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"East is east and west is west, and the wrong one I have chose."
Smoke billows from an overturned jeep, the twisted metal frame blackening from the flames that still flicker between chunks of debris. Embers glow in the darkening sky, the smoke choking out the last rays of the sun before nightfall.
"Let's go where I'll keep on wearin' those frills and flowers and buttons and bows."
Shreds of canvas flap in the breeze the flames create, support beams sticking out like broken ribs. One from what used to be the mess tent crashes to the ground with a groan and crack, feeding the blaze with a cough of smoke sputtering into the grey-and-orange sky.
Aside from the crackling of the fires and the voice carrying above it all, the once-bustling compound is silent.
"Rings and things and buttons and bows."
Captain Hawkeye Pierce stumbles between burning tents and hissing vehicles on the brink of explosion, soot-covered and soaked in deep crimson blood. The fatigues he wears are torn and muddy, one boot half burned away at the ankle, and a patch on his shoulder still smolders with a dying flame. His greying black hair is slicked against his forehead, mud and blood spilling in a ruddy brown from a scalp laceration that ran the length of his temple. Shrapnel shines in a tear on his shoulder, broken arm swinging at his side as he sways and dances along a torn-up trail.
"Don't bury me in this prairie, take me where the cement grows" he sings, tripping over a chunk of plywood sticking out of the mud. He just barely catches himself, shaking his head with a laugh. "Klinger, you can't be leaving your dress boxes all over the place! Someone'll trample them and ruin them before you can get them home."
(Klinger had been inside the mess tent when it exploded, packing away the last of the surplus for the next war. His face is a mangled mess of blood, soot, and dust, his dark eyes lifeless as they watch a smoke-filled sky. A piece of the bomb had lodged in his throat, jutting from the artery that pumps his blood onto the crates of potatoes he'd collapsed on.)
Hawkeye blinks, trying to clear the haze out of his eyes. That was one good farewell party: as much gin as they could drink so they could pretend it didn't hurt that they were saying good-bye. Hawkeye is just glad to get a good-bye.
"Let's move down to some big town, where they love a gal by the cut o' her clothes." Hawkeye continues on in a dramatic vibrato, dancing over a deep gouge in the softened earth. His boot catches on something poking out from under a heap of charred rubble. "Oh, Father, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to kick you."
"It's quite all right, my son," Father Mulcahy answers cheerily.
(Father Mulcahy's leg is the only thing visible of him, leg of his trousers torn to expose his black-and-red skin. His foot had been blown off, leaving a mangled calf behind, but it wasn't like he could feel it— he'd died from shock an hour ago, the blood loss too severe with no one to apply a tourniquet.)
Hawkeye stops to watch a pair of enlisted men take down the nurses's tent, his hands on his hips.
"Hey guys, watch that pole, it'll come down over your heads!" He calls, pointing.
(The tent is gone, only a few scraps of canvas and pieces of the support beams remaining. Thankfully, the nurses had been shipped out a day early, and they would hear about the tragic end of the 4077th's men on the news a week later and feel guilty for being grateful they'd been sent home first. Only Margaret had remained.)
Hawkeye hums as he tries to remember the rest of the lyrics, carrying on with his tour around the compound. The shrapnel in his shoulder shifts, digging deeper into the flesh, and blood starts to pour from the wound in earnest. He lifts his hand in a wave to Igor, smiling as the kid helps carry a heavy bundle of canvas to one of the waiting trucks.
(His arm doesn't move. Igor is in two pieces next to the truck, which is coated in his blood and dripping onto the war-torn dirt. There are no bundles to be carried, and no one else around. They were all thrown many feet away by the blast).
"I'll love you in buckskins, or skirts that I've homespun. . .but I'll love ya stronger where yer friends don't tote a gun," Hawkeye sings louder, twirling and waving his hands (hand, singular) in the air. He laughs as he topples over, picking himself up out of the dirt and brushing himself off. "God, what'll Dad say when he sees how much of a drunk I've become?"
(The back of his pants are coated in blood. Colonel Potter's body is getting steadily colder a few feet away, his blood pooled around him. Mildred would "die of a broken heart" six months later, leaving their children and grandchildren behind. His horse would wait at home for a caretaker that was never coming back).
"Oh, hey, remember that time when Klinger went flying over the camp in his pink, fluffy slippers?" Hawkeye doubles over laughing, a great honking thing that sucks all of the air out of his lungs. "Or, or, when Frank let those North Korean thieves kidnap him? He thought they actually wanted him to give a lecture! Isn't that right, Frank?"
(The lump of mangled flesh Hawkeye turns to cannot be identified, not until his dog tags are recovered near his body. Charles Emerson Winchester was directly next to the bomb when it went off, and now he fills the crater with his flesh and blood.)
"Oh you ninny!" Frank hisses, shooting Hawkeye a glare.
(Frank is at home with Mrs. Burns in Indiana, still recovering from his mental break. He spirals when he hears the news down the grapevine that the members of the 4077th MASH died. He's the first to visit Hawkeye in Portland when he does finally make it home, and neither of them really know what to say to each other).
Hawkeye spots the form of his best friend, BJ Hunnicutt, hunched over with his hand over his mouth to keep from throwing up. He ambles over, laughing, and pulls him merrily to his feet.
"Beej, come on, dance with me! We're finally getting out of this stinking cesspool!" He wraps Bj's arm around his neck, taking his weight against his side.
(BJ is nothing more than a skeleton. A tuft of his golden blond hair waves in the breeze, the only part of him left that isn't charred or shredded. Peg will tell Erin he died being brave, and never remarry. She visits Hawkeye, too, to thank him for giving BJ someone to depend on through the misery and loneliness. She tells him she knows he was loved with Hawkeye, and she's not mad Hawkeye survived because BJ wouldn't have been able to handle the guilt of being the sole survivor. But Hawkeye doesn't handle it much better
Hawkeye will eventually move out to San Francisco to help Peg with Erin. Erin never calls him "Dad," and he and Peg never marry or fall in love. Hawkeye could never replace BJ, and he doesn't try to. Peg knows Hawkeye lost BJ as much as she and Erin did— they're both widows to the same man. And she learns to be okay with that).
"Henry! Henry!" Hawkeye swivels around, looking for the Colonel. "Henry, come on, one last martini for the road!"
"Hawkeye, I t-think the world is spinning in the opposite direction," Henry hiccups.
"Nonsense, it's stopped spinning entirely," BJ jests, stopping to retch onto the ground.
(It's Hawkeye throwing up. It's all blood. He's going to die without help).
"Gimme eastern trimmin' where women are women in high silk hose and peek-a-boo clothes." Hawkeye lets go of BJ, letting him slide to the ground, only to take Margaret into his arms and twirl her.
She laughs, blue eyes sparkling with her joy.
(She lays under the remains of the hospital building, all but her shoulders, head, and one arm trapped beneath the debris. She knows she's going to die, but she finds hope when she sees Hawkeye moving towards her. She doesn't realize he's dancing with a severed arm around his shoulders until he's close enough to smell the burning flesh. She dies only a few minutes later.)
"Attention, all personnel," Hawkeye imitates the announcer, his voice growing watery as blood creeps up his throat. "From this day on, you are no longer soldiers. You are veterans. You're dead to the government until the next war."
● | ● | ●
When the aid car finally comes, noticing none of the 4077th had arrived at the airport, they find Hawkeye pretending to play basketball with an empty gas can ("come on guys, come on, one last game before we go!"). He doesn't seem to notice the "ball" doesn't bounce, shooting it up and cheering as he makes his imaginary basket. He lifts his uninjured arm in a victory post, imitating crowd sounds and running in a jagged circle.
Sergeant Dunlap throws up over the side of the jeep when he sees the state the outfit is in, so much violence after they'd been promised it would end. Maybe they would start the war over again, get revenge for the twenty or more American men and women that died this day. It would certainly be grounds to.
"Oh hey, are you guys coming to join the party?" Hawkeye's speech is slurred, one pupil dilated in hazy blue eyes. He waves the two MPs over with his arm, grinning like he wasn't surrounded by the corpses of the people he considered his friends. "Come on, grab a drink, they're all on the house!"
"Sir, you're injured," Corporal Hans tells him incredulously. He just manages to hold his stomach down, but he regrets the greasy sausages he had for breakfast before he left on the information gathering mission. "You need to get to the hospital."
"What? No, no, don't start pulling my leg now," Hawkeye says, shaking his head and waggling his finger. He moves like a drunkard, swaying in place. "I've spent three years doing meatball surgery and stitching kids back together so I can send them out to die again. I am going home."
"In a body bag, if you don't get treated right away," Sergeant Dunlap retorts after he steels himself. "Hans, check for any other survivors. I'll get on my radio and try to contact H.Q. for medevac."
"Fine." Iron Stomach Hans will never say no to doing the dirty work— there's nothing that can get to him.
But after the third severed limb he finds with no body left to re-attach it to, he has to kneel behind a broken sheet of metal and throw up.
Dunlap has gotten Hawkeye into the jeep, and while he doesn't have much in the way of medical supplies, he's at least able to get bandages onto his head and shoulder wounds until the doctors could get to him.
He doesn't miss the way Hans looks much paler and green when he returns to give his report.
"That man is the only survivor, sir."
Dunlap presses his closed fist to his mouth, his eyes squeezing shut against an onslaught of emotion. Sympathy, grief, anger, fear, and despair.
"We'll send the morgue vans out as soon as we get this man to Seoul," he decides, climbing into the jeep. "Come on, let's go before one more casualty gets added to the death tolls."
Hans hops in beside him, and they shoot off into the dusk, following a well-traveled dirt road.
"Get his name off his dog tags!" Dunlap orders Hans as he steers around a rut in the road.
Their passenger is barely conscious now, head handing over the seat and body slipping sideways with a particularly sharp turn. It's easy for Hans to grip his dog tags and angle them to read the name engraved, after he wipes away the blood on his sleeve.
"A Captain Benjamin F. Pierce, sir!" He reports.
"Well, Captain Pierce, you're one luck sonnuva bitch," Dunlap tries for a joke, but it's sour in his mouth. "You survived long enough for this to haunt you the rest of your life."
Hawkeye doesn't hear him. All he can hear are the mockingbirds singing and welcoming him home.