Mash

by Richard Hooker

  “The hell with this,” Hawkeye said now. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “In a minute,” the Duke said, and up to now he had been just monitoring the conversation. “I want to say something.”

  “What?” Spearchucker said, looking right at him.

  “I’m from Georgia,” Duke said.

  “I know that,” Spearchucker said.

  “If you and I had a problem,” Duke said, “we’d be the only ones who could understand it. These Yankees couldn’t, but what I wanta say is that I don’t have a problem, and if y’all do, tell me now.”

  Captain Jones sipped his drink and grinned and looked at the Duke.

  “No problem with me, Little Duke,” he said.

  “Wait a minute,” the Duke said, eyeing Captain Jones. “How come y’all call me Little Duke?”

  “Well,” Spearchucker said, “Hawkeye wrote me about you two guys and he said you’re from Forrest City, Georgia. Right?”

  “Right,” Duke said, “but…”

  “Your daddy a doctor?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He used to own a little farm north of town?”

  “Oh, no,” Trapper John said. “Please.”

  “Wait a minute,” Duke said. “He’s right. Let the man talk.”

  “Who tenant-farmed that place?” asked Captain Jones.

  “John Marshall Jones,” Duke said.

  “I should have been a lawyer,” said Oliver Wendell Jones. “What happened to John Marshall Jones?”

  “He got knifed by another nigra,” Duke said.

  “What happened to his family?”

  “They went north.”

  “That’s right,” Captain Jones said. “They went north. You know where they got the money for the trip?”

  “No.”

  “The doctor sold the farm, paid the family’s debt and gave my mother a thousand dollars. They called him The Big Duke. Now how do you like that, Little Duke?”

  Captain Forrest said nothing. He just sat there, looking at Captain Jones and shaking his head.

  “You see why I got no problem?” Spearchucker said.

  “Duke,” Hawkeye said, “as Grant said to Lee at Appomattox: ‘You give up?’”

  “Yeah,” the Duke said.

  13

  Colonel Henry Blake was busier than he had been since The Deluge, and happier than he had been since his arrival in Korea. The first thing he did on the morning after his new neurosurgeon reported was call General Hammond in Seoul and, still chuckling to himself, wonder if, by any chance, the football team of the 325th Evacuation Hospital would care to meet an eleven representing the 4077th MASH.

  General Hammond was delighted. The previous year his team had administered such thorough hosings to the only two pickup elevens in Korea foolish enough to challenge his powerhouse that both of those aggregations had abandoned the game. This had left him with a winning streak of two straight, visions of some day joining the company of Pop Warner, Amos Alonzo Stagg and Knute Rockne—and no one to play. The date was set for Thanksgiving Day, five weeks away, on the home field of the champions at Yong-Dong-Po.

  The next thing Colonel Blake did was write Special Services in Tokyo and arrange for the use of two dozen football uniforms, helmets, shoes and pads, all to be airlifted as soon as possible. Then he dictated a notice, calling for candidates to report at two o’clock the next afternoon, and copies were posted in the messhall, the latrines, the showers and in the Painless Polish Poker and Dental Clinic. After that he showed up at The Swamp.

  “Now,” he said, after he had finished his report, “when do we start getting our dough down?”

  “Why don’t we wait a while, Coach,” Trapper John suggested, “until we see what we’ve got for talent?”

  “It doesn’t matter what we’ve got,” Henry responded. “That Hammond doesn’t know anything about football.”

  “But if we seem too eager, Coach,” Hawkeye said, “we may tip our hand.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Henry agreed.

  The following afternoon, at the appointed hour, fifteen candidates appeared on the ball field. The equipment would not arrive for several days, so Henry, a whistle suspended from a cord around his neck, and as previously advised by his neurosurgeon, ran the rag-tag agglomeration twice around the perimeter of the field and then put them through some calisthenics. After that he just let them fool around, kicking and passing the three available footballs, while he and the Swampmen sized them up.

  “Well,” Henry said, at cocktail hour that afternoon in The Swamp, “what do you think?”

  “Can we still get out of the game?” the Duke said.

  “Yeah,” Hawkeye said. “Whose idea was this anyway?”

  “Yours, dammit,” Trapper said.

  “God, they looked awful,” Hawkeye said.

  “They’ll look fine,” Henry said, “once the uniforms get here.”

  “Never,” the Duke said.

  “Listen,” Spearchucker said. “The coach is right. I don’t mean particularly about the uniforms, but no team ever looks good the first few days. I noticed a few boys out there who have played the game.”

  “Besides,” Henry said, “what does that Hammond know about football? It’s like having another man on our side.”

  “The first thing we’ve got to do,” Spearchucker said, “is decide on an offense.”

  “That’s right,” Henry said. “That’s the first thing we’ve got to do. What’ll it be? The Notre Dame Box?”

  Trapper had been a T quarterback at Dartmouth, and Duke had run out of the T as a fullback at Georgia. Androscoggin, where Hawkeye had played end, had still used the single wing, but Spearchucker had played in the T in college and, of course, with the pros. Hawkeye was outvoted, 3 to 1, with Henry abstaining but agreeing.

  “Now we’ve got to think up some plays,” Henry said. “Why don’t you fellas handle that while I look after some of the other details?”

  Spearchucker diagrammed six basic running plays and four stock pass plays, and that evening presented them to Henry, with explanations. Henry studied these, established a training table at one end of the mess hall and ordered his athletes to cut down on the consumption of liquor and cigarettes. The Swampmen settled for two drinks before dinner and none after, and reduced their inhalation of nicotine and tobacco tars by one half.

  For the next two days, Henry, with surreptitious suggestions from Spearchucker, had the squad first walk through and then run through the plays. When the uniforms arrived they turned out, to the dismay of the Duke, who had worn the red for Georgia, to consist of cardinal jerseys, white helmets and white pants. As the personnel sorted through the equipment and found sizes that approximated their own, Henry fretted. He could hardly wait to see them suited up.

  “Great! Great!” Henry exulted, as they lined up in front of him on the field. “You men look great!”

  “We look like a lotta goddamn cherry parfaits,” Trapper said.

  “Great!” Henry went on. “Wait’ll that Hammond sees you. He’s in for the surprise of his life.”

  “It’ll be the last surprise he’ll ever have,” the Duke said. “He’ll die laughin’.”

  Things were not as desperate, however, as the Swampmen seemed to believe. To the practiced eye of their newest member, in fact, it was apparent that his colleagues possessed at least some of the skills needed to play the game. Trapper John, after he took the snap from center, hustled back and stood poised to throw, looked like a scarecrow, but he had a whip for an arm and began to regain his control. Hawkeye, when he went down for passes, exhibited good moves and good hands. The Duke had the short, powerful stride a fullback needs, ran hard, blocked well and, during the few semi-scrimmages, showed himself to be imbued with an abundance of competitive fire. Sergeant Pete Rizzo, the ex-Three I League infielder, was a natural athlete and a halfback. Of the others, the sergeant from Supply named Vollmer, who had played center for Nebraska, was the best. Ugly John made a gu
ard of sorts and Captain Walter Koskiusko Waldowski, the Painless Pole, a survivor of high school and sandlot football in Hamtramck, was big enough, strong enough and angry enough to be a tackle. The rest of the line was filled out by enlisted men, with the exception of one of the end spots to which, over the objections of Trapper John, Dr. R. C. (Jeeter) Carroll was assigned.

  The Spearchucker, of course, was kept under cover, except to jog around and catch a few passes. When anyone was watching he dropped them. No one guessed his identity, so scouts from the Evac Hospital could report to General Hammond only that the big colored boy was a clown, that whatever the Swampmen might have been once and were trying to be again, they had partaken of far too much whiskey and tobacco to go more than a quarter. Moreover, there were only four substitutes.

  Hawkeye scouted the 325th. He went down one afternoon and tried to look like he was bound on various errands between the Quonsets that surrounded the athletic field, while he eyed the opposition.

  “They got nothing,” he reported on his return. “Three boys in the backfield looked like they played some college ball, but they probably aren’t any better than Trapper, the Duke and me. They got a lousy passer, but their line is heavier than ours, and they got us in depth. I think that without the Spearchucker we could play them about even. With the Spearchucker they can’t touch us.”

  “Good,” Trapper said. “Then I suggest we do this: We hide the Spearchucker until the second half, and we hold back half our bets. We go into the half maybe ten points or two touchdowns behind, and then we bet the rest of our bundle at real odds.”

  “Great!” Henry said. “Everybody get his dough up!”

  By the time everyone had kicked in—doctors, nurses, lab technicians, corpsmen, Supply and mess hall personnel—Henry had $6,000. The next morning—five days before the game—he called General Hammond, and when he came off the phone and reported to The Swamp it was apparent that he was disturbed.

  “What happened?” Trapper asked. “Couldn’t you get the dough down?”

  “Yeah,” Henry said. “I got $3,000 down.”

  “No odds?” Duke asked.

  “Yeah,” Henry said. “He gave me 7 to 5. He snapped it up.”

  “Oh-oh,” Trapper John said. “I think I smell something.”

  “Me, too,” Henry said. “That Hammond is tighter than a bull’s ass in fly time. Whatever he’s trying to pull, I don’t like it.”

  “Tell you what we’d better do,” Hawkeye said. “When I scouted those clowns they didn’t look any better than we do but with them just as anxious to get their money down as we are, maybe I missed something. Spearchucker better go down tomorrow and nose around. He’ll know a ringer if he sees one.”

  “Maybe I’d better go at that,” Spearchucker said.

  The next night Captain Jones returned from his scouting trip to Yong-Dong-Po. He didn’t look any happier than Henry had the day before.

  “What’s the word?” asked Trapper John.

  “They got two tackles from the Browns, and a halfback played with the Rams.”

  “That’s not fair!” Henry said, jumping up. “Why, this game is supposed to be…”

  “Wait a minute,” Hawkeye said. “Are these guys any good?”

  “Anybody ever ask you to play pro football, boy?” Spearchucker said.

  “I get your point,” Hawkeye said.

  “My arm is sore,” declared Trapper. “I don’t think I can play.”

  “What do we do?” asked Henry.

  “Y’all are the coach,” Duke said. “How about it, Coach?”

  “I guess we have to play,” Henry said, his dreams of gold and glory gone.

  “The bastards outconned us,” Hawkeye said.

  “Maybe not,” Spearchucker said. “We’ll think of something.”

  “Like what?” Duke said.

  “Like getting that halfback out of there as soon as we can,” Spearchucker said.

  “You know him?” Duke said.

  “No,” Spearchucker said, “but I’ve seen him. He played only one year second-string with the Rams before the Army got him. He’s a colored boy who weighs only about 180, but he’s a speed burner and one of those hot dogs.”

  “What does that mean?” Henry said.

  “I mean,” Spearchucker said, “that when he sees a little running room he likes to make a show—you know, stutter steps and cross-overs and all that jazz. He runs straight up and never learned to button up when he gets hit, so I think that, if you can get a good shot at him, you can get him out of there.”

  “Then let’s kick off to them,” the Duke said, “and get him right away.”

  “Good idea,” Henry said.

  “No,” Spearchucker said. “He’ll kill you in an open field. You’ve got to get him in a confined situation, where he hesitates and hangs up.”

  “Good idea,” Henry said.

  “Sure,” Hawkeye said, “but how do we do that?”

  “They’ll run him off tackle a lot from strong right,” Spearchucker said, “or send him wide. Hawkeye has to play him wide and turn him in, and when he makes his cut to the left he’s gonna do that cross-over and Duke has to hit him high and Hawkeye low.”

  “Great idea!” Henry said. “That’ll show that Hammond.”

  “Yeah,” Duke said, “but can we do it?”

  “It’s the only way to do it,” Spearchucker said. “If you don’t get him the first time, he’ll give you plenty of other chances.”

  “But when we unload him, if we can,” Hawkeye said, “we’ll have to break his leg to keep him from coming back in.”

  “Not necessarily,” Trapper John said. “I got an idea.”

  “What is it?” Henry said.

  “Tell you later,” Trapper said, “if it works.”

  Trapper John excused himself, left The Swamp, walked over to Henry’s tent and made a phone call. He talked for five minutes, and when he came back his teammates and their coach were dwelling on the problem presented by the two tackles from the Browns.

  “We run nothing inside until I get into the game in the second half,” Spearchucker was explaining. “These two big boys must be twenty or thirty pounds overweight. We run everything wide, except for maybe an occasional draw for Duke up the middle to take advantage of their rush on Trapper when he passes.”

  “God help me,” Trapper said.

  “And me, too,” Duke said.

  “In other words,” Spearchucker said, “the idea is to run the legs off ’em that first half. I think that will be all the edge I will require, gentlemen.”

  “Right,” Henry said. “Imagine that Hammond, trying to pull something like that.”

  On the day of Thanksgiving the kick-off was scheduled for 10:00 A.M., so shortly after the crack of dawn the 4077th MASH football team, the Red Raiders of the Imjin, all fifteen of them, plus their coach, their water boy and assorted rooters, took off in jeeps and truck. The Swampmen rode together in the same jeep and in silence. No bottle was passed and no cigarettes were smoked, and when they arrived in Yong-Dong-Po and headed for the Quonset assigned to the team as dressing quarters Trapper John excused himself and disappeared.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Hawkeye asked him, when their quarterback finally returned just in time to suit up and loosen his arm.

  “Yeah,” the Duke said. “We thought y’all went over the hill.”

  “Had to see a man about a hot dog,” Trapper said. “Good old Austin from Boston.”

  “Who?” Duke asked.

  “About what?” Hawkeye said.

  “Tell you about it if it works,” Trapper said. “You two clods just take care of the halfback.”

  “All right, men,” Henry was saying. “I want you to listen to me. Let’s have some quiet in here. This game…”

  He went into a Pat O’Brien-plays-Knute Rockne, stalking up and down and invoking their pride in themselves, their organization, the colors they wore and their bank accounts. When he finished, out of words and o
ut of breath, his face was as red as their jerseys, and he turned them loose to meet the orange and black horde of Hammond.

  “Look at the size of those two beasts,” Trapper John said, spotting the two tackles from the Browns.

  “We know,” Duke said. “We were out here before. This is gonna take courage.”

  “I ain’t got any,” Trapper said.

  “Me neither,” Jeeter Carroll said.

  “God help us,” Trapper said.

  Hawkeye, because it had been his idea to play the game in the first place, was sent out now, as captain, to face the two tackles for the coin toss. When he came back he reported that he had lost the toss and that they would have to kick off.

  “Now keep it away from the speed-burner,” Spearchucker instructed the Duke. “Kick it to anybody else but him.”

  “That’s right,” said Henry, regaining his breath. “Kick it to anybody else but him.”

  “I know,” the Duke assured them. “Y’all think I’m crazy?”

  “Let’s go get ’em, men!” Henry said.

  The Duke kicked it away from the halfback who had played a year of second-string with the Rams. He kicked it as far away from him as he could, but the enemy was of a different mind. The individual who caught the ball, by the simple maneuver of just running laterally and handing off, saw to it that the halfback who had played a year of second-string with the Rams got the ball. The next thing they knew, the Red Raiders of the Imjin saw an orange and black blur and they were lining up to try to prevent the point after touchdown, an effort which also failed.

  “Stop him!” Henry was screaming on the sidelines. “Stop that man!”

  “Yeah,” the Duke was saying as they distributed themselves to receive the kick-off. “Y’all give me a rifle and I might stop him, if they blindfold him and tie him to a stake.”

  When the kick came, it came to the Duke on the ten and he ran it straight ahead to the thirty before they brought him down. On the first play from scrimmage Trapper sent Hawkeye, playing at left half until Spearchucker could get into the game, around right end. Hawkeye made two yards, and Pete Rizzo, at right half, picked up two more around the other flank.