MASH by Otto F. Apel M.D

Author:Otto F. Apel M.D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2011-01-22T05:00:00+00:00

Lt. Marilyn Brown sunbathing at the beach at Hwachon.

The next week, a wounded soldier in the pre-op tent looked with great suspicion at the people preparing to render medical care to him. He raised up from his litter and glanced about the tent. He called Amy aside: “Tell me something. Do you have to be redheaded to be in this hospital unit?” Everyone got a big laugh out of it, including the soldier on the litter.

There were also a variety of personalities among the nurses. A tall, slender nurse arrived shortly before I left. She had a roving eye and wit that we appreciated. She always said that when the artillery came in, she intended to jump into a foxhole with all the copter pilots because she did not want to die with a bunch of nurses. The nurses kept their eye on a certain nurse who had that New York model look about her all the time. They claimed that she came out of the shower tent with makeup on. They called her our GI dress model. As time went by, she got on well with all the people there.

One of the personalities that spread the fame of MASH 8076 throughout the Korean theater was Agnes. I never heard anyone refer to her by any other name. Soldiers came from far around to see her indescribable beauty. On one occasion a tank company and a transportation company came to MASH 8076 at the same time and, in a fit of jealousy, engaged in a battalion-sized brawl in the field outside Agnes’s tent. But I am getting ahead of myself. I will speak of Agnes, the friend we left behind, later.

Each time we had the opportunity—and there were not many such times—we relaxed. There were times when we stopped for a drink and laughed as we talked of home and life without the war. Our best place, ironically, was at the Hwachon Reservoir in the fall of 1951. We moved north above the thirty-eighth parallel in the United Nations counteroffensive in the late summer of 1951 and located the MASH on the east end of the Hwachon Reservoir, a huge body of water nearly twenty miles in length. The fighting, which included the battles of Bloody Ridge and Heartbreak Ridge, was to the north of the reservoir. It was extremely hot that summer, often over one hundred degrees, and the fighting was very heavy. We found a place not far from the MASH where the river emptied into the reservoir. The river made a large bend, and the inside bank of the bend was a sandy beach. Shortly after we settled into our encampment, we rigged a barbecue grill on the riverbank and slipped away in the late afternoons to swim and sunbathe. It was a delightful spot where we could relax and enjoy the beauty of the Korean countryside. The pilots and the NCOs, who were excellent scroungers, managed to bring supplies of beer and steaks and hamburgers and hot dogs; we would crank up the grills and cook in the summer afternoons.

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