Mash (29 page)

Just to be safe, Duke and Hawkeye kept the chaplains’ insignia on their collars. Other doctors didn’t interest them, and medical insignia invited medical conversation. However, the chaplains’ roles soon became as burdensome. One Lutheran parson from central Pennsylvania was particularly interested in talking shop. He asked Duke what his reaction had been to his Korean experience. Duke cured him quickly. “Loved it,” he answered. “Didn’t do nawthin’ but hoot, holler, drink rum and chase that native poon!”

On the fourth day out they became captains in the Medical Corps again. Their two new friends had established themselves as short-arm inspectors, and they themselves had tired of being asked for spiritual guidance by soldiers who had flunked inspection.

“Now I know what happens to the guys who get thumbed out of the short-arm line,” said Hawk. “They get a shot of penicillin and a ticket to see the chaplain.”

The time passed slowly, but it did pass. Nineteen days out of Sasebo, in a fog so dense that nothing, not even Mt. Rainier, was visible, the troopship docked in Seattle.

Ten hours later in a taxi on the way to the airport, Captains Augustus Bedford Forrest and Benjamin Franklin Pierce nursed a fifth of whiskey. At the airport, everything was fogged in, so they went to the cocktail lounge.

As they sat there at the bar, it all seemed unreal. Two people who had been very important to each other were now almost totally preoccupied with thoughts of other people, and their conversation had become sparse and even a little stilted.

“We don’t seem to be acting like Swampmen,” observed Duke.

“I guess not, but I don’t feel like it. It’s just as well.”

“Probably.”

“Flight 401 for Pendleton, Salt Lake City, Denver and Chicago,” blared the loud-speaker.

During the early morning hours, with the moon shining on the snow-covered Rockies, the stewardess addressed the former Swampmen, “I’ll have to ask you gentlemen to put away that bottle.”

“Sorry, miss,” apologized Hawkeye. “We sort of don’t know any better.”

An hour later the stewardess spoke again to Captain Augustus Bedford Forrest. “Sir, if you don’t put away that bottle, I’ll have to ask the Captain to come back and speak to you.”

“That’ll be fine, ma’am. We’d be proud to meet him! My buddy here’s a Captain, too.”

Hawkeye grabbed the bottle and put it away. “Never mind your Captain, honey,” he promised. “I’ll take care of mine.”

At 6:00 a.m., in the men’s room of Midway Airport in Chigago, Duke and Hawkeye finished the jug and threw it in a trash can. They were too excited to be drunk. The flight to Atlanta was announced. Duke put his arm around Hawkeye.

“I’ll see y’all some time, you goddamned Yankee. Stay loose!”

“Helluva place to end an interesting association, Doctor,” said Hawkeye Pierce, “but it’s been nice to have known you.”

Dr. Augustus Bedford Forrest boarded the plane for Atlanta, where he was met by a big girl and two little ones. Six hours later the valedictorian of the class of 1941 at Port Waldo High School and two small boys watched Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce disembark from a Northeast Airlines Convair in Spruce Harbor, Maine.

The larger of the two boys jumped into his father’s arms and inquired, “How they goin’, Hawkeye?”

“Finest kind,” replied his father.

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