MASH 09 MASH goes to Vienna Read online

  For the first time since he had arrived in Spruce Harbor, Alfred the dog had not gone with Hawkeye to the hospital. It quickly became apparent that Alfred the dog had joined her party and had every intention of staying until the party was over, no matter how long that took. For the first few days, Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones had regarded Alfred the dog as simply one more barb in her crown of thorns, but then she realized that there was a definite advantage in having a large Scottish wolfhound extremely fond of you.

  Particularly if one also had a large medical person simultaneously, and quite as shamelessly, enamored of one. Alfred the dog became immediately jealous of the attention being paid to Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones by Richard J. Wilson, M.D. Whenever the doctor ever so casually laid his arm on the back of the seat on which he sat with Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones, Alfred the dog pushed it away with his paw. Whenever Dr. Wilson turned his face toward Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones, with osculation clearly in mind, his pursed lips touched not Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones’s delicate white skin but Alfred the dog’s large, cold black nose.

  As Alfred the dog sank in Dr. Wilson’s estimation, he rose in Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones’s. She had no time for romance. She was a naval officer, her life dedicated to the briny deep, and while she realized that eventually a gentleman might come into her life, he would be a knight in navy white, not an amiable apprentice chest-cutter in surgical green.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t like Dr. Wilson. She thought he was sweet. But she didn’t want a sweet boyfriend. She wanted a boyfriend with machismo, a boyfriend who would sweep her off her feet, not touch soft fingers to her brow and tell her it was time to get out of the sun, she was a little feverish.

  On the other hand, she had convinced herself that if that sacred naval custom provided each sailor with a girl in each port, in the new, revised scheme of things that now meant that each sail-person was entitled to a romance-person of his or her choice in every port.

  Dr. Wilson had been selected for that singular honor. She knew she would think of him fondly as the years passed, on lonely nights on the bridge of the aircraft carrier she would one day command, that sweet little doctor with the blue eyes and warm hands back in Spruce Harbor, Maine, with whom she had once shared a too brief, bittersweet moment of passion.

  To accomplish this end, she chose a clamming costume consisting of not quite enough material to make a decent-sized handkerchief. What there was of it, however, was liberally soaked in “Free Ms.,” new perfume absolutely guaranteed to drive male chauvinist sexists mad. Then, taking into account the fact that the only thing Alfred the dog liked better than guarding her virtue was eating, she hid aboard the swamp buggy a bag of dog food (the large, kennel-sized bag) and three gallons of water with which to mix it in the cutoff bottom of a fifty-five-gallon drum Alfred the dog used as his puppy bowl.

  When they reached the mud flats she sent Woody and Beverly off alone, to slop about happily hand-in-hand in the mud.

  “Dr. Wilson and I will watch you from the buggy,” she said.

  As soon as they were gone, she turned to Dr. Wilson and Alfred the dog, both of whom seemed to be sitting on their haunches, wagging their tails, lolling their tongues, and staring at her with undisguised adoration.

  “Dick,” she said, “I think Alfred is hungry.”

  “He’s not hungry,” Dr. Wilson replied. “While we were waiting for you and Beverly to come out of the nurses’ quarters, he stole two hams from the hospital kitchen.”

  “He looks hungry to me,” she insisted.

  “Too much food isn’t good for a dog,” Dr. Wilson said.

  “Do me a favor and feed the damned dog, will you?” she said.

  “Whatever you say,” Dr. Wilson said. “All I ask from life is the opportunity to make you happy, even if that will probably make the dog throw up.”

  He climbed down off the swamp buggy. She handed him the bottom of the fifty-five gallon drum, and then the bag of dog food, and finally the three plastic gallon bottles of water. While he was stirring the mixture, she removed the terrycloth robe she had been so far using to cover the “Free Ms.” soaked bikini and arranged herself seductively on the rear seat of the swamp buggy.

  She felt Dick’s weight as he started to climb back up the ladder. Suddenly embarrassed, she turned to look out at the mud flats and the harbor itself. Suddenly, her heart beat faster, and she knew that it was now or never, for sailing majestically up the harbor, the national colors waving in the breeze, was the nuclear submarine USS Satyriasis.

  Dr. Wilson, in navy parlance, “reached the top of the ladder.” He looked at Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones. While, in his line of work, he was not entirely unfamiliar with large expanses of naked female flesh, none of it before had ever produced the reaction in him that this did. His heart started to beat with a strange rapidity. His head felt light. More importantly, the palms of his hands began to sweat.

  “Oh, Joanne!” he cried. She turned to look at him shyly, just before his sweaty palms slipped off the rungs of the ladder and he fell off the ladder. Horrified, Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones heard the sound of his body crashing onto the ground. She jumped off the seat, ran to the edge of the swamp buggy and looked down. Dr. Wilson was lying, unconscious, on the ground. Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones went down the ladder after him and bent over his inert form.

  “My darling,” she cried, “what have I done to you?”

  Alfred the dog, hearing the “Oh, Joanne!”, the sickening thud, and the “Oh darling” business came at a run. Since his beloved sail-person was kissing the unconscious body, that was obviously the thing for him to do, too. Wagging his tail, he licked Dr. Wilson’s unconscious face.

  Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones, after first tenderly kissing Dr. Wilson’s some what sweaty forehead, remembered that she was a naval officer and could not panic in a time of disaster. She scurried back up the ladder into the swamp buggy, started the engine, and began sounding the buggy’s horn in the traditional short-short-short- long-long-long/short-short-short of the SOS.

  Far away on the mud flats, she saw Woody and Beverly look in her direction and then start toward her at a run (or at least as much of a run as they could make through the mud). Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones then went quickly back down the ladder to Dr. Wilson.

  He stirred.

  “Darling,” she said, “you’re alive!”

  “I seem to have suffered a simple fracture of either the radius or the ulna,” Dr. Wilson said matter of factly. He sat up then, amazed. “What did you call me?”

  “Nothing,” she said, flushing mightily. She looked away in abject embarrassment. She saw the USS Satyriasis, had steamed even further up the harbor. Her deck (if the exterior portion of her body can properly be called a deck) and stabilization wings, jutting out from the side of the conning tower, were lined with sailors.

  “Yes, you did, too!” Dr. Wilson said. “You said it twice, once when you first came down and again just now.”

  She looked at him and met his eyes. He put his arms out to embrace her. Since one of them, as he had professionally noted, contained a fractured radius or ulna, there was a certain degree of pain. He passed out.

  “Oh, my darling!” Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones said again, throwing herself on him, holding him in her arms.

  “Pardon me, miss,” a firm masculine voice said. “If you are the party responsible for issuing the SOS, I am Lieutenant Commander Cooper Morton of the United States Navy at your service.”

  Tom between two sacred demands on her attention, Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones chose duty. She got off her knees, straightened and saluted.

  “Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones, J. P., sir,” she said. “There has been an accident!”

  “I recognize you now, Lieutenant,” Lieutenant Commander Cooper Morton said. “Who’s the civilian?”

  “He is Dr. Wilson,” Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones said, “and I think I’ve killed him!”

  “Got fresh, did he?” Commander Morton said, “Gave him a regulation karate chop, huh?”

  “Sir, you
r accusations are unfounded.”

  Woody came running up.

  “I say, what have we here?”

  He bent over Dr. Wilson. Beverly Chambers came up, somewhat impolitely pushed him out of the way and put her head on his chest.

  “He said he had a fractured radius,” Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones said, “whatever that is.”

  “He’s broken his arm,” Woody said. “I once broke my radius. That’s how I came to Spruce Harbor in the first place, as a matter of fact.”

  “Who’s the Limey?” Lieutenant Commander Morton asked.

  “Sir,” Woody said, coming to attention, “Midshipman Woodburn-Haverstraw.”

  “His Grace the Duke of Folkestone,” Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones added.

  “Yes, sir!” Commander Morton said.

  “There’s a first-aid kit in the buggy,” Beverly Chambers said. “Somebody get it. We’ll immobilize his arm and take him to Spruce Harbor Medical Center.”

  Woody headed up the ladder.

  “Get on the radio,” Beverly Chambers said, “and tell the hospital we’re coming.”

  Getting on radios was obviously the sort of thing a naval officer was expected to do. Commander Cooper Morton started up the ladder to the buggy after Woody. Alfred the dog, of course, had no way of knowing that Commander Morton was trying to help. It looked to him as if the man was chasing Woody. Alfred the dog didn’t think it was nice for people to chase Woody. He put his paws on the side on the buggy and took Commander Morton’s leg in his mouth. He didn’t bite his leg, or even grip it very hard. He just held him there. Commander Morton, who had seen the movie Jaws, looked down to see what was holding his leg and lost his cool. He started to clamber desperately upward. What he grabbed, however, instead of the ladder rung he was reaching for, was Woody’s leg.

  Woody came tumbling back down, landing on top of Commander Morton. Alfred the dog started to lick his face. Commander Morton lay just as still as he possibly could.

  “Are you all right, Woody?” Beverly asked, turning from her attentions to Dr. Wilson.

  “Nothing serious,” Midshipman His Grace the Duke of Folkestone replied. “But if you are going to call the hospital, you’d better make it two broken radii.” He winced and then went on. “Or is it radiuses? Alfred, let the nice man up. He has to use the radio.”

  The USS Satyriasis sailed with the tide the next morning, carrying aboard her eleven foreign national midshipmen, including Midshipman His Grace the Duke of Folkestone, whose right arm was in a cast, and their escort officer, Lieutenant (j.g.) Joanne Pauline Jones, U.S.N.

  The Honorable Secretary of State, looking just slightly hung over, made a little speech. The blessings of the deity upon the voyage were invoked by the Reverend Mother Emeritus Margaret H. W. Wilson, and the Spruce Harbor High School Band played both the national anthem and “Anchors, Aweigh!”

  The latter musical selection, played as the USS Satyriasis actually backed from the pier, was disturbed by several happenings not on the official program of events. Alfred the dog, seeing the people he loved next best to Hawkeye Pierce, Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones and Midshipman Woodburn-Haverstraw, sailing away, began to cry. He was joined in this lament by his adopted uncle, Wee Black Doggie, and by his sisters and brother, Duchess, Darling and Beauregard. The mournful sound of the howling of near-grown Scottish wolfhounds to which was added the basso tremolo of one full-grown animal, so disturbed the engineman of USS Satyriasis that he confused his captain’s orders, and went FULL AHEAD on the port engine and FULL ASTERN on the starboard engine, instead of the other way around, and a collision between the USS Satyriasis and the Spruce Harbor municipal garbage barge, The Pride of Maine, which had been decked out for the occasion in suitable patriotic bunting, resulted.

  No lasting damage was done, and as Mayor Moosenose Bartlett, a passenger on The Pride of Maine at the time, later said, in years to come the good citizens of Spruce Harbor could point with pride to The Pride of Maine as the only garbage barge proudly bearing marks of an encounter with a nuclear submarine.

  Admiral Saltee, however, saw only that the prestige of the U.S. Navy had been sullied twice in two days. (The first time, of course, being when Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones, charged with the simple task of getting the duke of Folkstone aboard the Satyriasis in one piece, had miserably failed. He didn’t want to hear the details. The bottom fine was that a VIP in custody of the U.S. Navy had wound up with a busted arm.)

  He ran to the end of the dock, shouting, “I want that engineman’s name!” He had time to shout this twice before he found himself sailing through the air to end up with a large splash in the waters of Spruce Harbor itself.

  “I didn’t see dat,” the Secretary of State said to Dr. Pierce. “I didn’t see a thing. I vas looking in duh udder direction entirely. If ennybudy vas to ask me, did I see you shove duh admiral off the dock, I don’t know from nudding.”

  “Come along, Tubby,” Hawkeye said. “Trapper and I want a word with you.”

  “Vatch it vit dat ‘Tubby’ business, will you please? I mean, tink about duh prestige uf duh United States government.”

  “Tubby, looking at your smiling face, your jiggling jowls and pearly whites, so to speak, on the tube, you’d never guess what a hard-nosed, cold-blooded, insensitive character you really are.”

  “You’re insulting me again,” the secretary said. “You doing it to keep in practice, Hawkeye, or maybe there’s a purpose?”

  “You mean to tell me you didn’t see the unmitigated sorrow on the dock?”

  “You mean, did I hear dem dogs howl? How could I miss it?”

  “I refer to His Grace the Duke of Folkestone,” Trapper said.

  “He personally assured me, wise guy, on his word as an English gentleman, dat the arm don’t hurt much. Just a liddle.”

  “I thought the whole purpose of this operation was to keep His Grace happy,” Trapper asked.

  “You mean he’s not happy? I mean, vat else can ve do? Ve gif him a ride on a nuclear submarine. Dat don’t make him happy?”

  “You didn’t see the tears in his eyes, his stiff upper lip?”

  “To tell you the truth, I didn’t notice,” the secretary confessed. “You want to tell me vat’s bothering him?”

  “You didn’t see the looks he was exchanging with Beverly? It was enough to melt even your heart, Tubby.”

  “Frankly, I vas watching the udder guy. I never saw a doctor crying before.”

  “We, too, are human,” Hawkeye said. “Foul rumors to the contrary.”

  “He’s really god it bad for dat lady sailor, don’t he?” the secretary said.

  “You’re standing in the way of true love,” Trapper said. “Twice.”

  “Dat’s duh vay duh ball bounces,” the secretary said.

  “What if His Grace realizes that you’re the reason that he’s two-hundred feet under the Atlantic, going further away from his lady love with every turn of the screw?” Hawkeye asked.

  “You vant to run dat by again? What’s vit duh screw?”

  “Those things on the bottom of the ship,” Trapper explained. “That turn around and around?”

  “So dat’s vhat dey call dem!”

  “What if His Grace decides that the way to get back at the guy who keeps separating him from his lady love is to rent his seaport to some body else?”

  “He vouldn’t do dat!” the Secretary of State said. “He’s an Englisher gentleman.”

  “Not unless someone put a few well-chosen words in his ear, he wouldn’t,” Trapper said.

  “Who vould do something rotten like dat?” the secretary protested, considering the matter, and added, “Either one of you two vould, come to think of it. O.K. So vat do you vant from me?”

  “I thought you would never ask,” Hawkeye said.

  “Before you slip it to me, I god to tell you the USS Satyriasis ain’t going to turn around and come back.”

  “That thought had crossed my mind,” Trapper said.

  “I can’t tell
you vy, but it ain’t going to stop more than a couple of minutes in Herstead-on-Heath, just time enough to let them get off.”

  “Then where’s it going?”

  “I can’t tell you, of course,” the Sectetary of State said. “The Russians shouldn’t know. But if you vas to ask me was it going to the Mediterranean, I vouldn’t lie to you.”

  Admiral Saltee at this time rejoined the party.

  “Mr. Secretary!”’ he said, rushing up, shaking a two-pound Croaker out of his left pants leg. “You’re all right, thank God!”

  “Vy shouldn’t I be all right? You know maybe something I don’t know?”

  “There’s assassins afoot!” Admiral Saltee said. “Some dastardly foreign agent pushed me into the harbor.”

  “No!” Hawkeye said.

  “Tell me, Admiral,” Trapper said. “How much trouble would it be to get Lieutenant Jones and Midshipman Woodburn-Haverstraw off the USS Satyriasis?”

  “You mean now? While it is proceeding across the broad Atlantic, on a secret course at a classified flank speed, at a depth beneath the surface which would make the Russian Navy eat its heart out, if they found out how deep, which they won’t?”

  “Right,” Trapper John said.

  “Virtually impossible.”

  “That hard, huh?” Trapper John said.

  “It would entail,” Admiral Saltee said, frankly a little pleased that he was going to have a chance to show off his vast nautical knowledge, “first of all, authority from the highest, and I mean the highest, headquarters. Possibly even as high as a deputy assistant undersecretary of the navy. I mean, really up there!”

  “And what else?” Trapper said. The Secretary of State mopped his sweaty brow.