Mash goes to San Francisco

by Richard Hooker;William Butterworth

  'It takes more than surgical greens, no matter how well tailored, to make a surgeon,' as Dr. Pierce had said.

  'Starting with knowing which end of the scalpel to hold,' Dr. McIntyre had agreed.

  In private practice, it had not been at all hard to find out, Dr. Burns had been proprietor of a thriving pediatric clinic, where his surgery had been essentially limited to extracting large sums of money from first-time mothers by agreeing with their every dark and imaginative suspicion regarding their children's health. On those rare occasions when it had been impossible to find a nurse with free time on her hands to remove a splinter from the hand of one of his prepubescent patients and Dr. Burns' personal services had been required, he had proved so inept that - privately, of course - his fellow medical practitioners had referred to him as 'The Bumbling Baby Butcher of Shady Lane.'

  How it had come to pass no one knew, but while passing through the Army's school for newly commissioned doctors, Frank Burns had been classified as a surgeon. There were several theories of how this had happened, ranging from a

  *Colonel Blake, despite irresponsible reports to the contrary from people who would have known better had they been able to read words of more than one syllable, survived the Korean War and achieved high rank. A rather touching, and certainly splendidly written, account of his faithful service to his country as sort of a medical diplomat (and major general) may be found in M*A*S*H Goes to Paris (Sphere Books). This tome is a real bargain.

  hung-over clerk punching a hole in the wrong place on the IBM card to the theory to which Doctors Pierce and McIntyre subscribed: that the North Koreans had infiltrated a secret agent into the medical training center, where, by assigning inept clowns like Frank Burns as front-line surgeons, he stood a good chance of killing off more troops than the North Korean Army would on the battlefield.

  Major Burns' surgical ineptitude had been known to Colonel Blake, who had been, in the opinion of Doctors Pierce and McIntyre, a fair-to-middling cutter himself. Wise in the ways of the Army, Colonel Blake had, before Doctors Pierce and McIntyre arrived in Korea, done two things to keep Burns from wiping out the corps of patients. He had appointed Burns his deputy commander, in full charge of such military necessities as giving the 'Why We are Fighting Here' and 'How To Avoid Social Disease' lectures; counting the Hershey bars in the PX; and making sure that all the Jeeps had a wheel at each corner. He was also named the morale officer, the VD-control officer, the officers'-club officer, the postal officer, and the re-enlistment officer.

  Colonel Blake had also had a word with Major Margaret Houlihan, Army Nurse Corps, a veteran professional soldier herself and a fine operating-room nurse. Major Houlihan had been told, soldier to soldier, that Major Burns was not to be allowed to perform any surgery of a complexity greater than trimming a fingernail unless every other doctor had fallen hors de combat.*

  After the arrival of Captains Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre at the 4077th MASH, other problems developed. Colonel Blake had quickly come to understand that his two new surgeons were (a) splendid surgeons and (b) lousy officers, at least when judged by the standards of Major

  * This little G.I. tete-à-tete resulted in a slight misunderstanding at first. Major Houlihan, who, as the senior nurse, felt a firm loyalty to her subordinates, was not fluent in French. 'If your doctors, Colonel,' she said, ‘are fooling around, they're not fooling around with my nurses. Bite your tongue, sir!*

  Francis Burns, who had, upon donning his first uniform at the reception center, instantly come to think of himself as the George S. Patton of the Medical Corps.

  As he frequently pointed out to Colonel Blake, his being referred to as 'Old Bumble Fingers,' 'El Bedpan,' and 'Hey, you!' violated every known canon of military courtesy and discipline.

  Forced to choose between maintaining military discipline and providing his patients with the best cutters available, Colonel Blake had flown (perhaps 'flapped' would be a better word) in the face of tradition and appointed Captain Hawk-eye Pierce as chief surgeon of the 4077th MASH and Captain Trapper John McIntyre as his deputy.

  With two exceptions this appointment pleased the entire medical staff of the 4077th MASH.

  Major Burns was annoyed, of course. It was quite clear to him that since he was a major he knew more about any given subject, including surgery, than any lowly captain, and thus the appointment should have been his. He brought this logical conclusion to the attention of Colonel Blake at his first opportunity, and Colonel Blake responded with the succinct phraseology of command for which the career soldier is famous.

  'Shut up, Frank,' Colonel Blake had replied. 'And get your fat ass out of my tent.'

  Tears had come to Major Burns' eyes, and as he had marched out of Colonel Blake's tent his somewhat obscured vision had caused him to bump into Major Margaret Houlihan.

  Although Major Houlihan was not only a first-class nurse but a professional soldier as well, under her 38D chest beat, of course, the heart of woman, and women, as a class, manifest on occasion an emotion known as the maternal instinct. This maternal emotion burst into full bloom in Major Houlihan's bosom the moment she saw Frank Burns' face with a tear running down each cheek.

  She knew that this man, this boyish chap, this tall fellow who alone among the officer-doctors of the 4077th MASH had observed every subde nuance of the correct inter-officer relationship (he had, in other words, always referred to her as 'Major' Houlihan, rather than as 'Nurse,' or 'Hey, you!'), had just suffered some unbearable (and probably unspeakable) tribulation, and that it behooved her as both woman and fellow major to console him in his hour of pain.

  Major Margaret Houlihan accomplished this by taking Major Frank Burns to her tent, giving him a couple of belts of medicinal bourbon, and encouraging him, as one officer to another, to open his heart to her.

  Possibly it was because he was so distressed by the gross injustice of what had happened to him that Major Burns, in relating to Major Houlihan the story of his life, neglected to mention that there was at home a Mrs. Francis Burns and four little Burnses.

  One thing, as they say, led to another, starting with Major Houlihan's professional medical opinion that if two ounces of medicinal bourbon had made Major Burns stop crying, four would probably make him smile. To cut a long and somewhat sordid story short, when reveille sounded the next morning, it found Major Burns and Major Houlihan in flagrant violation of a military regulation themselves. The Army frowns on two officers sharing the same cot, folding, field, wood and canvas, M1917A2, and, in fact, strictly proscribes such behavior.

  'This is bigger than both of us, Frank!' Major Margaret Houlihan had cried.

  'Not much bigger,' Major Frank Burns had replied. ‘I almost fell out.'

  'I mean our love!' she'd said.

  'Oh,' he'd replied. 'If you say so, Margaret.'*

  * It is not the authors' intention to dwell on the Burns-Houlihan affair. For those with a prurient interest in such things, the details have been recorded in M*A*S*H, which Sphere Books, as their contribution to belle lettres, has seen fit to make available to the general public via the better bus-station, airport, and motorway paperback racks at a very nominal price.

  Major Houlihan, just as soon as she got dressed, brought the matter of the unjust appointment of Captain Hawkeye Pierce to the position of chief surgeon up to Colonel Blake.

  'As one soldier to another, Colonel,' Major Houlihan said, 'it is obviously a gross miscarriage of military justice!'

  'As one soldier to another, Major,' Colonel Blake had responded, 'I am surprised that you have forgotten that basic philosophy upon which the military services function.'

  'I beg your pardon, sir ?'

  'The colonel may not always be right, Major, but he's always the colonel,' Colonel Blake said. 'Sometimes expressed as "Yours is not to reason why, Major, yours is but to do what you're told to do without sticking your nose in where it's not wanted." You read me?'

  Major Houlihan that night was consoled by Major
Burns, and vice versa. The next day, which happened to be her day off, Major Houlihan did something she remained ashamed of for the rest of her life. (It had nothing to do, for those with an all-consuming prurient interest who are still with us, with her amoro-biological relationship with Major Burns.)

  What she did - blinded both by love and the rest of the half-gallon of medicinal bourbon - was to 'go over Colonel Blake's head.' Specifically, she journeyed by Jeep to Eighth Army Headquarters in Seoul and brought the unjust appointment of Captains Pierce and McIntyre to the positions of chief surgeon and deputy chief surgeon, respectively, to the attention of the Eighth Army surgeon.

  As that dignitary chased her around his desk, urging her to lie down and talk about it, it occurred to him that perhaps there was something to what Major Houlihan was saying beyond the fact that her new boyfriend's feelings had been hurt.

  For one thing, he knew Major Houlihan to be a fine operating-room nurse. He had personally chased her around G.I. operating rooms from the Panama Canal Zone to Alaska and had seen her at work. For another, it wasn't a good idea to appoint junior officers to positions that should be occupied by more senior officers.

  He told her that he would 'look into it.' He looked into it two ways. He telephoned Colonel Blake and just happened to mention it to him. He was shocked by Colonel Blake's response. Colonel Blake, previously a fine officer, told the Eighth Army surgeon that if he didn't like the way he was running the 4077th MASH, the Eighth Army surgeon knew into which orifice of the body he could stuff it.

  'I'm overworked and understaffed,' Blake went on. 'And if you want to help me, Sammy, you can get off the phone, get up here, scrub, and grab a scalpel. Otherwise, bug off!'

  And with that, the commanding officer of the 4077th MASH hung up on the surgeon of the Eighth United States Army.

  Three hours later, the Eighth Army surgeon arrived by helicopter at the 4077th MASH, wholly prepared to relieve Colonel Blake of his command and to place Major Burns, as ranking officer, in command, at least temporarily.

  He was informed that the entire medical staff of the 4077th MASH was in the operating room. The Eighth Army surgeon scrubbed, put on surgical greens, and entered the operating room.

  At the first table, two surgeons were in the process of removing pieces of shrapnel from the intestinal cavity of a young soldier. The taller of them looked up quickly, saw the newcomer, and then dropped his eyes back to his work.

  'I suppose it's too much to hope, Chubby,' he said, 'that you're a surgeon ?'

  'As it happens,' the Eighth Army surgeon replied, somewhat testily, 'I am.'

  'The term is bandied about somewhat loosely in these parts,' the tall chap said. 'But I'm desperate and have to take the chance. Close this guy up. I've got one waiting that's in just about as bad shape.'

  The Eighth Army surgeon realized that he had just been ordered around like an intern by one of his very junior subordinates. But as the junior surgeon stepped away from the table, he stepped up to it.

  'What have we got here ?' he asked the other surgeon.

  'He doesn't know,' the departing surgeon called over his shoulder. 'That's Dago Red. He's the chaplain.'

  'I try to help as best I can,' the man whom the Eighth Army surgeon had thought was a doctor said.

  The Eighth Army surgeon bent over the table.

  Four hours later, as he finished closing a badly torn leg, the Eighth Army surgeon looked up and found the eyes of the tall young man on him.

  'You're pretty good with that knife, Chubby,' he said. 'And we're glad to have you. Come on down to the swamp and have a martini with us.'

  Still in his soiled surgical clothing, the Eighth Army surgeon walked to the most disreputable tent he had ever seen in twenty-five years of military service. While a full inventory of the tent beggars description, suffice it to say that the beds showed no evidence whatever of ever having been made, that an anatomical skeleton dressed in a bikini stood in one corner smoking a cigar, and that a still bubbled merrily in another corner.

  He accepted a martini, which filled the eight-ounce glass in which it was served, took one appreciative sip, and then slumped into the chrome-and-leather barber's chair the tall young doctor offered him. He took another sip of the martini and found that both young doctors were smiling at him.

  'Martini all right ?' the taller one asked.

  'Just fine,' the Eighth Army surgeon said.

  'Cold enough? Not too much vermouth?'

  'Just fine,' the Eighth Army surgeon repeated.

  'Been in the Army long, have you ?' the tall one inquired.

  'Long enough,' the Eighth Army surgeon replied.

  'Would it be safe, then, to presume you're higher-ranking than a captain ?' the tall one asked.

  'Yes, you could say that,' the Eighth Army surgeon, who was a brigadier general, replied.

  'Maybe even higher than a major ?' the shorter one asked.

  ‘You could say that, too,' the general said.

  At that point, the man whom the Eighth Army surgeon had met at the operating table came into the tent. He was wordlessly offered and wordlessly accepted a martini. He was wearing the insignia of a chaplain, and captain's bars.

  'Dago Red,' the tall one said, 'you've met the new guy, haven't you ?'

  'Not officially,' the chaplain said. 'I'm Father Mulcahy,' he said, putting out his hand to the Eighth Army surgeon. 'Do you happen to be a Catholic?'

  'No, I don't,' the Eighth Army surgeon replied.

  'No matter,' Father Mulcahy said. 'Welcome anyway.'

  'I didn't get the name, Chubby,' the tall one said. 'You've already met Dago Red, and this is Trapper John McIntyre, and I'm Hawkeye Pierce.'

  'My friends call me Sammy,' the Eighth Army surgeon said.

  At that point, Colonel Blake, who had been advised by his clerk, Corporal J. Robespierre 'Radar' O'Reilly, that the Eighth Army surgeon was in the hospital area, came into the tent. Because of the merrily bubbling still, which blocked his view, he could not see the occupant of the barber chair.

  'I'm going to lay an order on you guys,' the colonel said. 'And for once, you'd damned well better obey it.'

  Doctors Pierce and McIntyre immediately dropped to their knees and bowed three times in the manner of Moslems at prayer.

  'We hear and obey, O Worshipful Master!' they cried in unison.

  'I'm serious,' Colonel Blake said. 'I'm Hawkeye,' said Hawkeye.

  'Look, I blew my cool this morning and told the Eighth Army surgeon to stick the MASH up ... you know where.'

  'Give the man a martini,' Trapper John said. 'How brave of you, Colonel!'

  'And he's here!' Colonel Blake went on. 'I'm in enough trouble without him seeing you. So you guys stay in the tent until further orders. You read me ?'

  'What were you being beastly to the Eighth Army surgeon about, Henry?' Hawkeye asked.

  'Frank Burns,' the colonel said. 'Somebody told him I had named you chief surgeon over him.'

  'Your problems, O Maximum Leader,' Trapper John said, 'are over!'

  'What the hell are you talking about?'

  'The Eighth Army surgeon has finally done something right,' Hawkeye said. 'He sent us a cutter who is actually a cutter, not a refugee from a chiropractor's clinic. This guy is actually a better cutter than me, as hard as you may find that to believe.'

  'Not only that,' Trapper John joined in, 'but he's higher in rank than Frank Burns. So you just name him chief surgeon, and the flap is unflapped. It's as simple as that.'

  'What the hell are you talking about?' Colonel Blake demanded.

  'Sammy, stand up and salute and meet the boss. He's big on G.I. crap like saluting and standing up straight.'

  Colonel Blake peered around the merrily bubbling still just in time to see the Eighth Army surgeon rising from the barber chair.

  'Nice little place you've got here, Henry,' the Eighth Army surgeon said. 'A little odd, perhaps, but you've got one hell of a fine chief of surgery.'

  'I,
uh, didn't expect to see you here, Sam,' Colonel Blake said.

  'Well, you said that if I wanted to help I should come up here, scrub, and grab a scalpel,' the Eighth Army surgeon said. 'So I did.'

  'I gather you know each other?' Hawkeye said. 'That's even better.'

  'I've got bad news for you, Slim,' the Eighth Army surgeon said.

  'You can call me Hawkeye, Chubby,' Hawkeye replied.

  'And you can call me General, Hawkeye,' the general said. 'And as I was saying, I've got bad news for you. You're stuck as chief of surgery here. You can consider it a permanent assignment.' He started for the door.

  'You're not leaving?' Colonel Blake asked.

  'I have to have a word with Major Houlihan,' the general said. 'And then I'll be going back to Seoul.'

  The word he had with Major Houlihan he had in private, of course, and, truth to tell, both Hawkeye and Trapper John had naughty thoughts about what was really going on behind the closed door of Major Houlihan's tent. . .

  Speaking as soldier to soldier, the Eighth Army surgeon told the chief nurse of the 4077th MASH that the only reason he wasn't shipping her home in disgrace was because she was a good operating-room nurse and was needed at the 4077th.

  'Think what you like about those two clowns with the private still and the barber's chair, Margaret,' he said, 'they're first-class surgeons, and that's the bottom line. I had a moment or two to observe that simpering jackass, Frank Burns, at work on the table, and my first reaction was to have him sent home on the next plane. The only reason I'm not doing that is because he'd love it, and, more important, if I keep him here, he can empty bedpans, sweep the floor, give social-disease shots, and free the enlisted men for more important things.'