Chapter Four
"Hold it, Hawk!" Hunnicutt shouted, several miles and several million raindrops later.
Pierce hit the brakes. "What! What is it!"
"A river!" B.J. exclaimed, jumping from the vehicle.
Winchester gave their driver's back an annoyed glare and got re-situated in his seat. "Oh boy!" he stated sarcastically. "A river!" He held Hunnicutt's spinning rod up. "Wait! Don't forget this!"
Hawkeye slipped out from behind the wheel and hurried to catch up to his friend. "BeeJ! Wait up! Where are you going?"
"There's only one river in this whole part of Korea," he explained, as they slipped and slid down a muddy embankment. "And it flows in only one direction–to the Southwest!"
Pierce watched as his companion carefully inched his way clear down to the very brink of the river's steep bank. He continued watching as B.J. stooped down and then plunged his hand into the rushing water. "Oh, I get it. A natural compass, right?"
"Right! You could float clear down to Seoul on this thing..." Hunnicutt's words trailed off.
Hawkeye suddenly felt a little nervous–no, extremely nervous. "BeeJ? What's wrong? What is it?"
B.J. slowly straightened back up. "According to the river...we've been traveling in a North, Northeasterly direction since we left the cutoff..." his words trailed off again.
Hawkeye's already numbed brain was numbed even further, by this bit of news. "My god...we must be miles behind the lines," he realized, aloud
The pair stood there, in stunned silence, for a few more panic-filled moments then they turned around and started scrambling back up the slippery slope.
"Back so soon?" Charles queried, still in his best sarcastic fashion. "What's the matter? Weren't they biting?"
The two Captains completely ignored him and quickly piled back into the jeep.
Winchester suddenly felt a bit nervous, himself. "What is the matter?" he repeated, this time sounding sincere.
Pierce's only reply was to turn their jeep around and then head off, in the direction they'd just come from, at a rather high rate of speed.
A knot suddenly formed in the pit of the Major's empty stomach. "Don't tell me we've been..." he allowed his words to trail off.
The two Captains honored his request and remained silent.
Margaret braced herself, as the truck suddenly lurched. The woman stiffened as her patient suddenly stiffened and let out an agonizing groan. "Pass me that knapsack at your feet," she requested of the private sitting beside her.
He did.
The woman flipped the satchel open and started rummaging through its contents. She discovered a little flashlight and then used it to locate a bottle of morphine, a syringe, some alcohol and a box of cotton swabs. 'Good ole B.J.,' she silently mused. 'No wonder it took him so long to get back.' The Captain had thought of everything. She filled the syringe with morphine and pulled the blankets back from her groaning patient, to reveal his left wrist. She dipped one of the swabs in alcohol and used it to sterilize the tip of the IV port. "Easy, soldier," the nurse comforted, as she slowly emptied the syringe's contents into a vein in the Lieutenant's left arm. "I'm giving you something for the pai–" Margaret braced herself once more, as the truck hit another deep rut and lurched again.
Her patient stiffened again and let out an involuntary cry.
The woman winced and reached for the Lieutenant's clenched left fist. "It won't be long now," she soothingly assured him. The nurse pried the patient's fingers open and placed his hand in hers, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "Hang on, Lieutenant.," she urged.
The young officer gripped her hand firmly, in return.
Margaret felt the lumbering vehicle slowing to a stop.
A few seconds later, the canvas flap on the back of the truck was lifted and the silhouette of a man's helmeted head appeared. "Margaret?" a familiar voice called out. "Are you in there?"
"Yes, Colonel," the Major answered, and exhaled a sigh of relief. The sound of Potter's voice caused her to feel a bit more at ease..
Potter was equally relieved to hear her voice. "What about the Three Stooges?" he annoyedly inquired.
Margaret was forced to smile. "No, sir. They're behind us...in a jeep...towing the generator."
"Thank god!" her commander exclaimed. "I was beginning to get a little nervous when we couldn't raise them on the radio."
"I seem to recall Captain Hunnicutt mentioning that he was having some sort of trouble with it," she truthfully admitted.
Potter seemed surprised to hear this. He hadn't really believed B.J. . He suddenly remembered something else. "How's the Lieutenant?"
"I'm...okay, Colonel," Ames replied, his voice barely above a whisper.
His comment caused the Colonel to smile. "Glad to hear it, son. Take good care of him, Major," he affectionately added. Then the canvas flap fell and he was gone.
Margaret smiled sadly down at her patient. "I will, sir," she quietly vowed, and gave the Lt.'s hand another reassuring squeeze.
The truck lurched again and they drove on.
Colonel Potter and Sgt. Klinger stood, waiting patiently at the side of the road, as first another troop transport truck and then a single jeep came grinding up. The jeep was loaded with sleeping soldiers instead of doctors and it was not towing a generator. Yet it appeared to be the last vehicle in the convoy. They flagged it down.
"Sergeant, is there another jeep behind you!" Potter inquired of the driver.
"Yes, sir," the soldier assured him. He turned and stared off into the pitch blackness behind them. "At least, there was the last time I looked..." he uncertainly added.
The Colonel gazed down the dark, deserted road, praying to catch a glimpse of bobbing headlights approaching. But, several minutes passed...and no narrow beams of light appeared. Potter's spirits fell and his temper rose. "Exactly when was the last time you looked!"
The Sergeant had to think for a moment. "A couple a' miles before we hit that first turn-off...I think. I'm sorry, sir. I guess I didn't really notice. I was so busy trying to stay awake...trying to keep this thing on the road." The soldier glanced at his dozing companions. "This is the first real sleep they've had in three days." He turned back to the Colonel, "This thing is almost out of gas, sir. But, if you'll let us use your jeep, we could go back and look for them," he volunteered.
One thought kept running through the Colonel's mind...and he didn't like thinking it. He gave the exhausted soldier an appreciative smile. "All right. We'll wait here for you." He turned to Klinger. "Sergeant, pass the word. We're stopping the convoy again."
Klinger nodded and held up his walkietalkie.
"Look alive, ladies!" the Sergeant taunted his motionless men. "C'mon! Snap to it! We're trading jeeps!"
The men moaned and groaned and reluctantly began exiting their vehicle..
"We have wounded with us," the Colonel reminded them, "and they can't wait in the backs of those trucks all night. So don't go too far." He patted the Sergeant's walkie-talkie, "And keep me posted," he strongly advised. "I want to hear from you every five minutes, understood?"
"Yes, sir," the Sergeant acknowledged, with a snappy salute.
Potter watched as the men–and his jeep– headed off down the road, in the direction they'd just come from.
Speaking of gas shortages...
Pierce stiffened and tightened his grip on the steering wheel as his jeep's engine began to sputter and they began slowing down.
"What's the matter?" Hunnicutt inquired.
"I don't know." Hawkeye pumped the gas pedal and pulled the choke out, but their jeep's engine just continued to die out.
The three mens' spirits dropped as their speed dropped. The sputtering engine finally conked out entirely and the jeep coasted to an eerie, quiet stop.
Hawkeye tried, several times, to get the stalled vehicle started again. But his efforts were to no avail. He exhaled a gasp of frustration, then slammed the steering wheel with his fist and cursed. "We must be out of gas!" he glumly realized, and then sat there, kicking himself for forgetting to check the gauge before leaving the camp.
Winchester was completely devastated. "Marvelous!" he shouted sarcastically, as his extreme disappointment gave way to anger. "Leave it to you to pick a jeep with a gas tank as empty as your head!"
"That's right, Charles!" Hawkeye shouted right back, sounding equally sarcastic. "Blame me and forget all about the guy who insisted on going back to camp to get his medical bag, so that we would have to go back for him...and then end up getting lost while trying to catch up to the convoy again!"
"And let's not forget the guy who forgot the walkie-talkie we were supposed to use to keep in touch with the Colonel, so we could avoid getting lost in the first place! It's all my fault!" B.J. bitterly declared, and then sat there feeling terribly guilty and dejected.
There was a long silence.
His two companions gradually came to realize that they were–all three–at least partly to blame for the predicament they now found themselves in.
"No," Winchester corrected, "no, I'm afraid Pierce is right. I should never have gone ba–"
"–Nah," Hawkeye interrupted. "I should've checked the gas gauge before we left."
Their admissions caused B.J. to feel a tad bit less guilty and miserable.
There followed another long silence.
"C'mon!" Pierce prompted. "Help me get this thing off the road."
Winchester and Hunnicutt climbed wearily out to lend Hawkeye a hand.
The jeep's driver shifted its transmission into neutral. Then he climbed out himself and started cramping the rolling vehicle's wheel hard to the left.
They soon had the thing both off the road and out of sight. B.J. and Charles gathered up their prized possessions.
"Now what?" Winchester glumly wondered.
"No-ow, we start walking," Hawkeye simply said.
"Walking!" the beat-on-his-feet Bostonian found the very idea horrifying. Why, he could barely stand. "Walking where?"
"Back to that crossroads," Hawkeye informed him. "The Colonel must've discovered we were missing, by now. He's probably sent somebody back to look for us."
"But...that must be miles from here!" the Major reminded him.
"So...we'll walk real fast."
"Humph! I barely have the strength to stand."
"Then we'll crawl real fast," the Captain corrected and started heading off down muddy, rutty road.
Charles let out a pitiful moan. "My kingdom for a rick-shaw!" he pouted, misquoting Shakespeare.
His companions were forced to smile.
Hunnicutt and Winchester caught up with their leader and the trio kept right on limping, slipping and sliding...in a Southerly direction.
Speaking of their destination...
Two soldiers came racing up to Colonel Potter's jeep in the dark. "We might as well forget it, Sarge," one of them breathlessly announced. "The commies have roadblocks set up on both the North and the South turnoffs."
The second soldier nodded in agreement. "If they did take the wrong road, they're cut off for sure, now, because we don't have the manpower or machinery to take on an entire regiment."
Their Sergeant uttered a few choice expletives and reluctantly raised the walkie-talkie to his lips.
Potter jerked, startled as the soldier's voice suddenly spoke his name. He raised his radio and thumbed its the transmit button. "Potter here," he anxiously acknowledged, "go ahead, Sergeant." He and his company clerk listened as the combat veteran explained the situation at the crossroads...and then requested further orders.
The one thought that had been going through the Colonel's head for the past half hour was finally put into words. "If the Chinese don't already have them," he grimly informed Klinger, "it won't be long before they do..." A new, even more horrifying thought wormed its way into his head...the thought that the U.N. had no Prisoner Exchange Agreement with the Chinese. The 4077th's Commander exhaled an oath or two, of his own making, and then raised his radio. "All right, Sergeant. You and your men rejoin the convoy. I-Corps will have to handle it from here."
The Sergeant acknowledge his latest order and then signed off.
Potter passed the walkie-talkie to Klinger. "Get I-Corps for me, will you," he quietly requested, his voice a bit shaky.
Klinger's body had gone completely numb, from the news. It was a while before he could get his mouth to move. "Yes, sir."
The Colonel just continued to stand there, staring sadly off into the darkness...to the North. "God, help them," he prayed aloud..
Hawkeye cautiously peered up from a rain-filled ditch at the side of the once again deserted road. It appeared that the last of the enemy's troop transport trucks had finally passed. Yes, the only convoy they'd managed to come across turned out to be the wrong one. "Okay. They've gone," he quietly informed the two motionless men sprawled out beside him.
B.J. reluctantly raised his helmeted head.
Charles remained motionless.
Hunnicutt studied the Major's still figure for a moment or two. "I think he fell asleep."
"Well, wake him up. C'mon! We gotta get outta here."
B.J. could feel his helmeted head succumbing to the gravitational pull of the earth. It felt so good to be lying down. He never dreamed cold, damp ground could be so comfortable...
"Bee-eeJ!" Hawkeye gave his half out of it chum a not too gentle shake. "C'mon! Get up!"
Hunnicutt groaned. It took every ounce of his remaining strength just to make it up onto his hands and knees.
Pierce pulled him the rest of the way to his feet and then tried to rouse the soundly sleeping Major.
B.J. stood there on the side of the road, swaying from complete physical exhaustion. "Hawk, we've been walking for hours. Are we gonna walk around North Korea all night?"
"We are going to walk around North Korea for as long as it takes us to reach South Korea," Hawkeye staunchly determinedly and hauled Winchester to his unsteady feet. "C'mon, Charles!" he quietly encouraged. "Up and at 'em!".
Winchester groaned. "Go away. Even if I possessed the strength, which I do not, I could not go on. My feet are killing me!"
"If you don't get with it, Charles, they won't be the only ones."
The Major exhaled another pitiful moan and, reluctantly, locked his knees. He somehow managed to take a few staggering steps...backwards. "I've always pictured dying in one's sleep as a rather pleasant way to go," he grumbled, groggily.
His friends were forced to smile.
B.J. retrieved his box of photos and letters and placed it back beneath the protective cover of his rain parka..
Hawkeye stashed Charles' belongings in his arms and then started ushering him and B.J. up out of the ditch.
"When did it stop raining?" Winchester wondered, noticing the lack of precipitation for the first time.
"Who cares!" his companions simultaneously replied.
Charles aimed annoyed glares in their direction and started to pose another question.
"I have a great idea," Pierce suddenly cut in. "Let's see who can be the quietest."
The Major sighed and reluctantly closed his mouth.
It was awfully dark...and they were awfully tired. And that is probably why none of them noticed the jeep stalled in the middle of the road, until they were almost right on top of it. The trio immediately ground to a halt and then glanced around for someplace to take cover.
Four North Korean soldiers were huddled around a fifth North Korean soldier who was kneeling down, changing their jeep's left rear tire. The North Koreans seemed as startled by the three men's sudden appearance as the three men were by their's. Nobody moved for several seconds. Then there was the unmistakable sound of rifle bolts being rammed into place.
The Americans' hearts momentarily stopped beating..
"Quan san lui nai!" B.J. pleaded in broken Korean. "Kung li maisun!"
This time, the silence was broken by the sound of snickering...then outright laughter. The North Korean soldiers untensed a bit, but still kept their rifles raised and trained on the Americans.
"What did you say to them?" Hawkeye wondered, in a nervous whisper.
Hunnicutt stood there, listening to the laughter and looking a puzzled. "I thought I told them not to shoot...that we were friends," he whispered back.
Winchester was too petrified to even breathe deeply. "What do we do now?" he inquired, softly.
"Well...we're definitely out-manned and out-gunned," Pierce quickly determined. "So, all in favor of an unconditional surrender, .raise you hands. Go ahead, BeeJ, tell 'em we surrender."
B.J. didn't know if he dared. The laughter still hadn't completely died down from his last attempt at Korean. He was much more adept at phrases like: 'How old is the baby?' He was just going to have to improvise. The doctor drew a deep breath in and then tried again. "Uhh, grau won ming...lo?" he added, uncertainly and was rewarded with another round of hearty laughter. "I'm not sure if I'm gaining–or losing–something in the translation." Whatever the case, Hunnicutt very slowly raised his hands into the air, along with his companions.
"At least you've put them in a good mood," Hawkeye rationalized.
One of the North Korean soldiers stomped up to them. "Pi que!"he ordered menacingly, and waved the barrel of his gun right in their faces.
There was no need to translate. The tone of his voice and his unfriendly gesture meant "Shut up!" in any language.
They did.
The bully, who was obviously the group's leader, shouted out a few more orders to his 'comrades'.
Their belongings were confiscated and their bodies were searched thoroughly.
B.J. smiled, inwardly, as the searchers failed to find the little packet of letters he had stashed up under his helmet.
Hawkeye smiled, inwardly, as well, seeing his captors weren't quite sure what to make of the way he was dressed. It was fair to say they'd never seen anyone wearing 12 different shirts all at the same time before.
Winchester frowned, outwardly, seeing his precious medical bag in the grubby little hands of these North Korean savages.
Following the search, the physician's elevated arms were pulled down and wrenched behind their backs. Their wrists were then tied so tightly so as to cut off the circulation to their hands..
If the three of them had been anything but surgeons, B.J. probably wouldn't've disobeyed orders by requesting that their bonds be loosened...just a little. Not only was the good doctor's request denied, but he managed to get a rifle butt in the ribs and another "Pi que!" thrown at him.
Hawkeye was livid.
The head bad guy raised his rifle butt again and stood there, glaring at Pierce and daring him to speak.
The Captain had everything he could do to contain his seething emotions and keep his mouth shut.
B.J. finally got his breath back. The soldiers jerked him back up onto his feet and then started shoving him and the others in the direction of their jeep. Their friend had finished changing the tire.
'Maybe we should look on the bright side,' B.J. reasoned, as the three of them were crammed into the vehicle's back seat. 'At least these guys occasionally exchanged prisoners...'
The jeep started off with a lurch.
Hawkeye was feeling extremely nauseated. He figured it was the North Koreans. They made him wanna throw up! He was beginning to think that they'd've been better off to make a run for it and take their chances at dodging a bullet. Maybe there was some truth to that saying, 'Better dead than Red', after all?
The only redeeming feature about the whole affair, as far as Winchester was concerned, was the dubious fact that they no longer had to walk. The Bostonian wriggled his rapidly numbing fingers and began to pray...fervently.
The jeep rumbled across a rickety old wooden, one-lane bridge, just up from where they had made their U-Turn. They came to a fork in the road and the driver turned off onto a, for lack of a better descriptive set of nouns, 'cow trail'. They followed this narrow, bumpy, boulder-strewn path until they reached a deserted, bombed-out village. Which, from appearances, the North Korean Army had turned into a temporary command post.
They prisoners were jerked roughly from the back of the jeep, prodded across an open yard and then shoved into a cold, damp, dark hut. The door was slammed and they were left alone in the silent blackness of their makeshift prison. They stood there, quietly, for a few moments and then let out long, loud sighs...of relief.
"Will one of you please remove this cord before my entire career as a surgeon comes to a halt, along with my circulation?" Charles pleaded, pitifully.
Hawkeye used the sound of Winchester's voice to position himself in a way that would enable him to do just that. He stood back-to-back with the Bostonian and fumbled with Winchester's bonds with numb fingers. "Will yah stand still?" he irritatedly requested.
Charles obligingly halted all movement.
"Maybe we should just loosen them a little?" B.J. suggested. "If we remove them entirely they might replace them just as snugly...if not snugger."
Hawkeye hesitated. "You've got a point, BeeJ. How 'bout it, Charles?"
"Remove them, please! I'll take my chances."
Hawkeye returned to his arduous task.
B.J.'s tired eyes strained to adjust to the darkness. They gradually did and he wandered around, checking the place out. "I don't think I'm gonna like this hotel," he announced.. "The bellhops are extremely rude. And, I'll just bet they have lousy room service." He found the small, one-room hut to be completely devoid of both furnishings and furniture. "I get first dibs on the floor."
Winchester exhaled another audible sigh of relief, as the cord, at last, fell free. The surgeon pulled his liberated wrists from behind his back and began massaging life back into his numb appendages. "Thank you, Pierce."
"You're welcome. Now, how about returning the favor?"
Winchester took the hint and went to work on Hawkeye's bonds.
"Just loosen mine, Charles. And I'll let you know when they're comfortable."
Winchester's usually responsive fingers failed to cooperate. It took him forever to get the knot untied. Finally, he got the cord loosened.
"That's fine, Charles," Hawkeye determined, feeling the circulation returning to his wrists. "Now put the knot back."
Easier said than done. Winchester was used to tying complicated, delicate sutures. Now, suddenly, there he was incapable of forming a big, bulky knot. The experience was unnerving. "If I were not so-o-o fatigued, I would probably be scared to death right now."
"Me, too," Pierce admitted.
"Me, three," Hunnicutt confessed.
"It's rather odd, but I am not particularly concerned about anything right now but sleep...blessed sleep." Charles stifled a yawn. "I am simply too tired to care anymore what happens." He stifled another yawn. He finished loosening B.J.'s bonds and slowly started slipping to the dirt floor of their prison. "Too tired," he muttered sleepily. The Major rested his head on his folded arms and dozed off–instantly.
"Me too," Hawkeye mumbled. He dropped to the floor, rolled onto his side, rested his head on Winchester's back and immediately drifted off to sleep.
"Me three," B.J. whispered, softly. The Captain took one last, weary look around. Then he dropped to his knees, sprawled out on the ground and joined them.
Twenty minutes later, the door to their dismal hut flew open with a forceful kick.
Four North Korean soldiers stomped into the dark room. While two of the men covered the sleeping hostages with their rifles, the other two marched up to the snoring Major and latched onto his arms. They jerked the prisoner roughly to his feet and then half-dragged and half-carried the moaning American from the room. The two soldiers with the rifles backed out into the yard. The door was slammed–again–and re-barred.
Pierce was rudely awakened when his 'pillow' was yanked out from under him.
B.J. was roused by the loud banging of the door.
The two Captains lay there for a few moments, dazed and disoriented. Then grim reality hit them and they struggled quickly to their knees.
"Charles?" Pierce anxiously called out.
No answer.
Hawkeye knelt there, trying to revive the arm he had been sleeping on, "Charles?" he shouted, a bit louder.
Still no response.
B.J. squinted down at the black void where Winchester had been lying. "They must've taken 'im," he grimly reasoned. "What do you suppose they intend to do with him?"
Hawkeye shrugged, but then realized his friend couldn't see his reply and forced himself to answer vocally. "Who knows? They probably just wanna ask 'im a few questions."
Hunnicutt gazed solemnly up at their prison's only exit. It was just a matter of time before the soldiers came for them, too. He stiffened, suddenly remembering his hidden mail. The Captain snapped his head forward. His helmet slid off and dropped to the dirt floor, with a dull 'clunk'. B.J. was beginning to wonder if he was ever gonna get to read Peg's letters.
Both of them knelt there, lost in silent thought, until weariness and exhaustion overcame them once again. The two friends settled uncomfortably back down on the cold, hard ground. As they lay there, in the cool, damp dirt, they couldn't help but think of the cozy cots they were forced to leave back at their abandoned camp. And their friends. What had become of their friends? Hopefully, they were safe and sound...somewhere's to the South.
The 4077th's convoy had finally rumbled to a halt some fifteen miles to the South, in the small village of Seijo.
The 8063rd's MASH Unit had halted there, the previous evening, and was already set up on the outskirts of the village.
The 4077th's patients were tucked into the 8063rd's dry, cozy Post-Op, to be given medical attention and treatment until such a time as they could be Evac'ed down to the Hospital in Seoul.
While extra tents and cots were being hurriedly set up for the 4077th's travel-weary personnel, Colonel Potter commandeered an abandoned hut and had Klinger assemble the troops there for a brief, gloomy, announcement.
Potter studied the fatigued faces of the people crowded around him in the small, candle-lit room.
Nobody spoke a word. They just stood there, asleep on their feet, staring blankly back at their C.O..
"I realize you're all very tired, so I won't keep you long," their Colonel promised, his voice sounding hollow and strained. He cleared his throat and then reluctantly continued. "I just thought you should know that Major Winchester, Captain Pierce and Captain Hunnicutt are missing and have presumably been captured by the enem–" he stopped talking as the suddenly 'alert' group began voicing shock and disbelief at this bit of horrifying news. Potter held up his hands and motioned for everyone to hush up.
They did and he continued, "My last contact with them had 'em still in camp working on Lt. Ames. Now, Major Houlahan and Sergeant Flouren have both assured me that they made it out of there okay. So, I can only assume that they somehow got separated from the rest of the convoy and took a wrong turn back at the first crossroads. I sent the Sergeant back to look for them. His men found the place crawling with the Chine–" he was forced to stop again, as a dozen questions were thrown at him at once.
"I contacted those dunderheads down at I-Corps," he explained, looking and sounding terribly disgusted. "They tell me there is absolutely nothing they can do about it, right now. But, in the hope that they have fallen into North Korean–and not Chinese–hands the people over in Panmunjom are being notified. They will attempt to negotiate some sort of Prisoner Exchange–" he halted again. "Either way, they'll be needing our prayers." 'What a fine time for Captain Mulkahedy to be off in Tokyo on R&R', he glumly realized.
The still-stunned members of his audience exchanged grave, solemn glances.
"Until we get our doctors back, the 4077th will be operating as part of the 8063rd," Potter informed them.
The group groaned, in disappointment.
"Under my command," the Colonel added and their long, sorrowful faces instantly brightened...somewhat. "I expect your full cooperation. That is all I have to say. Now, let's all try to get some shut-eye!" Potter disappeared into a back room.
His people glanced glumly at one another and gradually began to disperse..
Major Houlahan was slumped in a chair beside Lt. Ames' cot. The sleeping soldier's hand still clutched her's, tightly. The nurse's eyelids kept drooping shut and her blonde head nodded, from time-to-time.
Private Benson was seated across from her. The young man marveled at the nurse's ability to remain awake. "Major, if you'd like to get some sleep, I'll stay with him," he finally offered.
The Major snapped her eyes open and she flashed the private a warm, appreciative smile. "Thanks, but I'm all right. I'd like to stay a while longer." She saw Nurse Davis enter the Post-Op. She also caught the rather forlorn look on her face. Margaret caught the woman's attention and motioned her over. "What did the Colonel have to say?"
Davis looked even more forlorn and hesitated to answer. "He says we're gonna be working as part of the 8063rd's for a while."
The Major suddenly felt a might forlorn, herself...and, more than a little confused. "Why? Why can't they just requisition us some new equipment? All we need are some new tents–"
"–And doctors," Davis abruptly interrupted. Tears began streaming silently down her cheeks. "Hawkeye, B.J. and Charles didn't make it..." she shakily informed her fellow nurse...and friend.
For a few moments, Margaret was simply too stunned to speak. She glared at the 'bad news' bearer in shock and disbelief. At last she found her voice. "What do you mean–!" she angrily began, but then remembered where she was at and lowered her voice. "What do you mean they didn't make it! Where are they? Are they all right?"
Davis blinked her blurring vision clear and struggled desperately to not break down. "Nobody knows where or how they are. The Colonel is pretty convinced they're lost behind the lines. He's afraid the commies might have 'em."
Davis' little revelation was simply too much for the Major to deal with. She shut her tired, tearing eyes. 'At least they're not dead,' she consoled herself. 'Yet...'. Her eyes reopened. "What's being done to get them back?"
"A lot of praying," Davis solemnly announced..
"That's it!" the outraged Major demanded. "That's all?" she re-inquired, in a much lower, and calmer, voice.
"For now, yes. So, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to get back to mine..."
"Yes...of course," Margaret assured her with an understanding nod..
Davis composed herself, as much as possible, and quietly walked away.
The Major stared rather dazedly down at the young Lieutenant. 'They would've made it if it weren't for you,' she bitterly realized. 'They would probably be here, right now, if they hadn't stayed behind to help you.'
Private Benson sensed her thoughts. "I'm sorry about your friends, Major. I...I know it probably wouldn't've happened if we hadn't asked them to stay behind and take care of the Lt., here."
"You're very astute, private," she cooly conceded.
Benson swallowed hard and stared determinedly back at the Major. "Would it help any to know that Lt. Ames got hurt while drawing enemy fire away from the rest of his platoon?"
Margaret's look softened and she stared thoughtfully back down at the young man clutching her hand.
"The Lt. is one very special guy, Major. He's the finest, bravest most unselfish man I've ever known. He's saved a lot of lives over here...some more than once. And the reason I'm telling you all this is because he'd never mention it himself. That's just the kind a' guy he is."
Margaret couldn't help but notice how perfectly the private's description fit each of the three missing doctors...her three missing friends. Her throat tightened and her vision blurred. She blinked to clear it. But it was blurring faster than she could blink, and so tears started running silently down her cheeks. "Yes...I know the type," the woman assured him, softly. Then she closed her eyes again...and started praying.
End of Chapter Four