M*A*S*H: A Novel About Three Army Doctors

by Richard Hooker

Captain Pierce was twenty-eight years old, slightly over six feet tall and slightly stoop-shouldered. He wore glasses, and his brown-blond hair needed cutting. Captain Forrest was a year older, slightly under six feet tall, and more solid. He had brush-cut red hair, pale blue eyes and a nose that had not quite been restored to its natural state after contact with something more resistant than itself.

Duke Forrest learned that Hawkeye Pierce was married and the father of two young sons, and Captain Pierce found out that Captain Forrest was married and the father of two young girls. They discovered that their training and experience had been remarkably similar and each detected, with much relief, that the other did not think of himself as a Great Surgeon.

many of the casualties were brought in from the Battalion Aid Stations by ambulance and might arrive at any hour, the most seriously wounded were flown in by helicopter. This meant that daylight was the frequent arrival time because the choppers did not fly at night. When the night shift had worked steadily from 9:00 P.M. to 4:00 A.M. and finally had everything cleaned up, some of its members could usually be seen as the first light of day seeped into the wide valley, peering north beyond the mine field and the river with its railroad bridge, hoping against hope that no choppers would materialize out of the mist.

Tent Number Six, the home of Forrest, Pierce and McIntyre, became a center of social activity. It also became known as The Swamp, partly because it looked like the kind of haunt one might come across in a bog and partly because Hawkeye Pierce, while in college and unable to afford a dormitory room, had lived just off the campus in a shanty that his classmates had called The Swamp. The words, in big capital letters—THE SWAMP—were painted in red on the door of Number Six.

Cocktails consisted of better booze than most of the crew had ever had at home, and martinis were a favorite, served in water glasses filled to the brim.

“He might make it, even if all I really did was hit him in the head with an axe.”

And still they came. Bellies, chests, necks, arteries, arms, legs, eyes, testicles, kidneys, spinal cords, all shot to hell. Win or lose. Life and death. At the beginning of it, all of the surgeons, and particularly the Swampmen, had experienced a great transformation. During periods of only sporadic employment they often drank far too much and complained far too much, but with the coming of The Deluge they had become useful people again, a fulfilled, effective fighting unit and not just a bunch of semi-employed stew bums stranded in the middle of nowhere. This was fine, as far as it went, but it was going too far. By the end of the second week they were all wan, red-eyed, dog-tired and short of temper, and it was obvious to all of them that their reflexes had been dulled and that their judgment had sometimes become questionable.

“Because,” Trapper mumbled, “although you are a leader of men, there are no men left.”

“Talk to me anyhow, Captain. Just talk about anything that comes into your head.” “Death is an elephant, torch-eyed and horrible, foam-flanked and terrible,” Hawkeye commented.

Major Haskell lit a cigarette. “You nervous or something?” asked Hawkeye. “Not at all,” the Major replied, nervously. “Hey, Dad, I’ll give you a nice buy on an elephant. Velly clean. Takes penicillim. Finest kind.” “Captain Pierce, what are you up to? Frankly, I can’t decide whether you’re crazy or just some kind of a screwball.” “Well, why don’t you mull it over for a while. You got anything to trade in?” “What do you mean?” “I mean you want a clean deal on a clean elephant, or you got some kind of used up elephant you wanta stick me with in return for my best elephant?”

“OK,” said Haskell, “but I still don’t think you’re normal.” “I ain’t. Normal people go crazy in this place.”

“Well,” said the Hawk finally, “when you live in this sort of situation long enough, you either get to love a few people or to hate them, and we’ve been pretty lucky. I don’t know. I do know that nothing like this will ever happen to us again. Never again, except in our families, will we ever be as close with anyone as we were in that goddamned tent for the past year, and with Ugly here and Dago and a few others. I’m glad it happened, and I’m some jeezely glad it’s over.”

From here it sounds great to say we’ll all get together soon, but all I know is this: You can call me or the Duke fifty days or fifty years from now and we’ll be glad to see you.”