Mash

by Richard Hooker

  “This is going to mean trouble,” said Trapper John. “Nobody will put up with that kind of crap.”

  “Not ordinarily,” said Hawkeye, “but we’ll get away with it.”

  “Why?” asked Duke.

  “Because at seven o’clock tonight three companies of Canadians are going for Hill 55. When they do, this place will be flooded with casualties. Personally, I don’t plan to work if I’m under arrest.”

  “Who says?” said Trapper.

  “The Canadian colonel told me last night.”

  “Well, we’ll see,” said Trapper. “Barricade that door, and let’s go to bed.”

  When they awakened at four o’clock in the afternoon, all was quiet. Duke peeked out the door and closed it quickly.

  “What do the initials M.P. stand for?” he inquired.

  “Shore Patrol,” answered Trapper John.

  Hawkeye peeked through the rear of the tent and saw that the back was unguarded. He washed, combed his hair, put on clean clothes, a hat, captain’s bars and all the appurtenances of military costume he had hardly ever worn. He went under the rear tent flap, and his tentmates quickly tied things back in place. A few moments later, a smiling Captain Pierce approached the two M.P.’s and returned their salutes.

  “Colonel Blake says you can go back to your outfit, boys,” he told them. “It’s all blown over. You’d better get going before it’s too dark.”

  The day was cold, and they took off gratefully. An hour later, after one leisurely martini apiece, the men of The Swamp strolled into the mess hall and sat down. The Colonel stared at them, spluttered, and pounded his fist on the table.

  “Where are those M.P.’s?” he screamed. “You guys are confined to your tent until they come for you from Seoul.”

  “Y’all mean the Shore Patrol?” asked Duke innocently.

  Henry shook. His mouth moved but no words came.

  “What M.P.’s, Henry?” inquired Hawkeye. “Somebody screw up? We been in bed all day. Bring us up to date.”

  “Grab them!” yelled Henry, forgetting in his frenzy that no one else was present at the moment except nurses.

  Nobody moved.

  “Y’all heard your Cuhnnel,” said Duke to the nurses. “Grab us.”

  “I’ll try anything once,” said Trapper John.

  “I’m hornier than a three-balled tom cat,” agreed Hawkeye. “Clear the tables for action.”

  At this point Dago Red walked in.

  “Come with me,” he ordered, pushing and shoving them out of the mess hall and herding them back to The Swamp. There, disillusioned and disappointed, he scolded, pleaded and insisted that they apologize to Shaking Sammy.

  “Red,” said Hawkeye, “I’m perfectly serious now. I’m not going to apologize to Shaking Sammy. I despise quack doctors, and for the same good reasons I despise quack sky pilots and all the screwballs on the fringe of the do-gooding business. So forget it.”

  Before the discussion got any further, the rumor of Canadians attacking 55 was borne out. Ambulances and helicopters disgorged dozens of wounded. The Swampmen forgot the problems arising from human sacrificial ceremonies and went to the OR. To no one’s surprise, no one tried to stop them. For the next four days they worked with little letup, and no mention was made of the sacrificial ceremony of the previous Sunday.

  After five days the worst was over, the preop ward was cleaned out, and no new casualties were coming. The Swampmen had a drink at nine-thirty on a bright warm morning and put on their cleanest clothes. They borrowed handcuffs from the supply sergeant. They got three of their enlisted men friends to cuff them together and guard them with rifles. They sat huddled on the ground in front of Colonel Blake’s tent, passed a bottle back and forth, and chanted their version of “The Prisoner’s Song.”

  If we had the wings of a Colonel,

  We’d fly to the high Pyrenees,

  And open an open air laundry,

  Specializing in Blake’s B.V.D.’s.

  Colonel Blake came out to see what was going on.

  “Hey, Henry!” yelled Hawkeye. “Can officers get broads into Leavenworth?”

  In times of stress Colonel Blake sometimes stuttered.

  “You c-c-crazy bastards, get the h-h-hell out of here. They don’t have any replacements for you, but if you don’t get out of my sight so h-h-help me C-C-Christ I’ll have you s-s-shot.”

  5

  Captain Walter Koskiusko Waldowski, of Hamtramck, Michigan, and Dental Officer of the 4077th MASH, was a very good dentist. He took care of the tusks of hundreds of troops, most of whom, before they met him, would have preferred to storm a gook bunker barehanded rather than go to a dentist. He wired fractured jaws and extracted teeth with a dexterity that few of the medical personnel had ever witnessed at home. That he should be called The Painless Pole was so obvious that no one would own up to being the originator of the nickname.

  The Painless Pole ran the only truly popular Dental Clinic in the Far East Command, or at least in Korea. This clinic had a real poker table. It had a small portable pool table, a record player, a large supply of beer and other potables, and also one dental chair. At times of maximum surgical-military stress there were short intervals when the perpetual poker game might cease for a few brief hours. This was rare, however, for even when work was most intense, the poker game would often be the same. The players might change every fifteen minutes, but there were always players. Some were trying to relax enough to sleep. Some were trying to wake up. At any given time, a few of the players were likely to be patients. Perhaps they were waiting for Painless to get out of the OR; perhaps they were bleeding from an extraction and passing the time until the hemorrhage was definitely controlled. Other participants were wanderers from here and there who knew they could always find a game at the Painless Polish Poker and Dental Clinic.

  As a consequence, Captain Waldowski was widely known in the area and the most popular man in the outfit. Unlike most of the medical officers, he had been in private practice prior to being drafted. Unlike most of the medical officers, he had actually made a living, a state of grace almost inconceivable to his associates. He liked everyone, and was seldom without company.

  His greatest hobby and interest, however, aside from managing the Poker and Dental Clinic, was women. As he was unmarried, it would have been perfectly natural for him to play the local nurses and patronize the flesh emporia in Seoul, but he passed these up much as a major league ballplayer would pass up a sandlot baseball game. Back home in Hamtramck, his reminiscences made clear, he had the highest lifetime batting average in the history of the league. At the present time he was engaged to, as best he could remember, three young lovelies, and while this sort of talk is so common in any military organization that it is automatically written off as malarkey, in his case it could not be written off, even by the most skeptical.

  The Painless Pole, beyond any shadow of a doubt, was the best-equipped dentist in the U.S. Army Dental Corps. He was the owner and operator of the Pride of Hamtramck. Officers and enlisted men from the entire area frequently visited the 4077th MASH, supposedly to take advantage of the shower facilities, but actually they came in hope of catching a glimpse. In fact, Dr. Waldowski’s dental assistant, a Corporal Jones, significantly enhanced his lowly wages by informing certain troops in advance of the Captain’s intention of bathing. In the shower, popeyed officers and enlisted men viewed the Pride wistfully, and one day a corporal from Mississippi spoke for them all.

  “Ah’d purely love,” he said, “to see it angry.”

  Unfortunately, about once a month, the Painless Pole underwent a period of depression lasting no less than twenty-four hours and seldom more than three days. The usual activities of the Clinic continued, but except when forced to work, Walt just lay in his sack and stared at the walls. Radar O’Reilly, of course, was able to predict the advent of these episodes several days in advance, so that the clients of the Clinic were forewarned, but it was Hawkeye Pierce who spread the first wo
rd of what turned out to be Captain Waldowski’s most serious seizure.

  On this afternoon Hawkeye had been working continuously for twelve hours and, having finally finished and found it to be bathing time, he had gone to the shower tent. He undressed slowly. His stethoscope fell out of the rear pocket of his fatigue pants, and he hung it on a nail along with the pants. He stepped under the shower, luxuriated in its warmth, relaxed and dreamed dreams of Crabapple Cove. Returning to reality, he walked back to the bench where he had left his clothes. He found Captain Walter Waldowski, The Painless Pole, sitting on the bench. All the Dental Officer had on was Hawkeye’s stethoscope and a look of great alarm. He was listening to the Pride of Hamtramck.

  “What’s the matter, Walt?” asked Hawkeye.

  “I think it’s dead,” Walt answered and, in a trance, he walked to the nearest shower with the stethoscope still dangling from his ears.

  That evening The Painless Pole entered The Swamp and sat down. He was given a drink, which he accepted with indifference.

  “I thought you guys oughta know,” he announced.

  “Know what?”

  “I’m going to commit suicide.”

  There was a moment of silence. Finally Trapper John leaned from his sack and grasped Walt’s hand.

  “We’ll miss you, Walt,” he said. “I hope you’ll be happy in your new location.”

  “Hey, Walt, how about you all leaving me your record player?” requested Duke.

  “When are you making the trip?” inquired Hawkeye. “You oughta give Henry a little warning so he can get a replacement.”

  Throughout the interrogation, The Painless Pole sat numbly and made no effort to answer.

  “How do you figure to go?” continued Trapper. “You gonna do the .45 between the eyes, or are you planning something a little more refined?”

  “That’s what I wanted to ask,” Walt finally said. “What would you guys recommend?”

  “The forty-five will do it,” Duke answered. “There’s no question about that, but it can be sloppy. How about the black capsule?”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a never miss, easy, pleasant ride,” explained Hawkeye. “You have a few drinks, take the black capsule, and the next thing you know you’re listening to the heavenly chorus singing the Hamtramck High School victory song.”

  “You guys got any black capsules?”

  “For a buddy like y’all,” the Duke told him, “we’ll sure as hell get some, if that’s what you want.”

  “That’s what I want. I gotta go make out my will. Duke, you can have the record player. I’m closing the Clinic in the morning. Tomorrow night is it. You guys come up. We’ll have a few drinks, and I’ll take a black capsule, or maybe two.”

  The Painless Pole left. Hawkeye followed him.

  “Relieve me in three hours,” he instructed the Swampmen as he departed. “We’d better watch the foolish bastard until he gets over this one.”

  The next morning Henry heard about it. He was all upset and making plans to evacuate Painless, and came to The Swamp to discuss it.

  “What in hell’s wrong with him anyhow? Why do I have to get saddled with all the screwballs in the whole U.S. Army? Where in hell am I going to get another dentist?”

  Trapper was in the Dental Clinic doing guard duty, but Duke and Hawkeye argued Henry out of his evacuation plans.

  “Y’all don’t need to get rid of him, Henry,” said Duke. “He’ll get the hell over it.”

  “Christ, Henry,” Hawk added, “if you get rid of him, some head-shrinker will just give him shock treatments and probably send him to another outfit. We can give him some shock treatments right here!”

  “I’m afraid not, boys,” Henry said. “This sort of thing is dynamite. If he pushed himself over up here, I’d never hear the end of it.”

  “Henry, you surely are aware,” Hawkeye continued, “of the immense prestige which the presence of the Pride bestows upon the unit. Furthermore, the Pride is the greatest drawing card any military shower tent ever had. You must realize that the personnel of our hospital and all nearby troops, in their zeal to view the Pride of Hamtramck, have become the cleanest goddam soldiers in Korea. Henry, in the name of sanitation and personal hygiene, will you just give us twenty-four hours to cure Painless Waldowski?”

  “Yeah, Henry,” Duke said. “Will y’all just do that?”

  “I’m crazy. I’m just as crazy as you guys. Go ahead, cure him, and let me the hell out of here!” he cried, leaving.

  “So,” Hawkeye said to the Duke, “how are we going to cure him?”

  “Easy,” the Duke said. “We’ll get some kind of black capsule, like we told him, stick about fifteen grains of amytal in it, get him loaded, and give him the capsule. By the time he wakes up, he oughta be O.K.”

  “We better have some benzedrine or something around in case he looks like he won’t wake up.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “We should fancy up the procedure a little, too. We can work that out today. Let’s start by lining up Dago Red.”

  They ambled over to the chaplain’s tent, entered and opened two of Father Mulcahy’s beers.

  “How they goin’, Losing Preacher?” asked Hawkeye. “Whadda you hear from the Pope?”

  “What do you reprobates want?”

  “We came to invite y’all to the Last Supper,” explained the Duke.

  “The Painless Pole,” Hawkeye explained, “plans to cross the Great Divide about eleven tonight and wishes his friends and cronies to break bread and wine with him beforehand. He has also requested that Losing Preacher Mulcahy come prepared to administer the last rites of the bead-jiggler Church. He has been somewhat slack in his devotion to the Church in recent years and wishes you to grease the skids a little.”

  “Why don’t you guys leave me alone? What’s this all about anyway?” Dago asked wearily.

  “We’re serious, Red,” Hawkeye said. “Painless has parted his mooring. We don’t want to have him evacuated because he’s a good guy and we like him and we figure we need him. We think we can get him straightened out, but we need a little help.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Just what we said. Come up, have supper, a few drinks, put in one of your well-known fixes, and don’t get annoyed at anything you hear or see.”

  “OK, boys, I’ll trust you,” Father Mulcahy agreed, “but I hope the big guy in Rome never gets wind of it.”

  “He sure as hell won’t hear it from me,” Hawkeye assured him.

  They went to the supply sergeant and commissioned the construction of a coffin.

  “Who you planning to kill?” the sergeant asked.

  “Nobody. We need the coffin for Painless. He is going to commit suicide.”

  “He can’t do that!” protested the sergeant.

  “Why can’t he?”

  “Dentists we got lots of, but there’s only one Pride of Hamtramck.”

  “So what?”

  “So what? It belongs to the world! You gotta stop him.”

  “Don’t worry, we’re not gonna let him do it. You seen Radar O’Reilly around?”

  “Radar went to Seoul to get some blood. He’ll be back this afternoon. Whadda you want with him?”

  “We may need him. Send him over to The Swamp as soon as he gets back.”

  In the pharmacy a black capsule was prepared. Then the two trooped over to the mess hall and found the celebrated chef, Sergeant Mother Divine. Sergeant Mother Divine was a Negro boy from Brooklyn who, during his military career, had distinguished himself through a variety of accomplishments, not all of them culinary. As president of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Marked-Down Monument and Landmark Company, and equipped with picture postcards and impressive papers suggesting ownership of various public edifices, statuary and parks, he had, for months, been running a thriving sales business. Just two days before the visit of Hawkeye and Duke, in fact, he had sold the Brooklyn Botanical Garden for two hundred dollars
to a Caucasian private from Mississippi.

  “Man,” one of his less sophisticated kitchen colleagues had said to him, more in awe than admonition, “how could you do that?”

  “Man,” Mother Divine said, “it was easy. That cat wouldn’t buy the bridge because he said he’d heard in the family for years that his grandpappy had bought it a long time ago.”

  “Mother,” Hawkeye said to him now, “how would you like to win the Medaille d’Honneur des Chevaliers d’Escof-fier de France?”

  “Man,” Mother said, “what is it?”

  “It’s a gold medal,” Hawkeye said.

  “Man,” Mother said.

  “It’s awarded in Paris every year,” Hawkeye said, “to the man voted the Chef of the Year.”

  “And how do I get voted to that?” Mother asked.

  “By preparing for this evening an especially sumptuous…”

  “Oh no, man,” Mother said. “I ain’t caterin’ to no special parties. That ain’t in the regulations. In the regulations I just gotta provide three…”

  “Mother,” Hawkeye said, “you like Captain Waldowski, don’t you?”

  “That’s right,” Mother said. “In fact, there’s somethin’ about that man I greatly admire.”

  With that as his cue, and with the Duke nodding assent, Hawkeye launched into an explanation of the emotional and mental state of the Painless Pole and then an impassioned plea. When he finished, Mother Divine agreed to do his part to save the Pride of Hamtramck.

  In the Clinic that evening the poker game was stopped, and the poker and pool facilities, along with the dental chair, were removed. Two long tables were transported from the mess hall, candles were lighted and the Swampmen tended bar. The guests—doctors, chopper pilots, enlisted men—began to warm up, but Painless Waldowski sat unhappily in a corner, barely acknowledging the greetings of his friends and admirers.

  At the stroke of midnight the Last Supper was served, and no finer meal had ever been prepared at the 4077th MASH. This was due not only to the inspired efforts of Mother Divine but also to the fact that a Canadian supply truck had been hijacked a few miles to the south that very afternoon. As a result, smoked Gaspé salmon was followed by Pea Soup Habitant, roast beef sliced to the individual’s preference, three vegetables, tossed salad, baked alaska, coffee or tea, Drambuie and Antonio y Cleopatra cigars.