“Colonel! Sir! You better come out to the helipad. The choppers didn’t just drop off the skates…”
Radar’s voice was pitched an octave higher than usual, a sure sign that the 4077th was about to transcend its usual baseline of insanity. Hawkeye didn’t even blink. He just turned, grabbed the figure skate off the desk, and gestured toward the door like a maitre d’ showing Henry to his doom.
“After you, Colonel. Let’s go see what Santa brought the good boys and girls of the Korean War.”
Henry groaned, hoisting himself up from his chair. He adjusted his fishing hat, muttering something about a quiet practice in Illinois, and followed his company clerk out into the blinding, oppressive glare of the afternoon sun. The compound smelled of dust, diesel fumes, and the ever-present, metallic tang of the surgical scrub area.
When they reached the helipad, Hawkeye stopped dead in his tracks. “Well,” he said slowly. “I’ll be damned. They sent us a mascot.”
Standing amidst the towering piles of crates—which were, indeed, entirely filled with ice skates—was a goat. It wasn’t a small goat. It was a massive, mottled brown and white beast with curving horns and a look of pure, unadulterated malice in its rectangular yellow eyes. It was currently standing atop a crate of sterile gauze, chewing rhythmically on what looked suspiciously like a highly classified map of the Uijeongbu sector.
“A goat,” Henry whispered, the cigar slipping from his lips to the dirt. “Radar, why is there a goat?”
“Well, sir,” Radar consulted his clipboard, his brow furrowed. “According to the manifest, we requisitioned one ‘Generator, Overhauled, Alternating Type.’ But whoever typed it up at I-Corps just put G.O.A.T. And, uh… Supply sent a goat.”
Hawkeye threw his head back and laughed, the sound loud and sharp against the distant, low rumble of artillery fire over the hills. “Henry, you have to admit, it’s efficient! It cuts the grass, it eats the paperwork you don’t want to do, and if we run out of Spam—God forbid—we can have a luau.”
“Pierce, this isn’t funny!” Major Margaret Houlihan marched toward them, her blonde hair perfectly pinned beneath her cap, her eyes blazing. Close on her heels was Major Frank Burns, looking as smug and agitated as a ferret in a parade.
“Colonel Blake!” Frank barked, saluting so hard he nearly poked his own eye out. “This compound is a medical facility, not a petting zoo! I demand that this… this filthy creature be shot and disposed of immediately! It’s a clear violation of Army Regulation 40-3!”
“Oh, shut up, Frank,” Hawkeye snapped, the humor instantly vanishing from his voice. “The only thing around here violating regulations is your surgical technique.”
“How dare you!” Margaret gasped. “Colonel, you must assert your authority!”
Henry rubbed his face with both hands. “Major, Frank, please. I’ve got four hundred pairs of ice skates and no penicillin. I don’t have the bandwidth for a goat execution right now. Radar, find somewhere to tie it up. Far away from my office. And far away from the mess tent.”
“Yes, sir,” Radar said, cautiously approaching the beast. The goat stopped chewing the map, lowered its head, and let out a sound that was half-bleat, half-demonic roar. Radar froze. “Uh, sir? I think it outranks me.”
Before Henry could respond, the PA system crackled to life. It was a sound that instantly drained the comedy from the air, a sound that snapped everyone back to the grim reality they were desperately trying to ignore.
“Attention all personnel. Incoming wounded. Choppers on the pad in five minutes. Looks like a heavy load. All O.R. staff to the scrub room.”
The goat, the skates, the missing penicillin—it all evaporated. Hawkeye’s shoulders slumped slightly, the sarcastic armor dropping away. He tossed the figure skate into the dust.
“Duty calls,” Hawkeye muttered, his voice suddenly hollow. “Come on, Frank. Let’s go see what the generals have sent us to fix today.”
The next twelve hours were a blur of blood, sweat, and the sickly-sweet smell of ether. The O.R. was a sweltering canvas oven. Hawkeye worked with mechanical precision, his hands moving flawlessly even as exhaustion threatened to pull him under. He traded dark, rapid-fire jokes with Trapper across the operating tables, using humor as a shield against the endless parade of broken nineteen-year-old boys.
Henry worked in the next bay over. For all his bumbling in the commander’s office, Henry Blake was a superb surgeon. In the O.R., the fishing hat was gone, replaced by a surgical cap and a look of intense, quiet focus.
When the last chest was closed and the final bandage applied, the sun had already set, leaving the camp bathed in the eerie glow of the floodlights. Hawkeye pushed through the O.R. doors into the cool night air, his scrubs plastered to his chest. He collapsed onto a nearby supply crate, lighting a cigarette with trembling, blood-stained fingers.
Henry emerged a few minutes later, looking ten years older. He sat down next to Hawkeye on the crate, staring blankly out at the dark compound.
“Lost the kid with the shrapnel in the descending aorta,” Henry said quietly.
Hawkeye closed his eyes. “I know. I’m sorry, Henry.”
They sat in silence for a long moment, the shared weight of the war pressing down on them. This was the core of the 4077th. The jokes, the scams, the stills in the Swamp—it was all just a frantic tap dance on the edge of a cliff, a way to keep from looking down into the abyss.
“You know,” Henry finally said, his voice thick with fatigue. “When I was in private practice, the biggest crisis I had was Mrs. Glickman’s gallstones. Now… I’m patching up kids who shouldn’t even be shaving yet.” He took a deep breath. “Did we ever figure out what to do with those damn ice skates?”
Hawkeye cracked a tired smile, handing his cigarette to Henry. “I’m working on a trade with the Greek battalion. Apparently, they have an excess of ouzo and a severe deficit of winter sports equipment. I think I can spin it.”
“Just… don’t let Frank find out.” Henry took a drag. “And the goat?”
As if on cue, a piercing scream echoed from the direction of the nurses’ tents. It was unmistakably Margaret Houlihan.
Hawkeye and Henry leaped to their feet. They ran toward the source of the noise, bursting through the flap of Margaret’s tent.
Margaret was standing on top of her footlocker, clutching her robe tightly around her. And there, standing in the middle of her neatly made bed, was the goat. It had completely devoured her favorite silk scarf and was currently working its way through her copy of Army Regulations.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
Dangling from the goat’s collar, somehow snagged on the buckle, was a red, top-secret dispatch folder that Radar had been searching for all afternoon. The folder was half-chewed, but the large, black letters on the front were still visible: INSPECTION TOUR: GENERAL ‘IRON GUTS’ KELLY. And the date on the folder was tomorrow.
[ Next Chapter ⏩ ]
