Free Mash by Richard Hooker

fragment was in the left pulmonary artery. Three days later Ho-Jon was out of bed, happy, proud to have been operated on by two of his three heroes and, unaware of the odds against him, not at all upset at the prospect of further surgery.
    Taking a missile out of a pulmonary artery is no great trick, but few surgeons in Korea were familiar with such techniques. Cardiovascular surgery was in its infancy, and such procedures were not usually done in tents. Ordinarily this sort of case would have been evacuated to Tokyo, but no one seriously thought that any other surgeon in the Far East was better equipped to do the job than Trapper John. Colonel Blake did mention the possibility of evacuation once, but dropped the subject when Hawkeye gave him a very direct look.
    In The Swamp the next week the tension grew. Humor was nonexistent. Unmilitary behavior tapered off. One evening Hawkeye passed around a bottle of Scotch, feeling that, for the sake of efficiency, they should attempt some sort of comeback.
    “When do we go for it, Trapper?” he asked.
    “June 2.”
    “Why June 2?”
    “That’s the day I shut out Harvard on two hits.”
    Trapper John did not say another word that night. He lay on his sack, sipped his drink and just looked straight up.
    Ho-Jon, at the start of his big day, lay on the operating table, expectantly but confidently gazing up at Ugly John. Ugly John said, “Now, Ho-Jon, you just take it easy. Everything will be all right.”
    Ho-Jon smiled and said, “I know, Captains Blacks.”
    Ugly John started the Pentothal and curare, and three minutes later inserted the intratracheal tube through which Ho-Jon would do all his breathing while his friends worked on him. Then Ho-Jon was turned onto his right side and draped, and Trapper John, assisted by Hawkeye and Duke, removed Ho-Jon’s fifth rib. With that out of the way, Trapper entered the pleural cavity, and easily located the missile wedged in the left pulmonary artery. After opening the pericardium, which surrounds the heart, he then dissected his way around the origin of the artery and placed umbilical tapes as temporary ties above and below the missile.
    “How is he?” Trapper asked Ugly John.
    “Nice,” said Ugly. “Get on with it.”
    While Hawkeye applied traction on the tape above the shell fragment and Duke did the same below, Trapper incised the artery, removed the fragment, and resutured the artery with 5-0 arterial silk.
    “Ease off on those tapes, and let’s see how much it bleeds,” said Trapper. He had to place one extra suture, and then there was no more bleeding.
    “How’s he doing?” Trapper asked the anesthesiologist.
    “Nice,” Ugly John assured him.
    The Swampmen looked at one another, and Trapper said, “Boys, we’re home free.”
    For the rest of the day relaxation ruled, and recollection of it is indistinct in the minds of the survivors, who included Ho-Jon. Soon Ho-Jon was up and around, back at his job as Swampboy, his English improving. He was losing the Korean habit of putting an “s” on the end of every word. He eagerly read all that the Swampmen provided for him.
    “Now,” said Hawkeye one day, “I gotta get him into Androscoggin College.”
    “Dartmouth,” said Trapper John.
    “Georgia,” said Duke.
    “Boys,” said Hawkeye, “it’s gotta be Androscoggin. Dartmouth is too big and too expensive. At Androscoggin he can start a little more slowly and get more attention. If he’s as good as I think he is, he can move into the big leagues later, and I don’t think Georgia is the place even if the Klan doesn’t have a chapter house there any more.”
    The Swampmen agreed on Androscoggin College. “Guess I’ll write to the Dean,” said Hawkeye and sat down to do so. He wrote:
     
     
    Dr. James Lodge
    Dean, Androscoggin College
    Androscoggin, Maine
    Dear Mr. Lodge:
     
     
    A few years having passed, perhaps you’ll be willing to read a letter from me, although I seem to recall that when I left for