Signature Service

Note and Disclaimer: I don't own the characters of M*A*S*H. However, it's been high time that I wrote another blurb about somebody or another. Enjoy!

I, your lonely company clerk, Corporal Klinger, type away reports as the excitement from Tokyo (and nearly being dead) winds down from the winter months and I am stuck doing all this paperwork. It's the season for catching up. The makeup from acting as a geisha still itches underneath my cap. Sweat is pouring down my face as the office heats up. And, of course, the war is ending.

The war is ending? How can such a thing be said? It can't happen!

Can it?

I mean, we've been stuck hearing rumor after rumor about the end of the war. Now, it's May 1953 and we're still no closer to the end than we were back in Christmas 1950.

Well, that's my honest opinion anyway.

And yet…

I turn to the left and then to the right and sigh with relief. Our Chief of Chiefs is in his own office, signing some of the reports I've been typing up. He's in no hurry to get out of there, seeing as how Captains Pierce and Hunnicutt are also in there, drinking to their heart's content (the former still smoldering over events beyond his control, especially over the woman he loves). Major Winchester is blowing his own horn in the Swamp, a replacement from the one run over by us, except the noise is more bearable and the music is better. Major Houlihan is in Post-Op with Nurse Kellye. Father Mulcahy is at the orphanage, fixing their roof again. Nobody else in the camp is willing to bother me when the garlic is strung up and uplifting my spirits.

So, I am alone. Alone, to think of schemes of the past, blunders of the present and the Toledo of my future. The war may be ending soon supposedly, but I am more than willing to run off before the end, even if it means losing the one woman I love myself.

In the past, I've copied Colonel Potter's signature, which always makes me cautious whenever I think about it, more so than any other escape plan. Oftentimes, I've hid the most incriminating evidence and was even found out once by Potter himself (who suggested the middle initial was off). But just this once, just for today, I would like to look over the signature that I have painstakingly copied for many months now, just to see if I can get those discharge papers rolling again. Just this once, I would like to be free and run off into Toledo, where I can eat a hot dog at Packo's and scheme away on something to get richer…

The practice signatures were in the locked drawer of this desk. If only I could be alone for a second more and get those papers mailed! I mean, who else other than me checks the outgoing mail anyway?

I take the key from around my neck, the one I hide so that nobody could figure out where the signature service is, and gently ease open the drawer as the key clicks it unlocked. There was my salvation in that drawer, the mouth-watering taste of a discharge I have been dreaming about. I quickly cradle the notepad and discharge paperwork into my arms, hugging it tightly, and then sought a pen, willing to put it to use for the final time.

Just as I was about to grab my pen, the door behind me opens and then closes fast.

"Klinger!" Major Houlihan yells, putting her shirt over her nose as she hollered through the door. "Get out here! This supply report you're sending out isn't right."

I slammed the notepad and discharge paperwork into the drawer fast, not willing to lock it at the moment without suspicion. "Whatever is in there is what I was told to put in the report, oh Gracious Lady Major," I replied sweetly, putting the blame on Colonel Potter, even though he did not deserve it.

"Don't coat your words in honey, you Lebanese slimebag! Get out here and fix this report before it gets sent out." Major Houlihan appeared more than angry with me than ever before, even when she was with Major Burns. "And don't get anything else done until I say so!"

Turning around so that she could not see my snicker, I only answered, "Yes, Sir. I'll be on it now."

Satisfied, Major Houlihan left. And it gave me the precious seconds I needed to lock the drawer.

I sighed, shaking my head with sadness. Another day…another day, it will happen. And I'll be in Toledo before long.