As it turned out, Captain Pierce did see Ho-Jon again. It was six weeks later, when Ho-Jon returned in the uniform of a private in the ROK Army. The uniform was covered with blood. Deep in Ho-Jon’s chest was a mortar fragment.
At the Double Natural, as at every MASH, all wounds were first hastily assessed in the admitting ward and then the seriously wounded were brought into the preoperative ward. There blood was typed, nurses and corpsmen took blood pressures, started transfusions, inserted Foley catheters in bladders and Levin tubes in stomachs, and hung the X-rays on a wire in front of each patient’s cot.
Arriving for duty on this morning and finding the preop ward full, Hawkeye, Duke and Trapper John had gone down the row of wounded and started to make their plans. When they reached the last cot a corpsman said, “This kid is pretty bad.”
Hawkeye looked at the X-ray. He saw a large shell fragment deep in the boy’s chest.
“This one’s for you, Trapper,” he said. “I’ll help you, and Duke can take that belly back there.”
Then Captain Pierce took his first look at the patient.
“Christ!” he said. “It’s Ho-Jon.”
Trapper looked.
“OK. It’s Ho-Jon. We’ll fix him.”
Ho-Jon opened his eyes. He saw his friends and smiled.
“You’ll be OK, boy,” said the corpsman.
“I know,” Ho-Jon whispered. “Captains Pierces and Captains Mclntyres will help me.”
“You know it, Ho-Jon,” Captain Pierce said. “You just rest, and we’ll do it after you’ve had one more pint of blood.”
The Duke was about to become occupied in a bad belly, so they decided not to tell him. They went out for a butt.
“How do we go, Trapper?” asked Hawkeye.
“Right chest, just like the missile. He’s lost some blood. I’m afraid it’s hit more than just the lung. It’s in deep.”
“Trapper, you remember how we used to wonder what a kid like Ho-Jon might do if he had a chance to get an education?”
“Yeah,” Trapper answered dully.
“If we squeeze him through, I’m going to get him into Androscoggin College.”
“We’ll squeeze him through and right into Dartmouth,” said Trapper, grinding out his cigarette. “If all he wants to do is catch lobsters, he can learn that here.”
A grim pair of surgeons went to work on Ho-Jon.
“We’ll need room,” said Trapper. “The sixth rib goes.”
“Never mind the conversation. Do it, Dad.”
They opened the pleura, put in the rib spreader, and aspirated the blood from the chest cavity. Ho-Jon’s pulse and blood pressure held steady. Trapper reached down toward the inferior vena cava where it empties into the right atrium of the heart. He felt the missile.
“I got it,” he said. “Here, feel.”
Hawkeye felt.
“I don’t feel anything.”
“Oh, Jesus,” moaned Trapper, and felt again.
“What happened?”
“The mother must have gone in. I can’t feel it.”
“I don’t get it,” said Hawkeye nervously.
“It must have been in the cava, and the hole sealed itself off. When I felt it I must have jiggled it just enough to turn it loose. I can’t feel it in the heart. I don’t feel it in the right pulmonary artery. It must be in the left pulmonary artery.”
“Whadda we do?”
“Close and get an X-ray and fight another day.”
“OK,” Hawkeye said unhappily.
The X-ray confirmed Trapper’s guess. The shell fragment was in the left pulmonary artery. Three days later Ho-Jon was out of bed, happy, proud to have been operated on by two of his three heroes and, unaware of the odds against him, not at all upset at the prospect of further surgery.
Taking a missile out of a pulmonary artery is no great trick, but few surgeons in Korea were familiar with such techniques. Cardiovascular surgery was in its infancy, and such procedures were not usually done in tents. Ordinarily this sort of case would have been evacuated to Tokyo, but no one seriously thought that any other surgeon in the Far East was better equipped to do the job than Trapper John. Colonel Blake did mention the possibility of evacuation once, but dropped the subject when Hawkeye gave him a very direct look.
In The Swamp the next week the tension grew. Humor was nonexistent. Unmilitary behavior tapered off. One evening Hawkeye passed around a bottle of Scotch, feeling that, for the sake of efficiency, they should attempt some sort of comeback.
“When do we go for it, Trapper?” he asked.
“June 2.”
“Why June 2?”
“That’s the day I shut out Harvard on two hits.”
Trapper John did not say another word that night. He lay on his sack, sipped his drink and just looked straight up.
Ho-Jon, at the start of his big day, lay on the operating table, expectantly but confidently gazing up at Ugly John. Ugly John said, “Now, Ho-Jon, you just take it easy. Everything will be all right.”
Ho-Jon smiled and said, “I know, Captains Blacks.”
Ugly John started the Pentothal and curare, and three minutes later inserted the intratracheal tube through which Ho-Jon would do all his breathing while his friends worked on him. Then Ho-Jon was turned onto his right side and draped, and Trapper John, assisted by Hawkeye and Duke, removed Ho-Jon’s fifth rib. With that out of the way, Trapper entered the pleural cavity, and easily located the missile wedged in the left pulmonary artery. After opening the pericardium, which surrounds the heart, he then dissected his way around the origin of the artery and placed umbilical tapes as temporary ties above and below the missile.
“How is he?” Trapper asked Ugly John.
“Nice,” said Ugly. “Get on with it.”
While Hawkeye applied traction on the tape above the shell fragment and Duke did the same below, Trapper incised the artery, removed the fragment, and resutured the artery with 5-0 arterial silk.
“Ease off on those tapes, and let’s see how much it bleeds,” said Trapper. He had to place one extra suture, and then there was no more bleeding.
“How’s he doing?” Trapper asked the anesthesiologist.
“Nice,” Ugly John assured him.
The Swampmen looked at one another, and Trapper said, “Boys, we’re home free.”
For the rest of the day relaxation ruled, and recollection of it is indistinct in the minds of the survivors, who included Ho-Jon. Soon Ho-Jon was up and around, back at his job as Swampboy, his English improving. He was losing the Korean habit of putting an “s” on the end of every word. He eagerly read all that the Swampmen provided for him.
“Now,” said Hawkeye one day, “I gotta get him into Androscoggin College.”
“Dartmouth,” said Trapper John.
“Georgia,” said Duke.
“Boys,” said Hawkeye, “it’s gotta be Androscoggin. Dartmouth is too big and too expensive. At Androscoggin he can start a little more slowly and get more attention. If he’s as good as I think he is, he can move into the big leagues later, and I don’t think Georgia is the place even if the Klan doesn’t have a chapter house there any more.”
The Swampmen agreed on Androscoggin College. “Guess I’ll write to the Dean,” said Hawkeye and sat down to do so. He wrote:
Dr. James Lodge
Dean, Androscoggin College
Androscoggin, Maine
Dear Mr. Lodge:
A few years having passed, perhaps you’ll be willing to read a letter from me, although I seem to recall that when I left for the Army back in 1943 you indicated no great feeling of loss. The United States Army, in its infinite wisdom, allowed me to partake of the medical education for which I was so well prepared at Androscoggin.
Now I am in Korea as a surgeon in a Mobile Army Hospital. To make a long story short, I know a Korean kid that I want to get into Androscoggin. You took a chance on me. If you could do that you have twice as much reason to take a chance on my boy, Ho-Jon. He is a winner.