Thanks to Bartimus Crochety who told me it’s spelled: “Colonel Potter” and NOT Coronal Potter!
Thanks to everyone else who reviewed and told me something I could fix!
Let it be known that I do NOT speak or understand Korean, and that the text in Korean in this chapter is what I got when I used an online translator, so it’s obviously not 100 percent correct.
“Hawkeye, we’re leaving any minute,” BJ shook his sleeping friend’s shoulder. “Come on; wake up, would ya?”
When he didn’t move, BJ picked up Radar’s trumpet – which was kept on the shelf by Hawkeye’s bed – and blew in to the instrument as loudly as he could. The result was a wet blat sound which woke both Hawkeye and Frank.
“Honestly Hunnicutt! I have to do all of both your’s work while you go wondering around looking for that runt, so you should have at least a little consideration about waking a man at this hour. And-”
Wake-e, wake-e everybody! We’ve got wounded on the compound. First shift report to triage. The O’Reilly Search and Rescue Squad should report to in front of the mess tent, your jeeps are waiting.
“Ohhhh… nerts on you,” Frank grumbled and hurried out of the tent.
“Every second you’re in bed, Radar is getting more lost out there,” BJ said.
Hawkeye threw back his covers and tugged on his boots. “Here’s hoping Potter can handle the wounded, and Burns, all on his own.”
BJ had to drag Hawkeye most of the way to the jeep to keep the doctor from rushing over to the O.R. There weren’t many wounded – maybe between ten and fifteen – and most of them were mild cases anyway, but that didn’t stop him from worrying. Once everyone was ready they split into groups of two; Hawkeye drew the short breakfast sausage and was the lucky one to go on his own. Margret went with Klinger in the first jeep and BJ and Father Mulcahy took the second. They each took a field medic bag and a rifle; since Klinger was the only one who really knew how to shoot they decided the guns would remain unloaded for their own safety.
“Jeep, don’t fail me now!” Hawkeye said as he went peeling down the street with the others close behind.
While the others went ahead, BJ and Father Mulcahy decided to scan the area closer to camp. They followed along a less beaten path into the woods, their pace slowed to a crawl over the many roots and branches in their way. Soon the branches above their heads blocked out to much sunlight for them to keep going safely.
“Perhaps we should turn back,” Mulcahy said.
“You’re probably right,” BJ sighed and rested his head on the steering wheel. “God damn it! Oh… sorry Father.”
“It’s OK, my son; I’m sure the others will find Radar and they’ll bring him back to us.”
“I just don’t get why he would do something like that. Radar’s a good kid and he knows what happens if you… ya know,” BJ said.
Father Mulcahy patted the doctor’s shoulder comfortingly. “There is a reason – a good reason – that he ran, but we won’t find it here. Our best bet would be to return to MASH and wait for the others.”
“Alright, just let me…” BJ began to maneuver the jeep back and forth in an attempt to turn around; unfortunately the brush had gotten so thick that there was no room and he ended up getting caught on a root. “Ohhhh that’s,” kata-THUNK, “not good.”
“Oh my.”
“Well, Father, I think we’re walkin’.”
“Hmmm; if it’s alright with you, I’d like to carry the bag.”
BJ handed the priest the bag and grabbed the rifle and ammo as he got out. “I don’t blame you. Can’t say I honestly trust this thing not to go off in my face; unloaded or not.”
The two walked most of the way back to the camp before they hitched a ride on the back of a local’s ox carts. The trip was bumpy and smelly, but it beat walking. The lady driving the cart dropped them off outside Rosie’s Bar and they paid her generously before finishing the trek. For as long as they had been gone, they were surprised to find they were the first ones back, and just in time too. Helicopters began landing and busses arrived minutes after they talked to Colonel Potter about the search, each of them loaded with wounded.
Hawkeye based his search area on logic. In other words, he looked for any place a short person could fit. It was a sound strategy until he realized just how many small places there were for things or people to hide in, and those people or things could be Radar or they could be snakes, land mines, or short Chinese or North Korean soldiers. His luck with jeeps was only slightly worse than BJ and Father Mulcahy’s; when he left it by the side of the road to investigate a thick brush, a group of North Korean soldiers liberated it. Running off his every present “logic” he had left all of his equipment in the jeep when he got out of it.
“Why can’t we ever have a nice, peaceful drinking contest to settle wars instead of all this shooting and stealing jeeps from doctors?”
“필요로 하는 도움이 필요하세요?” [Do you need help?] A passing local asked.
“Hi, I’m a doctor. Don’t mind me, I’m just going on a leisurely walk around your country at the moment,” Hawkeye said, having no knowledge of how to speak or understand Korean.
“의사가 있습니까? 미국 의사들도 있습니다.” [You are a doctor? The American doctors are that way.] The local pointed down the road; he understood some of what Hawkeye said, but most of it was unintelligent gibberish to him – and to anyone else for that matter.
“Ya, sure. Thanks, I think. But I came from that way so I’m going to go back now,” Hawkeye smiled began walking in the opposite direction.
“아니, 아니에요! 가시겠는 그런 방향으로 흐른다는 것입니다.” [No, no sir! You want to go that direction.] The local said again, pointing the same direction and shaking Hawkeye’s elbow.
“Persistent little fellow, aren’t you? Fine, we’ll do this your way. Lead on,” Hawkeye said, giving in to the man and letting him lead him down the road.
Not long after that they arrived at Rosie’s Bar, just as BJ and the Father had earlier in the day. By then it was rather dark and Hawkeye could see the lights of the MASH lit up. Thanking the local one last time, and paying him with a sandwich he’d packed in his pocket, he hurried on. Colonel Potter chewed him out for letting his jeep get stolen along with the pack and rifle – he let the other two off the hook a bit more because their jeep was more or less unmovable and they had brought back their equipment – but was glad to see him back and safe. The night was a long one as everyone was worried when Margret and Klinger didn’t come back; Potter decided if they weren’t back by noon the next day then he was putting out missing person reports on them and calling off all further searches for Radar.
“Major, maybe I should be the one driving?” Klinger suggested hesitantly as he clung to his seat for dear life.
Margret was driving as fast as she could and swerving all across the road in attempt to avoid the shells exploding around them. She slammed the breaks – causing Klinger to smack his face into the dashboard – and bailed out, grabbing the medical bag and running for cover. Griping over his sore nose, Klinger followed behind with his rifle and helmet. The two crouched under the brush along the side of the road and waited. It wasn’t long before the jeep exploded and the shelling stopped.
“Just great; now what do we do?” Klinger asked.
“Oh shut up you. You’ve got the gun, don’t you?” Margret nodded to the weapon. “We’ll be fine so long as we keep our heads.”
“Well – uh – speaking of “keeping our heads”, can you keep yours when I tell you it ain’t loaded?”
Margret turned slowly to the Lebanese, an icy look in her eye. “It’s what?”
“Ya see, we all agreed not to load the guns, so I kept the ammo in the back seat. But now the back seat’s blown from here to Toledo so I’m thinkin’ I ain’t getting them back.”
“KLINGER!” Margret reared back and smacked him with her bag, yelling curses and insults at his stupidity.
Once the Major finished venting her anger, the two began walking back along the side of the road. Craters still smoked where shells had gone off, but that didn’t mean the area was safe from another bombing. They avoided tall grass and other places land mines could be as much as possible, but if they had to go through them Margret made sure to send Klinger a few steps ahead of her. At the same time Hawkeye was arriving back they were still miles away. With little other to choose from they went about setting up a make-shift camp for the night.
“You take first watch. If North Koreans come, let them take you quietly so you don’t wake me,” Margret instructed as she lay down.
Klinger grumbled to himself for nearly an hour before dozing off. The small fire he had started blew out some time in the night and the wind was picking up even more. When he woke up it was to dark to see anything clearly, but he could hear someone moving around not far off. He chalked it up as Margret going to the bathroom and closed his eyes once more. The next morning he woke to someone shaking him.
“Klinger; Klinger, he’s here! Damn it Klinger, wake up!”
“Wha~ No! I wasn’t asleep; I swear,” Klinger cried and put his hands up to protect himself.
“Oh hush up you and open your eyes,” Margret scolded. “He just wandered in here sometime in the night and collapsed. It must have been when the wind was strong because I didn’t hear him.”
“Who?”
“Superman… Who do you think it is? Idiot.”
Looking around the Major, Klinger could see a small lump in an army uniform passed out on the ground. He was covered in mud, twigs, and blood. Judging by the angle of his leg he figured it was broken in at least two places. Margret was already trying to splint the leg as Klinger sat there in shock, his face white.
“Shit,” Klinger felt the blood rush from his face and his stomach heaved.
Margret watched as he stumbled back and vomited to the side. “Damn it, this is not the time! I need you to put some pressure on his gut. He’s bleeding bad, probably took some shrapnel from a land mine, and recently too.”
The medical bag had scarcely anything in it. There was just enough tape to set his leg by using the rifle and a branch as support. Margret removed the major pieces of shrapnel that wouldn’t cause excess bleeding and rubbed his whole chest down with alcohol before they covered it up with cotton balls and tape. Unfortunately there was no morphine, penicillin or anything else they could give him.
“Guess we better get him back to camp,” Klinger sighed and shifted his arms around the lump to scoop him up.
“I’m surprised he’s even alive. I’ve seen boys in conditions like his die before they even got into O.R. and we don’t even know if that’s all that’s wrong with him. There may be internal bleeding or he may have ticks – Did you check his legs like I asked you to? – or he may have a concussion,” Margret began to list.
“He’ll be fine,” Klinger assured her. “Radar’s a tough kid. Little, but tough.”
“I can carry him in a while.”
“Nah, that’s okay, he’s actually really, really light.”
Margret reached across and ran her fingers along Radar’s side, feeling out every one of his ribs. “There’s at least one broken and a few fractures. You’re right; he’s lost a considerable amount of weight.”
“We’ll get him back to MASH and Cap’in Pierce ‘n Hunnicutt’ll fix him up; then the mess staff’ll stuff him ’til he pops!”
They walked for most of the day until a jeep with Colonel Potter himself driving it came roaring down the road. The ride back to the 4077th was silent; Margret kept checking on Radar, Potter was driving like a taxi driver from Chicago, and Klinger was… being Klinger. When the pulled in they were mobbed with everyone wanting to know how Radar was, but when they saw his condition they all made way for the stretcher to carry him in to the O.R. There weren’t any other wounded so all the doctors – excluding Frank, who was sulking in the Swamp – scrubbed and started to operate.
It wasn’t a hard case, most of the shrapnel was shallow and came out without a fuss, and things were going well until his heart stopped.
Read AWOL | Chapter 3 below:
