“Just pull,” Hawkeye was saying now. “Right there, and toward you. More. Good. And when we get out of this you can put in the first sterile fix in the history of surgery.”
And still they came. Bellies, chests, necks, arteries, arms, legs, eyes, testicles, kidneys, spinal cords, all shot to hell. Win or lose. Life and death. At the beginning of it, all of the surgeons, and particularly the Swampmen, had experienced a great transformation. During periods of only sporadic employment they often drank far too much and complained far too much, but with the coming of The Deluge they had become useful people again, a fulfilled, effective fighting unit and not just a bunch of semi-employed stew bums stranded in the middle of nowhere. This was fine, as far as it went, but it was going too far. By the end of the second week they were all wan, red-eyed, dog-tired and short of temper, and it was obvious to all of them that their reflexes had been dulled and that their judgment had sometimes become questionable.
“This can’t go on,” Lt. Col. Henry Blake was saying at five forty-five one afternoon, for the fiftieth or sixtieth time within the last three or four days. “Goddam it and to hell, but this just can’t go on.”
Henry was standing, with the Swampmen, just outside the door of the postop ward. Once again, somehow, they had managed to take care of all the major cases, and the debridements and fractures and amputations were now being handled by others. They had ostensibly stepped out for a smoke, but each knew that they were all there to post a watch to the north and hope against hope against the appearance of the six o’clock choppers.
“It’s gotta end sometime,” Henry was saying. “It’s gotta end sometime.”
“All actions and all wars,” Trapper John said, “eventually do.”
“Oh, hell, Mclntyre,” Henry said, “what good is that? When? That’s the question. When?”
“I don’t know,” Trapper said.
“But who the hell does know?” Henry said. “I call three times a day, but those people in Seoul don’t know a damn thing more than we do. Who the hell does know?”
“I don’t know,” Hawkeye said, “but maybe Radar …”
“O’Reilly, sir,” Radar O’Reilly said, at the colonel’s elbow.
“Goddam it, O’Reilly,” Henry said, “don’t do that!”
“Sir?”
“What the hell are you doing out here, anyway?”
“I thought you called for me, sir,” Radar said.
“Look, O’Reilly … ,” the colonel started to say.
“Look, Henry,” Hawkeye said, “maybe I’m going off my nut …”
“Maybe we all are,” Henry said.
“Then maybe Radar can help us.”
“We are crazy,” Henry said, shaking his head. “We’re absolutely mad.”
“Look, Radar,” Hawkeye said. “What we . ..”’
“Let me handle this, Pierce,” Henry said. “O’Reilly?”
“Sir?”
“Now don’t lie to me …”
“Why, sir! You know that I never …”
“Never mind that, O’Reilly,” Henry said. “I don’t want to listen to any of that, but I want to know something.”
“What, sir?”
“Goddam it,” Henry said, turning to the others. “I haven’t really gone out of my mind, have I?”
“No you haven’t, Henry,” Trapper said. “Go ahead.”
“Yeah, go ahead,” Duke said.
“Look, O’Reilly,” Henry said, looking right at Radar. “What do you hear?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Nothing!” Henry said. “What the hell do you mean, nothing?”
“I don’t hear anything, sir.”
“Well, what does that mean?”
“I believe it means, sir,” Radar said, “that the action has subsided in the north.”
“Good!” Duke said.
“Look, O’Reilly,” Henry said. “Are you telling the truth?”
“Why, sir! You know that I never …”
“Stop that, O’Reilly!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Radar,” Hawkeye said. “Tell us something else.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Do you hear the six o’clock choppers?”
“No, sir.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, how the hell are you going to hear them, anyway, standing here?” Henry said, and he pointed toward the north. “You should be listening out there.”
“Yes, sir,” Radar said.
Radar started to walk slowly toward the north then, and they followed him. They formed a small procession, Radar in the lead, his ears at the right-angle red alert, his head turning on his long, thin neck in the familiar sweeping action. They walked across the bare ground the fifty yards to the barbed wire, beyond which lay the mine field, and they stopped.
“Well?” Henry said.
“Nothing, sir.”
“Keep trying.”
“Yes, sir.”
To the north the valley was blanketed in shadow now, the hills to the left dark, but the sunset colors still bathing the tops of the hills to the east. They stood behind O’Reilly, where they could watch him and the sky at the same time, and they maintained absolute silence. As they watched, the last of the colors left the eastern hills, the dusk mounted in the valley and only the sky held light.
“O’Reilly,” Henry said, “it’s six o’clock.” “Nothing, sir.” “It’s six-oh-five.” “Nothing, sir.”
“O’Reilly,” the colonel said, at about six-fifteen, “I can’t see my watch any more.”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Glory be!” the Duke said.
“Good work, O’Reilly,” the colonel said. “Dismissed.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And by the way, Radar,” Hawkeye said, “stop by The Swamp tomorrow for a bottle of Scotch.”
“Thank you, sir,” Radar said. “That’s very kind of you, sir, but you were thinking of two.”
“OK,” said Hawkeye. “You’re right, and you’ve got two.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“We’re all crazy,” Henry said.
There was no jubilation. They were all too tired. In fact, they were exhausted, completely spent, and the Swampmen hit their sacks. When 6:00 a.m. came and went, and there were no choppers, they slept on, and at 8:00 a.m., when Radar O’Reilly, accompanied by an associate lab technician, entered The Swamp, he could have made any of the three the victim of his desperate need, not for two fifths of Scotch, but for a pint of A-negative blood, quantities of which were on order from Seoul but had not arrived.
“Captain Forrest?” he said, shaking the Duke. “Sir?”
“Not now, honey,” the Duke mumbled. “Gobacksleep.”
Gently, Radar straightened Duke’s right arm. Deftly, he injected Novocaine over a vein. Duke stirred but did not awaken, and while the assistant tightened the sleeve of Duke’s T-shirt to serve as a tourniquet, Radar skillfully inserted a No. 17 needle into the vein and joyfully extracted a pint.
“Where’d you get it?” Colonel Blake asked, after Radar had hurriedly cross-matched it and proudly presented it to his chief. “Twenty minutes ago you said there wasn’t any.”
“I found a donor, sir,” said Radar.
“Good boy,” said the colonel.
Two hours later the colonel himself was a visitor to The Swamp. By now Hawkeye was in the middle of Muscongus Bay between Wreck Island and Franklin Light. He and his father, Big Benjy Pierce, were hauling lobster traps.
“Finest kind,” Hawkeye was saying.
“C’mon, Pierce,” Henry was saying, shaking him, “C’mon. Wake up!”
“What’s wrong, Pop?”
“Pop, hell!” Henry said. “It’s me.”
“Who?” Hawkeye said.
“Listen, Pierce,” Henry said. “There’s a Korean kid in preop with a hot appendix. Who’s going to take it out?”
“You are,” Trapper John said, rolling over in his sack.
“Why me?” Henry said.
“Because,” Trapper mumbled, “although you are a leader of men, there are no men left.”