1940, and Hawkeye and Johnny chase girls together in their spare time, fill Dean Lodge's office with jelly and icecream, and start a riot in an Ohio bath house. Hawkeye lives just off the grounds of his college in a falling-down shack which his classmates christen 'the Swamp', and John McIntyre is only the last in a long, proud line of Boston Irish ever to keep a distillery in his bedroom.
1941, and Johnny takes to attending the Androscoggin lectures instead of his own. He acquires from somewhere a beaten-up guitar, and sits on the roof of Dartmouth nursing college inventing rude lyrics to "God Bless America". Hawkeye mails Dean Lodge a nervous system after his first autopsy, and travels to Boston for the Christmas break. He charms Ruth McIntyre with his blue-eyed innocence and becomes an indispensable aid to Xavier McIntyre's obsessive football following. He meets Johnny's brothers, Michael, Adam, and Luke, and begins a casual but lasting flirtation with his sister Kathy. As a seasonal gift, Dean Lodge receives a trailer full of kidneys, and a Christmas pudding.
1942, and the pattern is reversed. Johnny spends a lazy summer in Maine, and is instructed in the art of catching lobsters by Daniel Pierce. On the return journey, he discovers an old flame from high school escorting her grandmother to Boston, and traps her in the toilet of the train until she agrees to be his date to the Winter Carnival. This event gives rise to a multitude of ribald jokes on the part of Hawkeye, and John McIntyre becomes something of a college legend, and, in the immortal words of one Duke Forrest, 'the only man ever to get a piece in the ladies can of the Boston-Maine express.' The girl, Louise, doesn't seem to mind, and becomes a regular cheerleader at the Dartmouth football games. Johnny acquires a new nickname.
1943, and Hawkeye begins his medical residency at Boston General. He shares a flat with Trapper John and Duke Forrest, and they live off the bones of their arses. Together, Hawkeye and Trapper swim the Charles River in a fit of drunken enthusiasm, hold a pagan bonfire ceremony in the middle of their flat, and send Dean Lodge a farewell gift of appendixes in custard cream. They move their way systematically through most of the girls in Boston, and Trapper dates Louise regularly on his nights off. Kathy moves in with them for a while, and she and Hawk go steady, until one night she leaves, and is replaced by a young intern by the name of Carlye Breslin. Trapper proposes to Lou at midnight on the 24th of December, and her parents are quite satisfactorily horrified.
1944, Lou and Trapper are married. Trap's brother Mike is best man, and Hawkeye stands beside Luke and Adam in his dad's old tuxedo and tries not to giggle at the expressions of Louise's relatives. After the ceremony, they all drink too much, and Lou's Aunty Marge faints at Duke and Hawkeye's musical rendition of Trapper's more memorable exploits. Carlye has a row with Hawk after he flirts outrageously with Kathy at the reception, and Louise's grandparents give her and Trapper the down payment on a little house in the suburbs. During the honeymoon, Hawkeye and Duke slope moodily from one bar to another wondering why Trap had to go and get married anyway, and how come they manage to get their faces slapped so often. Not long afterwards, Lou and Trapper move out, Duke goes home to Georgia, and Hawkeye sulks for days. Carlye complains that he cares about his work more than her, and walks out on him. Hawkeye returns to Crabapple Cove, and helps his dad catch lobsters. He receives a single letter from Trapper John. He neglects to reply, but he keeps the photograph of the baby girl in the white christening gown sleeping on her Daddy's knee.
August 1945, America bombs Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and World Peace is declared.