After a few days, the intake figures recorded by Private Boone became open to the question. Several patients were alleged to have taken only one cc, two cc’s, or in extreme cases four or five cc’s in a given twenty-four-hour period, and no output at all was recorded. The ensuing revelation that Private Boone thought cc’s stood for cups of coffee solved part of the problem but did little to increase his efficiency.
It was shortly after this that Captain Burns was taken ill. In fact, he was so indisposed that he spent three days in his tent and, although the nature of his illness was never widely known, its origins were as follows:
Captain Burns was addicted to a common failing in the surgical dodge: if a patient died, he claimed it was (1) God’s will or (2) someone else’s fault. One day he spent six long, hard hours operating on a severely wounded soldier, who’d been in deep shock throughout most of the procedure. Half an hour after surgery, the patient died in the postoperative ward. His final gesture was to vomit and aspirate some of the vomitus.
Private Boone, on his own initiative, quickly brought in a suction machine. It was not functioning, but neither was the patient as Captain Burns appeared and observed Private Boone’s futile efforts.
“Boone,” he said, “you killed my patient!”
Private Boone turned white. He walked away and went to a dark corner and cried. The Captain said he’d killed a man, and the Captain was a doctor and he ought to know.
Duke Forrest caught it. To Captain Burns he said, “Frank, may I speak to y’all outside for a moment?”
Korean nights can be dark. Often you can’t see your hand in front of your face. Captain Burns never saw the hand that broke his nose, split his lip, or the knee that made him terribly uncomfortable for three days to come.
Trapper John was next in line to take on Captain Burns, and it had to do with cardiac massage. Cardiac massage is manual compression of a heart that has stopped. It is done through a hole hastily made in the chest in the hope, usually forlorn, that the heartbeat will resume and the patient will recover. The administrator of cardiac massage compresses and releases the heart between the fingers of one hand with a rhythm designed to approximate the normal heartbeat, and Captain Frank Burns was, without doubt, the leading cardiac masseur in the Far East Command.
At breakfast one morning Trapper John Mclntyre, leaving the mess hall, encountered Captain Frank Burns entering the mess hall. Trapper John traveled a fast right to Frank’s jaw, and Frank dropped on the sand floor like a poleaxed steer.
This was the second time within a month that Frank had been assaulted by a Swampman. The first time had been clandestine, but this was public, and again an irate Henry entered The Swamp.
Standing over Trapper John, who was sipping a beer in his sleeping bag, Colonel Blake yelled his usual question. “What’s wrong with you, anyhow?”
“I’m wondering the same thing, Henry,” replied Trapper. “I hear the son-of-a-bitch got up. I guess I’ve lost my punch.”
Trapper rolled over and ignored Henry.
“You wanta know what it’s all about, Henry?” volunteered Hawkeye.
“Yeah, I sure do!”
“Well, you remember, yesterday morning was pretty busy.”
The most minor injury was a kid with a shell-fragment wound in his right thigh. It didn’t look like much. Frank decided to get him out of the way so they could get on with the others. As usual, he didn’t think. He took the kid in with a pressure of eighty over fifty, had them give him anesthesia, and started to debride the wound. It turned out the kid’s femoral artery was lacerated and he bled a lot. Then he had a cardiac arrest, and Frank rubbed his heart. It came back, he stopped the bleeding and got some blood into him, and by midafternoon he looked OK. By the time we came on duty last night the kid was in shock again. Trapper took over, figured he was bleeding from the chest wound Frank made, got his pressure up, and opened his chest again to stop the bleeding.
“Now the kid’s OK,” Hawkeye said, “but because that bastard Burns didn’t observe a few basic principles, the boy almost died. Instead of cussing himself out for almost losing a patient, Frank thinks he’s a big hero because he did a successful cardiac massage. Therefore Trapper John administered a knuckle sandwich.”
It took a femme fatale, however, to restore peace, more or less, to the 4077th MASH. She was Major Margaret Houlihan, new Chief Nurse, and one June morning she emerged, not out of a scallop shell like Botticelli’s Venus, but out of a helicopter. She was tallish, willowish, blondish, fortyish. She had a nice figure. In fact, she was a nice-looking, forty-year-old female.
Within the prescribed twenty-four hours following her arrival, Major Houlihan made a point of seeking out the boss of each shift and attempting to discuss nursing problems with him. Captain Burns was in starched fatigues and his most gracious mood, but he mentioned several nurses whose performance was inadequate and made a variety of suggestions for improvement. The Major was quite impressed with Captain Burns.
She was less impressed with Captain Pierce. She found him in the mess tent in soiled fatigues having a late breakfast. She introduced herself, and Hawkeye invited her to join him over a cup of coffee.
“Captain Pierce,” Major Houlihan said, “I observed the night shift and I was not at all impressed with some of our nurses. How do you feel, Captain, about the nursing situation here?”
“Major,” Hawkeye said, “this is a team effort. I’m responsible for my team. It consists of doctors, nurses and enlisted men. We’ve been working as a unit for six months with little change in personnel. I’m satisfied with them.”
“Well,” she said, “Captain Burns isn’t at all satisfied.”
“Mother,” said Hawkeye Pierce, “Captain Burns is a jerk, and if you don’t know it by now you …”
Major Houlihan arose. “I wonder,” she asked, “how anyone like you reaches such a position of responsibility in the Army Medical Corps.”
“Honey,” answered Hawkeye, “if I knew the answer to that I sure as hell wouldn’t be here.”
“Very well, Captain,” Major Houlihan said. “It appears that we are not going to get along. Nevertheless, I want you to know that I will attempt to cooperate with you in every possible way.”
“Major,” Hawkeye said, smiling, “I appreciate that, so would you consider another cup of coffee?”
Reluctantly she sat down again and resumed the talk. She was still terribly upset, so Hawkeye tried to explain a few things.
“Major,” he said, “you’re watching both shifts. Watch them with an eye to which shift does the most work with the least fuss. Watch them with an eye to how many people work happily or unhappily.”
“I observed last night that both nurses and enlisted men addressed you as Hawkeye’.”
“That’s my name.”
“Such familiarity is highly improper,” declaimed Major Houlihan, “and inconsistent with maximum efficiency in an organization such as this.”
“Well, Major,” said Hawkeye as he got up and left, “I’m gonna have a couple shots of Scotch and go to bed. Obviously you’re a female version of the routine Regular Army Clown. Stay away from me and my gang, and we’ll get along fine. See you around the campus.”
Having been summarily dismissed by Captain Pierce, Major Houlihan took her problems to the commanding officer. The interview was quite unsatisfactory. Colonel Blake told her, after she’d bothered him enough, that he’d rather get rid of Captain Burns than Captain Pierce, but couldn’t afford to lose either one.