The door to the clerk’s office slammed shut behind Hawkeye, rattling the flimsy wooden frame and causing a stack of requisitions to flutter to the dirt floor. The cold Korean wind howled through the cracks in the walls, a sound they had all become far too accustomed to.
“Radar,” Hawkeye breathed heavily, leaning over the counter, his eyes wide and bloodshot from a 48-hour surgical shift and a severe lack of chronological stability. “Tell me I’m crazy. Tell me the gin has finally dissolved the temporal lobe of my brain, and I am simply hallucinating the concept of December.”
Radar O’Reilly, the young corporal who somehow held the entire US military apparatus together with paperclips and sheer nervous energy, swallowed hard. He adjusted his round glasses and looked down at the desk. “I can’t do that, sir. The Colonel says diagnosing mental illness is above my pay grade. Plus, you drank all the gin yesterday. I watched you.”
“Forget the gin, Radar! Look outside!” Hawkeye gestured wildly toward the frosted window. “It’s snowing. Again. They are hanging mistletoe in the latrines. Frank is practicing his ‘Good King Wenceslas’ in the shower, which is a war crime in at least Geneva and parts of Ohio. Radar, how long have we been here?”
“Well, sir,” Radar said, pulling out a massive, battered ledger. “According to the official United States Army records, we deployed to Uijeongbu in the summer of 1950. The current war has been active for approximately thirty-six months.”
“Thirty-six months. Three years.” Hawkeye slammed a hand on the desk. “So explain to me, with all the infinite wisdom of the Pentagon, how we are currently planning our fourth Christmas party?”
Radar sighed, a sound far too old for a kid from Ottumwa, Iowa. He opened the ledger, flipping through the meticulously kept pages. “I’ve been going over the logs, Captain. I noticed it this morning when I was filing the casualty reports. Here’s our Christmas ’50 manifest… turkey, mashed potatoes, one incoming offensive.” He flipped a chunk of pages. “Christmas ’51… canned ham, snowstorm, 140 casualties.” He flipped another chunk. “Christmas ’52… no meat, Father Mulcahy got the choir together, Frank tried to court-martial a reindeer.”
Hawkeye stared at the pages. The neat, precise handwriting of a boy documenting the end of the world, year by year. “And?”
Radar pulled out a fresh, crisp sheet of paper. It had a bright red ‘URGENT’ stamp on it from I Corps. “And this arrived via chopper twenty minutes ago. Official orders from General Headquarters, Tokyo. ‘To ensure troop morale during the holiday season of 1953, all MASH units are allocated an extra ration of eggnog powder and are instructed to observe the Christmas ceasefire.’ Signed, General MacArthur… wait, no, General Ridgway… actually, sir, there are three different generals’ signatures on this, and one of them retired two years ago.”
Hawkeye took the paper. His eyes scanned the bureaucratic nonsense. The military hadn’t just lost the war; they had lost time itself. “It’s a loop,” he whispered, horrified. “We’re in a temporal anomaly, Radar. The Army has requisitioned eternity. They bought time wholesale and they’re making us live it over and over until Frank Burns successfully hits a high C.”
Suddenly, the door flew open again. Major Margaret Houlihan stood in the doorway, bundled in her parka, her blonde hair perfectly tucked beneath a heavy cap. Her eyes were blazing with the fury of a woman who thrived on regulations.
“Captain Pierce!” she barked. “What is the meaning of this insubordination in the Mess Tent? You upset Father Mulcahy, and Major Burns is currently writing a letter to his congressman about your anti-American calendar propaganda!”
“Margaret, my sweet, strict, chronologically displaced angel,” Hawkeye said, stepping toward her with the paper. “Tell me, what year is it?”
“It’s…” Margaret paused. A flicker of confusion crossed her normally resolute face. “It’s nineteen-fifty… three. Late ’53. Obviously.”
“Is it?” Hawkeye challenged, holding up a separate file Radar had just slid to him. “Because this requisition form you signed yesterday for new nylons is dated 1951. And Frank’s letter home that he left on the swamp floor this morning? Dated 1952.”
Margaret looked at the papers. Her jaw tightened. “It’s… it’s just clerical errors! The clerks are tired! The war is… it’s a fluid situation!”
“Fluid? Margaret, time isn’t a fluid! It’s a straight line, and the US Army has somehow tied it into a pretzel!” Hawkeye yelled.
Before Margaret could formulate a threat involving a court-martial, the distinctive, rhythmic thwup-thwup-thwup of Huey helicopters echoed over the mountains.
Radar’s head snapped up before the sound even reached the others. “Choppers,” he said softly. “Incoming wounded. A lot of them.”
“Cancel the existential crisis, Pierce,” Margaret said, her voice instantly dropping an octave to her professional, commanding tone. “We have a job to do.”
Hawkeye grabbed his parka. “Right. Let’s go stitch up the class of 1950… or ’51… or whatever year they’re dying in today.”
They sprinted out of the office and into the freezing mud. But as Hawkeye reached the triage pad, watching the stretchers being unloaded, his blood ran cold. The wounded soldiers weren’t just wearing standard olive drab.
Every single one of them was clutching a pristine, freshly printed copy of the Stars and Stripes newspaper. And the headline made Hawkeye stop dead in his tracks.
[ Next Chapter ⏩ ]
