In the New Year of 1951, Captain Oliver Wendell Jones is honourably discharged from military service. That's what it says on his travel orders. The reality is so very different. A routine visit to battalion aid, with Leslie and Klinger for company. A patient long past saving, lying on a stretcher beneath the rough shelter of a heap of rubble, a carcass in everything but name. No x-rays, because what's the point in x-raying a man whose torso has been pared down the middle? (A nice, clean slice, as though with a carving knife). No point at all, except that maybe, if aid stations were equipped with x-ray machines, someone might have seen the grenade lodged in the poor bastard's spine. Might have seen the unexploded shell, and lifted the body (still breathing, then) more tenderly. But, like so many other things in Korea, stretchers are in short supply, so it's little wonder then, when a medic with red curly hair tips the limp form off into the pile of rubble, to save some poor sod who can still be saved. And when the shell explodes, sending a barrage of fragments hailing down, the red-haired medic only has time to look faintly surprised.
Spearchucker Jones is luckier. He only loses an arm, crushed beneath the weight of falling stone, and amputated by a cutter at the 8063rd with half of Trapper or Hawkeye's talent. But a black, one-armed doctor who shouldn't be operating anyway is no use to the United States Army (though what use he'll be as a ball-player is even less sure, but hey – that's not the army's problem.), so on January 12th, 1951, Captain Oliver Wendell Jones is discharged from active duty. A bottle of cheap bourbon, a pair of awkward, off-side handshakes, and that's it. Spearchucker's gone.
It is a year for departures. Owing to their high standard of training, the 4077th has always had a quick turnover of nurses, but in April, Lieutenant Dish is reassigned to Osaka, and the loss hits Hawkeye hard. Barbara is gone by May, Leslie transferred to the 109th EVAC in June. Eddie is shipped home, and strangely, Hawkeye misses her. Sanchez is killed by a sniper on her way back from Meg Cratty's clinic, and Louise Anderson marries an Australian marine, leaving Radar broken-hearted. Margie holds out until '52, though Hawkeye and Trapper are on R&R when she leaves, and never learn where she ended up. There are other girls soon enough. Girls who step daintily out of choppers in Class A uniforms, stay a few months, then are gone. Hawkeye and Trapper give up trying to learn the names. They're all happy, and willing, and no questions asked, and most of them good assistants in surgery. Mostly, they're good for a roll in the sack whenever the boys want one, and they're cheerful, and funny, and feminine, but they're no longer swamp rats. Of these, only Kellye, Ginger, Gwen and Nancy are left - and Klinger, though he lacks certain specific prerequisites that Hawkeye and Trapper require in a night-nurse.
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N.B. Chapter titles are getting more and more obscure. This one's a Fred Astaire/Marilyn Miller number from the musical Smiles.