The days passed, among them Christmas and New Year’s. On Christmas, Dago Red said four Masses at nearby troop concentrations, another at the Double Natural where he also conducted a non-denominational service. Then he pulled all the strings behind the scenes at the party in the mess hall where a red-suited and white-bearded Vollmer, the sergeant from Supply and center from Nebraska, a pillow strapped to the stomach where the ball had once been cradled, handed out clothing, cigarettes and fruit to a gaggle of Korean house boys while their benefactors among the personnel of the 4077th applauded.
For dinner on both holidays, Mother Divine put down excellent repasts. Mother, still president of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Marked-Down Monument and Landmark Company, and still doing business with Caucasians from south of the Mason-Dixon Line, was in a beneficent mood. For a while during the autumn, business had slackened off, but the onset of the holiday season had brought on a gift-buying stampede, and Mother had even managed to unload two items in which little interest had previously been shown.
The first of these was the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument at 89th Street and Riverside Drive. It was purchased by a Private First Class from Hodge, Alabama, who mailed the postcard picturing it to his fiancee, with the following message printed on the reverse side:
Huney:
I just bot this for you. They will delivur it in a cuple weeks. Have them put it in yur side yard and wen we get marreed I’ll get Puley to help me muve it to our own place.
Merry Xmas. Your frend and husbend to be.
His buddy, and near-hometown-neighbor from Dutton, bought Fifth Avenue (Looking North From Forty-Second Street) as a surprise for his father. On the back of the card, circa 1934, he wrote:
Pa:
Merry Christmus. I bout this strete for you. You can see that all of the cars that use it are olden, so I figger you can move the garege up there and will get all the busines you can handel. I’ll help wen I get home. Merry Christmus agan.
The holidays over, time dragged for Hawkeye and Duke. The 4077th was reasonably busy, so they had enough to do. When Henry was afraid they didn’t, and still on his teaching hospital kick, he had them shepherding associates with less experience over the rocky pastures of meatball surgery, until one night, early in February, he entered The Swamp, kicked the snow off his boots, helped himself to a large shot of Scotch, made himself comfortable on one of the sacks and announced to Captains Forrest and Pierce: “I’ve got orders for you two eightballs to ship out of here a week from today.”
Duke and Hawkeye jumped, laughed, hugged Henry, hugged each other. Spearchucker, with two months left to go, congratulated them warmly. In the far corner of the tent, Trapper John Mclntyre with almost six months of servitude still ahead of him, lay on his sack and looked at the roof.
The last week was interminable. Preparation for leaving involved very little so, considering the importance of the event, The Swamp was pretty quiet. Finally, Duke and Hawk-eye shaped up for their last night shift, and the demands it made upon them brought them back to earth.
Arterial injuries were not unusual, but this night they caught two. Trying to save the right leg of a G.I. from Topeka, Kansas, and the left leg of a Tommy from Birmingham, England, Duke and Hawkeye did two vein grafts to bridge the arterial gaps blown out by gook artillery. When the shift was over, they started for The Swamp, tired, excited, and troubled. They had just done two operations on two legs belonging to young men, to each of whom a leg was important, and they were walking away knowing that, in all probability, they would never learn the fate of the legs.
At The Swamp, their two colleagues were waiting for them, bottle open. By 11:00 a.m. they had gone over for the third time plans, which each secretly suspected would never materialize, for meeting in the States as soon as possible after Spearchucker and Trapper John gained their releases.
“Look,” Trapper John said finally, “aren’t you guys going to say goodbye to Henry?”
“Naturally,” Duke said. “We take kindly to the man.”
“Well, why don’t you do it now?”
“Yes, father,” Hawkeye said.
At 11:15 a.m. Duke and Hawkeye, still in their soiled fatigues but wearing scrubbed and serious looks, arrived at the office of Colonel Henry Blake. Hawkeye approached Henry’s sergeant, threw his shoulders back and stated, “Captain Pierce and Captain Forrest request permission to speak to Colonel Blake.”
The sergeant, who had known them for eight months as Duke and Hawkeye, was shaken.
“What kind of bullshit is this?” he wanted to know. “Don’t screw up now, for Chrissake.”
“Don’t worry,” Hawk assured him. “Announce us.”
The sergeant knocked on Henry’s door and announced: “Captain Pierce and Captain Forrest request permission to speak to the Colonel.”
Colonel Blake blanched. His knees shook.
“What are they up to?”
“Don’t know, Sir.”
“Well, let’s find out. Send them in.”
Duke and Hawkeye entered, saluted and stood at attention.
“Stop it, you two! Cut it out!” roared Colonel Blake. “You’re making me nervous. What the hell have you got in mind now?”
“Tell him, Duke,” Hawkeye, still at attention, said.
“You all tell him, I can’t.”
“Well, Henry,” explained Hawkeye, “we haven’t come to apologize for anything exactly …”
“Good,” Henry said.
“… but we wanted you to know that we know what you’ve had to put up with from us and that we appreciate it. We think you’re quite a guy.”
Duke stepped forward and offered a much-relieved but silent Henry his hand. Hawkeye also shook hands, and then they saluted, executed a perfect about-face and, solemn-faced and in step, departed.
Back at The Swamp, most of the outfit had showed up for a farewell drink. Ugly John, who would drive them to Seoul in the jeep, was there. So were Dago Red and the Painless Pole, Jeeter Carroll, Pete Rizzo, Vollmer, the sergeant from Supply and center from Nebraska, and the other survivors of the Thanksgiving Day Massacre, officers and enlisted men all milling around in a heterogeneous mass. Captain Leverett Russell thanked them for their patience during the past months. Radar O’Reilly presented them with his own version of their horoscopes. Mother Divine, who had just leased out the rowboat concession for the Central Park Lake, sent over a box lunch for them to take along, and Colonel Blake appeared just long enough to hand over two bottles of Scotch to be put in the jeep. Everyone wished them luck, pumped their hands, and gave them home addresses.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Hawkeye whispered to the Duke, finally. “I’m beginning to feel like Shaking Sammy.”
“Me, too,” the Duke said.
Hawkeye looked toward Trapper John’s corner. Trapper had a bottle and a glass. He sat on the edge of his sack, alternately taking large gulps of the liquid and letting his head drop almost into his lap. Hawkeye went over, took the bottle and glass and put them on the washstand.
“All right, you bastards!” he announced to the others. “Out! We leave in two minutes.”
The others pushed their way through the door, and the bottle was reclaimed from the washstand. The Duke poured four drinks, which were downed in silence. The Duke shook hands with Spearchucker and Trapper and left without a word. Hawkeye Pierce shook hands with Spearchucker, and then stuck out his hand for Trapper John.
“Hang in there,” he said.
“Get the hell out of here,” Trapper John said.
Outside, Ugly John waited at the wheel of the jeep, the others gathered around it. Hawkeye and Duke climbed into the back seat and, as Ugly John gave it the gun and they affected Nazi salutes, they made their turbulent departure from the cheering multitude.
“Don’t look back,” Hawkeye said.
“I ain’t,” the Duke said.
For five minutes the two did not look at each other, nor did they speak. Their first act to break the silence was to blow their noses.
“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.”
“Yeah,” agreed the Duke, “and y’all know what I’m thinkin’? We came in a jeep, half in the bag, and now we’re leavin’ in a jeep, half in the bag.”
In Seoul, the jeep carrying Captains Duke Forrest and Hawkeye Pierce and driven by Captain Ugly John Black found its way to an Air Force Officers’ Club.
“I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe we’re actually goin’ home,” Duke kept saying, as they stood at the bar.
“You lucky bastards,” groaned Ugly. “I don’t know if I can hold out one more month.”
“You’ll make it, Ug,” Hawkeye said.
“Yeah,” the Duke said. “It’s good y’all came this far with us to see how it’s done.”
They had a supper of shrimp cocktail and filet mignon. Hawkeye, in fact, had two shrimp cocktails, two filet mignons, and pondered ordering a third round.
“You got worms?” Ugly wanted to know. “You hit those steaks like they’re going to bite back if you don’t swallow them fast.”
“You mean these appetizers? Jesus, boy, you oughta see the meal my old man and the valedictorian will have for me when I get home!”
Dinner finally over, they returned to the bar. As they sipped their brandies, the conversation, which had been lagging, came to a halt.
“Let’s finish these up and haul for where we spend the night,” Hawkeye said finally. “I’m tired.”
“Well,” said Ugly, “when am I ever going to see you guys again?”
“Ugly,” answered Hawk, “that’s a painful subject. I hope it’s soon, but I don’t know. If you come to Maine, you’ll see me. If we attend the same medical meetings we’ll meet. 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.” “Right,” the Duke said. “Yeah,” Ugly said. “I know what you mean.” Ugly drove them to the Transient Officers’ Quarters at the 325th Evacuation Hospital, from opposite ends of which, more than fifteen months before, the two had emerged to meet for the first time. They watched the jeep disappear into the darkness and head north and back to the Double Natural.
They opened the door of the Transient Officers’ Quarters, walked in, stomped the snow off their feet and dumped their barracks bags on the floor. Looking around they saw a dismal but familiar military scene. A large room was almost filled with triple-decker bunks. The floor was littered with old copies of The Stars and Stripes and empty beer cans. There were two weak electric lights hanging from the ceiling, two bare wooden tables and a few flimsy chairs. In a comer, five young officers were seated around one of the tables talking earnestly, seriously, worriedly. Their clean fatigues and their general appearance indicated that they were coming, not going.
Duke selected one of the three-decker bunks. He examined it carefully, prodding it and poking it.
“Hawkeye,” he said, “I think y’all better pour us some prophylactic snake bite medicine. This place is plumb full of snakes.”
“I never argue about snakes with a man from Georgia,” said Hawkeye, extricating a bottle and paper cups from his bag. “I will pour the necessary doses.”
They sat at the wooden table, sipped the Scotch, smoked, and said little but looked happy. They had long hair, could have used shaves, and their clothes were dirty. Between them they owned one-half pair of Captain’s bars, which Hawkeye wore on the back of his fatigue cap.
From the corner, the eager new officers watched them with interest. Finally one of them rose and approached.
“May I ask you gentlemen a question?” he inquired.
“Sure, General,” said Hawkeye, who had turned his fatigue cap around so that the Captain’s bars showed.
“I’m not a general, Captain. I’m a lieutenant. May I ask why you wear your cap that way?”
“What way?”
“Backwards.”
Hawkeye took his cap off and inspected it.
“It looks OK to me,” he said. “Course, I ain’t no West Pointer, and frankly I don’t give a big rat’s ass whether it’s on backwards or forwards. What’s more, when I wear it this way, a lotta people think I’m Yogi Berra.”
“Yogi Berra?” the lieutenant said.
“Hey, Duke,” Hawkeye ordered. “Gimme my mask.”
The lieutenant scuffed his feet and asked, “How long have you gentlemen been in Korea?”
“Eighteen months,” Duke informed him. “Seems like just yesterday we came.”
The lieutenant left and rejoined his group. “They’re nuts,” he told them.
“Jesus,” said one of them, “I hope we don’t look like that after eighteen months.”
“Hawkeye,” Duke said, “y’all hear what that boy said?”
“Yeah.”
“Do y’all attach any significance to it?”
“Not much. We’ve done our jobs. I’m not ashamed of anything. I don’t care what anyone thinks.”
“Me neither,” Duke said, “but y’all don’t suppose we’ve really flipped, do you? Sometimes I’m not sure.”
“Duke, wait’ll you see your wife and those two girls. You’ll be tame, docile and normal as hell. I wouldn’t know you two months from now. Relax.”
“Yeah,” Duke said, pouring another drink, and then raising his voice, “but do y’all know something? This is the first day in eighteen months I ain’t killed nobody.”
“Like hell! You didn’t get one on Christmas.”
“That’s right. I forgot, but y’all know it kind of gets in your blood. Guess I’ll clean my .45 just in case any Chinks infiltrate this here barracks.”
The Duke took out his .45, started to clean it and to look significantly at the new officers in the other corner. He poured another drink. “Hawkeye,” he announced loudly, “those guys are Chinks in disguise, or at least I think they are. Guess I’ll shoot ’em, just to be safe.”
Hawkeye got up, his hat on backwards, and approached the new officers.
“Maybe you guys better cut out for a while,” he suggested. “I only think I’m Yogi Berra, but my buddy has a more serious problem. After four drinks he knows he’s the United States Marines.”
Duke started to sing as he loaded his .45:
From the Halls of Montezuma To the Shores of Okefenokee.
The new officers went through the door rapidly and into the snow. They found the 325th Evacuation Hospital’s Officers’ Club. If they hadn’t been green, they’d have found it sooner. Excitedly, to an enthralled audience that included Brig. General Hamilton Hartington Hammond, the five described their experiences in the barracks.
“Leave those two alone!” General Hammond thundered, when someone suggested that the Military Police be summoned. “For Chrissake, just leave them alone! Just hope that train leaves in the morning with them on it. Assign these men other quarters!”
Ere long, Duke and Hawkeye grew lonesome.
“You scared our friends,” said Hawk. “They left.”
“Yeah,” Duke said, “but that ain’t important. I just don’t believe that y’all are Yogi Berra. I ain’t the United States Marines, either, because I’m Grover Cleveland Alexander. Let’s get that buddy of Trapper John’s who’s stationed here to find us a catcher’s mitt. Then y’all can warm me up at the Officers’ Club.”
“Grover,” Hawkeye said, “I think you got a fast ball like Harriet Beecher Stowe.”
“What’s Trapper’s friend’s name?” Duke said, ignoring him.
“I don’t know,” Hawkeye said. “I think he called him Austin From Boston.”
“Good,” the Duke said. “There can’t be two people named that.”
They finished their drinks and went out into the night. For forty-five minutes they tramped through the snow, traversing the various roadways while, at the top of their voices, they called for Trapper John’s friend.
“Austin From Boston!” they called. “Oh, Austin From Boston! Where are you, Austin From Boston, Trapper John’s friend?”
Their cries, of course, penetrated the Officers’ Club where, at the bar, the five new men clustered now around General Hammond. They were afraid to request an armed escort to accompany them to their new quarters, and they were even more afraid of going out in the snow and dying alone so far from home.
“Goddammit, you men!” General Hammond said finally, tiring of playing mother hen as they pressed closer around him with each plaintive cry. “Why don’t you go to your quarters and get some rest?”
“It must be terrible up there, Sir,” one of the new men said.
“Up where?” General Hammond said, starting to swing his elbows now.
“Up at the front, Sir.”
“Oh, Goddammit,” the General said, giving up. “Do your mothers know you’re over here?”
“Yes, Sir,” they all replied.
Unable to find Trapper John’s friend, who may well have heard their calls and wisely decided against responding, Hawkeye and Duke returned to the barracks where, as soon as they hit their bunks, they fell into sound slumber. Three hours later, Hawkeye was awakened by the Duke, who was fully dressed and fully packed. This had required very little effort, as he had neither undressed nor unpacked.
“Wake up, y’all. We’re goin’ home. That train leaves at seven.”
“What time is it now?”
“Four.”
“Jesus, are you out of your mind? I wanna sleep.”
“Y’all can’t sleep. I think we both got snakebit during the night. Have some medicine.”
He handed Hawkeye a shot of Scotch and a lighted cigarette. While Hawkeye immunized himself, Duke filled a flask.
“The mess hall starts servin’ at four-thirty,” he announced. “We gotta eat hearty.”
As soon as the mess hall opened, Duke and Hawkeye entered with barracks bags and proceeded to eat heartily. Over a cup of coffee, Hawkeye reached into a seldom used pocket for a fresh pack of cigarettes. With the cigarettes came a small piece of paper. On it was written, in the unmistakable hand of Trapper John Mclntyre, the unmistakable poetry of Bret Harte:
And then: “It’s a small place, and now I love it less. If the heathen Chinee should get lucky, just remember your old Dad, and know that he wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
Hawkeye handed the note to Duke who read it and took out his flask. They drank reverently and headed for the nearby train.
The train ride to Pusan was a full twelve-hour journey. The two Swampmen slept for the first six hours; then Hawkeye read while Duke gazed out the window. At one point a sergeant of the Military Police, patrolling the aisle, requested politely that Hawkeye remove his captain’s bars from the back of his fatigue cap and pin them on the front and Hawkeye, to his own surprise, politely acceded.
“Well, now,” Duke said, after the sergeant had gone on.
“For a much-decorated, fierce, front-line fighting type like y’all, that was pretty peaceful. Y’all goin’ chicken?”
“No,” Hawkeye said, “but I’ve been thinking.”
“It gives you a headache?”
“I’ve been thinking that you and I really have been living a life that few of the people we’re gonna meet from here on in know anything about. Most of the combat and near front-line people like us fly out from Seoul, so we’re gonna look like freaks to the clerk-typists and rear echelon honchos who have been living about as they would in a stateside Army camp. We’d better act at least half civilized. In fact, it wouldn’t hurt if, the next chance we get, we even put on clean uniforms.”
“I’ll think about it,” agreed Duke.
In Pusan they were directed to the Transient Officers’ Quarters and assigned to one of the Quonset huts. The hut was divided into three compartments, and they were in one of the end divisions. Each area was heated by oil stove, and each cot had a mattress on it.
“Which reminds me of something else,” Hawkeye said, as they examined their quarters.
“What’s that?” Duke asked.
“I am reminded,” Hawkeye said, “that back in The Swamp you were one of the most faithful observers of the night rules. Religiously you would leave your sack, walk three steps to the door and take the seven prescribed paces before initiating micturition. This is such a conditioned habit that I thought I’d mention it. It might not be appropriate tonight.”
“I’ll bear that in mind, too. Anythin’ else, Aunty?”
Although the rest of the Quonset filled rapidly, there were, among the other guests, few other medical officers and none from MASH units. There were few people who had been up forward, so Duke and Hawkeye were satisfied to keep to themselves. After a reasonable number of drinks and at a reasonable hour, they decided to hit their sacks, but after fifteen months on hard cots a mattress atop a spring may seem uncomfortable. Duke, having tried his, dragged his mattress to the floor, where he went to sleep until approximately 3:00 a.m., when Hawkeye was awakened by a loud voice complaining in the next compartment.
“Hey, buddy,” someone was protesting, “you can’t do that in here!”
“I’m doin’ it, ain’t I?” Captain Pierce heard Captain Forrest reply, and shortly Captain Forrest returned to flop down on his mattress again and begin to snore once more, as the occupants of the next compartment continued to grumble and complain.
In the morning it was clear that their fellow officers considered Duke inapproachable. With misgivings they sought out Hawkeye and registered their complaints. Since neither Duke nor Hawkeye wore medical insignia, Hawkeye saw no reason to correct the impression that he and Duke were fierce, battle-hardened combat veterans. He was pleasant but firm.
“I’ll do my best,” he assured the committee, “but even I dasn’t rile that man none. If I can get him home without him killin’ anybody, or earnin’ the Purple Heart for myself, I’ll be lucky. He’s got so he can’t hardly tell a Chink from anyone else.”
As Hawkeye finished his explanation, Duke joined the group and at the same moment a passing truck backfired. Hawkeye and the Duke hit the floor, simultaneously drawing their .45’s and looking around for the enemy. Then, realizing their mistake, they arose, feigning embarrassment.
That night Hawkeye slept without interruption. When he awoke it was to the babble of another delegation of their neighbors, standing in the doorway and viewing with obvious distaste the Duke, still sleeping on his mattress on the floor.
“What’s the matter?” Hawkeye, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, asked him. “He didn’t do it on the floor again, did he?”
“No, he did it on the stove.”
“Why didn’t you stop him?”
“We were afraid he’d do it on us.”
That afternoon they embarked aboard a ferry for Sasebo. As the ferry left the dock, they leaned over the side, smoking and observing a crowd of Koreans and a Korean band cheering and serenading their departure. Hawkeye threw his cigarette into the swirling, dirty waters below.
“And now,” he said, “as we leave the Beautiful Land of Korea, the grateful natives line the shores and chant: ’Mother—; Mother—.’ ”
“Y’all just about said it all,” agreed the Duke.
As the ferry approached the Japanese shore, Sasebo materialized from the mist as a pretty town. There were mountains, evergreens and a rocky shoreline that, not that he needed any prodding, reminded Hawkeye of the coast of Maine. There were shops and Officers’ Clubs and several thousand troops awaiting transportation home. The Swampmen abandoned fatigue uniforms, donned Ike jackets, adorned them with proper insignia and became recognizable as medical officers.
This was a mistake. Before any group of returnees was allowed to board a troopship, short-arm inspection was mandatory, and properly so. Returning medical officers were drafted for this duty, and when the Swampmen heard about this, they were shaken.
“Not me,” said Hawkeye. “Let the pill rollers who been doing it all along do it. After eighteen months of being one of their knife artists, I ain’t going to be demoted.”
“Me neither,” declared Duke.
A sergeant with a pad descended upon them. “You men medical officers?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“May I have your names, please?”
“What for?”
“I’m making up the roster for short-arm inspection tomorrow.”
“Oh, certainly, Sergeant,” Hawkeye said. “My name is Captain George Limburger, and this is Captain Walter Camembert.”
The sergeant started to write, and Hawkeye politely assisted him with the spelling.
“What time tomorrow?” Duke asked.
“You’ll be notified.”
Time passed slowly in the big, bare barracks. No one seemed to know when they’d ship out. After being placed on the short-arm roster, the Swampmen decided to go shopping. Popular items in the local shops were flimsy, transparent negligees known as skin suits. No red-blooded American boy wanted to return to his homeland without several skin suits for his loved one, or ones, and the local shopkeepers were hard put to meet the demand.
“I gotta get me some skin suits,” said Hawkeye.
“Me too.”
At the nearest shop they looked over the selection. The Duke insisted on having one with fur, preferably mink, around the bottom. After much haggling and consultation between employees and owners, the shop agreed to supply such a garment if given twenty-four hours. Their command of English didn’t match their curiosity, and they couldn’t completely grasp the Duke’s simple explanation that he did not wish his wife’s neck to get cold.
The next morning the sergeant who came in search of Captains Limburger and Camembert was a different sergeant. He went through the barracks shouting: “Limburger! Camembert?” Several officers inquired about the price. Some asked for crackers. The sergeant became annoyed. Finally he arrived in the area occupied by Duke and Hawkeye, who had just returned from shaving and had yet to don shirts or insignia.
“What do you want with those two guys?” Hawkeye asked him.
“They’re supposed to hold short-arm inspection.”
“You can’t be serious!”
“Why not?”’
“Don’t y’all know,” said Duke, “that those guys are the two biggest fairies in the Far East Command? That’ll be the longest short-arm inspection y’all ever saw.”
The sergeant perceived the logic of their argument. He consulted his list. “You know anybody named Forrest or Pierce?” he inquired
“Yeah,” Duke told him. “They shipped out yesterday.”
“Well, thanks a lot,” said the sergeant
Two days later the word came. They were to board a Marine transport for Seattle. They packed. They had a bottle of V.O. left, and booze was not allowed on troopships.
“What difference does it make?” asked Hawkeye. “How we going to get enough booze on board to last us to Seattle, anyway?”
“I got an idea,” the Duke said. “Let’s drink this jug and have our next drink in Seattle. If we can go that long without it, we’ll know we’re not dangerous alcoholics.”
“The first sign of a stewbum,” said Hawkeye, “but it’s OK with me.”
They boarded ship carrying pretty full loads. Having been informed that short-arm inspection was also carried out at regular intervals on shipboard, they checked in under their own names, but then assumed new identities. The Caduceus of the Medical Corps was removed from the Eisenhower jackets. The simple cross of the Chaplain’s Corps replaced it.
They shared a cabin with four other returning officers who were not particularly pleased to find two chaplains among them. The conversation was slightly stilted until, that evening, Duke and Hawkeye broke the ice.
“Do you gentlemen happen to have any Aureomycin?” asked Hawkeye. “The Reverend here seems to be developing a slight cold. In fact, gentlemen, the Reverend, I fear, has fallen from grace with a large splash.”
“What do you mean?” asked one of their cabin-mates.
“The Reverend, God forbid, has come down with the clap.”
Incipient laughter was cut short by a stern look from Hawkeye. “Be charitable, gentlemen. Help us. My colleague is a good man. It is just that he has been unusually bedevilled, and I must do something to remedy the tragic results of his excessive libido before he returns to Kokomo, where he is betrothed to the Bishop’s daughter. Bishops, as a group, are opposed to gonorrhea, and this one has particularly firm views on the subject.”
Meanwhile Duke, looking very pleased, began to leaf through a girlie magazine, a corner of which he had noticed protruding from a barracks bag.
“Stop looking at those pictures, Reverend,” commanded Hawkeye.
One of the group, a big, tough, rough-looking first lieutenant, with the crossed rifles of the infantry on his collar and the look of the front line about him, was observing them quizzically. After a little more of the act, he began to grin.
“They ain’t no chaplains,” he exclaimed in a broad southern accent. “They’re Duke and Hawkeye from the 4077th MASH. They saved my brother’s life two months ago. What the hell’s wrong with you guys?”
“We are traveling incognito,” Duke told him. “We will do anything to avoid officiating at short-arm inspection, and we figure if we are chaplains there will be no one demanding that we view three thousand weapons.”
“Yeah,” quibbled one of them, “but they must have your names. It’s a big boat, but in two or three weeks they’re bound to track you down.”
“Any of you guys want to be Forrest and Pierce of the U.S. Army Medical Corps between here and Seattle?” asked Hawkeye. “Tell you what we’ll do. We’ll pay you.”
“How much?”
“Cent for each one you inspect.”
“Pretty low wages,” one of them, a red-haired artillery captain from Oregon, said.
“But it’s an important contribution to public health,” Hawkeye told him.
“I’ll do it for two cents a weapon,” the infantry man who had recognized them said, “not a penny less.”
“You are hired,” Hawkeye informed them, handing them their medical insignia. “You are now members of the Army Medical Corps.”
“How do we go about it?” inquired the new physicians.
“It is very simple,” Hawkeye explained. “You get a chair. You sit on it backwards with your arms clasped behind its back and your chin resting on the top. You gotta have a big cigar in your mouth. You sit there and look. Most of the guys will know what to do. If they don’t you growl, ’Skin it and wring it, soldier.’ Sound mean when you say it. If you think there is a suspicion of venereal disease, you make a gesture with your thumb like Bill Klem calling a guy out at the plate. Then somebody hauls the guy off somewhere. I never found out what happens to them. Every now and then, just so they know you’re alert, you grunt, ’Don’t wave it so close to my cigar, Mac!’ If you follow these simple rules, you can’t go wrong.”
Just to be safe, Duke and Hawkeye kept the chaplains’ insignia on their collars. Other doctors didn’t interest them, and medical insignia invited medical conversation. However, the chaplains’ roles soon became as burdensome. One Lutheran parson from central Pennsylvania was particularly interested in talking shop. He asked Duke what his reaction had been to his Korean experience. Duke cured him quickly. “Loved it,” he answered. “Didn’t do nawthin’ but hoot, holler, drink rum and chase that native poon!”
On the fourth day out they became captains in the Medical Corps again. Their two new friends had established themselves as short-arm inspectors, and they themselves had tired of being asked for spiritual guidance by soldiers who had flunked inspection.
“Now I know what happens to the guys who get thumbed out of the short-arm line,” said Hawk. “They get a shot of penicillin and a ticket to see the chaplain.”
The time passed slowly, but it did pass. Nineteen days out of Sasebo, in a fog so dense that nothing, not even Mt. Rainier, was visible, the troopship docked in Seattle.
Ten hours later in a taxi on the way to the airport, Captains Augustus Bedford Forrest and Benjamin Franklin Pierce nursed a fifth of whiskey. At the airport, everything was fogged in, so they went to the cocktail lounge.
As they sat there at the bar, it all seemed unreal. Two people who had been very important to each other were now almost totally preoccupied with thoughts of other people, and their conversation had become sparse and even a little stilted.
“We don’t seem to be acting like Swampmen,” observed Duke.
“I guess not, but I don’t feel like it. It’s just as well.”
“Probably.”
“Flight 401 for Pendleton, Salt Lake City, Denver and Chicago,” blared the loud-speaker.
During the early morning hours, with the moon shining on the snow-covered Rockies, the stewardess addressed the former Swampmen, “I’ll have to ask you gentlemen to put away that bottle.”
“Sorry, miss,” apologized Hawkeye. “We sort of don’t know any better.”
An hour later the stewardess spoke again to Captain Augustus Bedford Forrest. “Sir, if you don’t put away that bottle, I’ll have to ask the Captain to come back and speak to you.”
“That’ll be fine, ma’am. We’d be proud to meet him! My buddy here’s a Captain, too.”
Hawkeye grabbed the bottle and put it away. “Never mind your Captain, honey,” he promised. “I’ll take care of mine.”
At 6:00 a.m., in the men’s room of Midway Airport in Chigago, Duke and Hawkeye finished the jug and threw it in a trash can. They were too excited to be drunk. The flight to Atlanta was announced. Duke put his arm around Hawkeye.
“I’ll see y’all some time, you goddamned Yankee. Stay loose!”
“Helluva place to end an interesting association, Doctor,” said Hawkeye Pierce, “but it’s been nice to have known you.”
Dr. Augustus Bedford Forrest boarded the plane for Atlanta, where he was met by a big girl and two little ones. Six hours later the valedictorian of the class of 1941 at Port Waldo High School and two small boys watched Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce disembark from a Northeast Airlines Convair in Spruce Harbor, Maine.
The larger of the two boys jumped into his father’s arms and inquired, “How they goin’, Hawkeye?”
“Finest kind,” replied his father.