Dear Mom, It's Casidy.

A MASH Fan Fiction

(Situated during the end of Season 3, before the end episode)

INSERT THEME SONG

Casidy sat in her tent, her hair glittered in the light. Radar had managed to find her a lamp. She smiled softly as she looked at the piece of paper sitting in front of her. It had been a while since she had written her mother at home, and she had told Trapper and Hawkeye to go and see the movie without her because of this.

She chewed on the top of her pen, thinking about all the things that she wanted to tell her mother about. It was so hard to not tell her mother about everything that was going through her head. She frowned, twisting a few strands of her hair around her finger before she began writing the letter. She made her letters neatly, gently sloping to the right hand side.

Dear Mother,

I am sorry that it has been so long since my last letter. It has been a long spring here in Korea. I miss home greatly. I miss the smell of our farm back home more and more every day. There are few flowers here, and I have managed to plant a few seeds that you have sent me. I have a small little patch of home in front of my tent, but its not nearly the same. They remind me of your flower beds... Radar has said that they remind him of home as well. It is nice to spend some of my free time watering them.

How is our family? I have thought of you all many times during my time here. It is almost as though memories of home are most of what fuel me some days. But I have found other things here to occupy my free time... I've been spending a lot of time with the surgeons here at the MASH unit. I'm sure that Radar has told you about them. They are as unique as they can be. I've never met men like them before in my life, even at the University. They are not only co-workers, but friends, good listeners, and shoulders when I am in need.

Colonel Henry Blake, he's our C.O. He's quite a man. He's very compassionate. He treats Radar like a son. He's quite a man. I'm sure that you'd appreciate the way that he's treated both Radar and myself. He has been quite a good person to talk to when the war starts to get to us. I've had to talk to him a time or two about patients. I've had to watch as several lost their lives on the tables at our unit. They come in missing parts, and we have to patch them back together. Colonel Blake is quite a surgeon. He takes very good care of the patients and his men. I have to say that I admire his quiet strength. He doesn't really run our camp in a way that is very GI... its more along the lines of being a piece of home dressed up in Army drab. He gets picked at by Majors Hoolahan and Burns for not being as GI as they think he should be.

Captain Hawkeye Pierce. His real name isn't Hawkeye, but it is appropriate. He's one of the best surgeons here at the unit. I've worked at the same table as him in the OR on several occasions and he is exactly that. A hawk eye. He can see shrapnel that other doctors would have left behind. He's a very knowledgeable man. He is our chief surgeon here at our Unit. He's very good at what he does. He deals with the stresses here in Korea differently than many here do. He makes it into a joke. He keeps our atmosphere light, and doesn't allow us to fall into a war depression. He's got a good joke anytime that any of us need it. He has been an amazing friend. He listens to me when I need him to. He is a big hit with all of the nurses, and is seldom without a date on his nights off. He rarely wears his full uniform around the camp, and I've never seen him in his dress uniform.

Major Frank Burns. He's quite a card. All he cares about is what we in the army call Brass. He's constantly worried about ranking and other nonsense like that. He thinks that its disgraceful for Hawkeye, Trapper and I to pal around with Walter and Corporal Klinger (I'll tell you more about him later.) He thinks that he's God's gift to surgeons. He's a terrible surgeon to be honest. I think that I'd rather not work at his table. I've been lucky enough to only be assigned his table twice. He's rude, obnoxious, and an all around terrible surgeon, if you want to call him that. He's a wolf in sheep's clothing. He's not a very good surgeon and enjoys flashing the flag in front of all of us. He believes that he's the only patriot here at camp, him and Hoolahan. He tends to annoy us all, so Trapper and Hawkeye make a point of playing tricks on him all the time to keep the camp's moral up. He's also having an affair with Major Hoolahan, even though he is married. I don't know how he lives with himself. Not that they'd admit that they were having an affair. They say that they're just good colleagues, and that everyone is making a big fuss out of nothing when it comes to them being together.

Captain Trapper John MacIntyre is an amazing doctor. He is a very good joker as well. I'd have to say that he's an amazing surgeon. He's second only to Pierce. He is the doctor that I am assigned to most of the time in the OR. The one thing that you won't like about him is that he's divorced recently. He and his wife have parted ways on amiable terms. To be honest, before they split, they weren't on the best terms... He married her because he got her pregnant, or at least that's what I've heard. He has two little girls named Becky and Kathy back home. They're really cute. He's shown me pictures of them. They both look so much like their father. Sometimes it makes me wonder who I really look like, my mother or my father. Curiosity killed the cat you know...

I have spent a lot of time with Trapper lately. He is a very kind man. We go to the movies together on movie nights. He and I have gotten very close during the months that I have been here at the MASH unit. He has taken good care of my needs. He even managed to get me an orange. It was the first orange that I've had in a very long time. I shared it with him, it would have only been fair. We went up to the heli-pad in a jeep and watched the sunset, eating the orange. It has to be the most romantic moment that I have ever had in my life.