Interviewer: Bill, people always remember Father Mulcahy as the moral compass of the 4077th, the man who stayed calm while Hawkeye and Trapper were running wild. Was it ever difficult to maintain that saintly composure on a set that was essentially a hotbed of practical jokes and professional chaos?

William Christopher: (Laughing) Oh, goodness, you have no idea. You see this photograph right here on your desk? The one with me standing by the ambulance with that very somber, prayerful look on my face? I remember exactly when that was taken. We were out at the Malibu ranch, and it must have been a hundred and five degrees. The dust was so thick you could chew it, and we were all exhausted.

You have to remember, the ranch wasn’t like a studio set with air conditioning and craft services every five feet. We were in the dirt. We were in the elements. And on that particular day, we were filming a scene where Mulcahy had to perform a blessing for a new shipment of medical supplies that had finally arrived after weeks of delays in the script.

The director, I believe it was Burt Metcalfe that day, wanted the scene to have this underlying sense of gravity. The camp was low on everything—morphine, bandages, hope. My job was to stand there, in all that heat, and provide a moment of spiritual sanctuary for the men.

We had been through four or five rehearsals, and everyone was getting a bit cranky. Harry Morgan, who played Colonel Potter, was standing right next to me. Harry was the ultimate professional, a real “one-take” kind of actor, but he had this little glint in his eye whenever he saw that the rest of us were starting to fray at the edges.

I was holding a specific prop—an aspergillum. For those who aren’t familiar with the liturgical terminology, it’s a small metal wand with a perforated ball at the end used for sprinkling holy water. The prop department had filled it with water, and I was supposed to flick it gracefully over the crates while Harry stood there looking stoic and commander-like.

Alan Alda was hovering nearby, just out of the shot, probably waiting to find some deep philosophical meaning in the dust motes. The sun was hitting the exact right spot behind the mountains, and Burt yelled that we had to get this in one go before we lost the light. I took a deep breath, straightened my collar, and stepped toward the crates with all the dignity a man in a sweat-soaked tunic could muster.

The camera started rolling, the silence of the canyon settled over us, and I reached out to deliver the blessing.

And that’s when it happened.

I flicked my wrist with what I thought was a gentle, sanctified motion, but the prop aspergillum had other plans. Apparently, the heat had caused some kind of pressure buildup inside the metal handle, or perhaps the threads on the perforated ball were just worn down from years of being tossed around in a prop box.

Instead of a light, holy mist, the entire metal head of the wand launched off the handle like a pressurized projectile. It didn’t just fall off; it flew with the velocity of a small mortar round. It whistled through the air for a fraction of a second and struck the side of the metal supply crate with a loud, ringing “CLANG” that echoed across the entire ranch.

But it didn’t stop there. Because the head had flown off, the remaining handle acted like a wide-open straw. A concentrated, high-pressure jet of lukewarm water shot directly out of the hollow tube and caught Harry Morgan squarely in the left eye.

Now, Harry was a veteran of the studio system. He had worked with everyone from John Wayne to Henry Fonda. He was a man who prided himself on never breaking character, no matter what happened. He stood there, completely drenched on one side of his face, with his hat dripping and a single stream of water running down his nose.

He didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He just stared at me with that stern, Colonel Potter gaze while his eye remained squeezed shut against the deluge.

The entire crew went dead silent. We were all terrified that we had just ruined the final shot of the day. I was mortified. I was standing there holding a useless metal stick, looking at a wet Colonel, wondering if I should apologize or keep praying.

Then, Harry leaned in just an inch closer to me, wiped a glob of water off his cheek with one finger, and whispered just loud enough for the microphone to catch it: “Padre, I knew you wanted me to see the light, but I didn’t think you were going to try and drown me in it.”

That was the end of the silence.

Alan Alda was the first to go. He let out this high-pitched, hysterical bray of a laugh that he always got when something truly absurd happened. He actually doubled over and had to lean against the ambulance to keep from falling into the dirt.

Once Alan started, it was like a dam had burst. The camera operator started shaking so hard that the frame was bouncing up and down, which I’m sure made the footage look like we were in the middle of a massive earthquake. The director just dropped his head into his hands and started making these quiet, wheezing noises.

But Harry—oh, Harry made it so much worse. He saw that he had broken us, so he decided to lean into it. He turned to the “supplies” I had just supposedly blessed, saluted the empty handle I was still holding, and said, “Sir, if that’s the water, I’d hate to see what you do with the wine at Sunday service.”

We couldn’t stop. We literally had to stop filming for fifteen minutes because every time someone looked at me or my headless wand, we would start all over again. Harry would just stand there, refusing to let the wardrobe person dry his face, insisting that he wanted to “savor the blessing” while he pointed at his soaked uniform.

It was one of those moments where the line between the show and our real lives just vanished. We weren’t just actors playing soldiers and a priest; we were a group of friends who were absolutely exhausted and found the one thing that could make us feel human again, which was a ridiculous, soggy mistake.

Whenever I see a photo from that day, I don’t think about the heat or the lines I had to memorize. I think about the look on Harry’s face as he stood there, dripping wet, teaching me that sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is have a good laugh at yourself.

That’s the secret of MAS*H, really. We survived the production the same way the characters survived the war—by finding the comedy in the middle of the mess. I still have that broken aspergillum handle somewhere in a box in my attic. Every time I stumble across it, I can’t help but smile and wonder if Harry ever truly got that water out of his ear.

It reminds me that even in the most serious moments, there is always room for a little bit of unexpected grace, even if it comes in the form of a flying prop and a soaked Colonel. Those are the memories that stay with you long after the costumes are put away and the cameras stop rolling.

Looking back, it wasn’t the scripted jokes that defined us; it was the moments where everything went wrong and we found a way to laugh through it anyway. I think that’s why the show still resonates today. It feels real because the joy we shared was absolutely genuine.

Do you think the best memories in life are the ones where everything went exactly as planned, or the ones where the “holy water” hit the fan?