'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.