MASH

(William Morrow & Co., 1968)

"A fantastically comic and wildly irreverent story of a small group of army surgeons just behind the front lines in Korea. Not since Catchh-22 has the struggle to maintain sanity in the rampant insanity of war been told in such outrageously funny terms." - Ring Lardner Jr.

"I picked up MASH and didn't put it down till I had finished it in the early morning hours. I found it extremely funny and a great pacifist document." - Art Hoppe, humorist and columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle

The heroes of MASH, Captains Hawkeye Pierce, Duke Forrest and Trapper John McIntyre, have two things in common: they are the best surgeons in the Far East Command and they are certified lunatics.  Their certification as hell-raising nuts is made by the army bureaucracy, which is three heroes turn into bedlam, by those doctors and chaplains who show more talent for witchery than surgery or godliness and by Major Hot-Lips Houlihan, the pompous Chief Nurse at the 4077^th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. (MASH).

At MASH the boys in a playful fashion terrorize Shaking Sammy, the forgetful Protestant chaplain who writes all-is well letters to the families of mortally wounded G.I’s And they send a stoned, bearded Trapper John aloft, where he hangs from a helicopter posing as Jesus, while they sell genuine photos of the Saviour to the boggle-eyed troops below.

Underlying the ribald, irreverent humor is a serious theme — how men of war survive the waste of war and how in the midst of destruction they strive to maintain their humanity.  The pseudonymous Richard Hooker (W. C. Heinz and Dr. H. Richard Hornberger) tells a wildly funny story that never loses sight of the dedication and purpose of three very human doctors and the wounded G.I.’s who are brought to them.

How MASH Came About

After observing three dozen lung operations over the shoulder of thoracic surgeon J. Maxwell Chamberlain, Bill Heinz crafted a moving cover story for Life Magazine in 1961 called "A Man With A Life In His Hands." It met with such acclaim that he expanded it into the novel The Surgeon in 1963. A Maine doctor, Dr. H. Richard Hornberger, who had studied under Chamberlain, was trying to publish his manuscript based on his experiences as a surgeon in the Korean war. Having been rejected by seventeen publishers, and after reading the first few chapters of The Surgeon, he called his old mentor asking if he could get Heinz to help him out. "Do me a favor?" asked Chamberlain in a phone conversation with Heinz. "Of course," replied Heinz, and over the next few years he and Hornberger combined their talents, knowledge, and humor to create the story that became the forerunner to the award winning film and television series.