders.”

They got out their papers and handed them to the Colonel. They watched him while he checked the papers and then while he eyed the two of them again.

“Well, it figures,” Henry said finally. “You guys look like a pair of weirdos to me, but if you work well I’ll hold still for a lot and if you don’t it’s gonna be your asses.”

“You see?” Hawkeye said to Duke. “I told you.”

“You’re a good man,” Duke said.

“Colonel,” Hawkeye said, “have no fear. The Duke and Hawkeye are here.”

“You’ll know you’re here by morning,” Henry said. “You go to work at nine o’clock tonight, and I just got word that the gooks have bit Kelly Hill.”

“We’re ready,” Hawkeye said.

“Right,” Duke said.

“You’re living with Major Hobson,” Henry said. “O’Reilly?”

“Sir?” Radar O’Reilly said, already at the Colonel’s side, for he had received the message even before it had been sent.

“Don’t do that, O’Reilly,” Henry said. “You make me nervous.”

“Sir?”

“Take these officers …”

“To Major Hobson’s tent,” Radar said.

“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.

2

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.