Klinger, Igor and Rizzo were out near the minefields later that day, searching for Lieutenant Curtis or what other things of hers that were left behind in the wake of her disappearance. All three, covered head to toe in light clothing material and carrying canteens of water for their breaks in the shade, were complaining all the way around about the heat in-between looking carefully around the fields and calling out the nurse's name. So far, other than the obvious find of the lieutenant's jacket, nothing else was discovered.
"Lieutenant, where are you?" Igor yelled loudly, his voice echoing off the hills surrounding the camp. "Come on, I have to serve up dinner soon!"
"Shut up! Do you want them North Koreans to hear ya?" Rizzo asked him.
"I think that's the point if we want some relief from this heat," Klinger said, almost tripping over his dress. "Dammit, I see nothing here but the Korean landscape. Why can't we move on?"
"Because we were ordered to stay here by Major Houlihan?" Igor questioned almost sheepishly.
"Because we was ordered to be lookin' out here until we find somethin'?" Rizzo added in an obvious sneer of disgust, his voice muffled by the protective clothing.
"Right, but we can't just stand around here in this desert heat and suffer while some dumb blonde nurse runs off without a trace except her jacket covered in blood," Klinger replied to the both of them. "If I hated Lieutenant Curtis back then with her rudeness, then I hate her even more now for taking us out here in the sun. To have her leave like that, after giving Major Houlihan an attitude that I would never give, leaves me no choice but to curse her."
"What? To have a camel spit in her meal everyday in her life?" Rizzo joked insultingly, taking out a half-smoked cigar and lighting it as he moved some of his protective gear out of his face.
"No, and – hey, don't you think it's too hot to smoke?" Klinger looked incredulous that Rizzo was disobeying orders by taking off the light Army material so that he could smoke the cigar.
"What nobody else knows won't hurt them, right?"
"Yeah, but –"
"Hey, you two, I think I found something! And I think I can serve dinner tonight too, when the colonel finds out that we have this."
Igor caught the both of their attentions by yelling in an excited tone. Walking away from the argument, the private ignored the upcoming mudslinging and ambled away from the minefields, following a cleared pathway that led down the hill to Rosie's Bar. In the dirt below his feet, Igor spotted something that resembled dark, red-brown dots, some of them dark, metallic-smelling lines. Either way, the private thought that the thing – liquid, it looked like – was ominous and he needed to look further into it.
Rizzo (putting out his cigar on the ground) and Klinger had stopped their squabble and walked over to where Igor was, pulling apart their protective clothing to see what Igor had found. All three then stared at it, as if it was going to move, as if they shouldn't follow it, but had to because it was obviously something they needed in order to find the nurse.
"What is it?" Rizzo finally asked, the first to speak after being called over by Igor.
"It looks like blood." Klinger saw the looks he received from the other two as he mentioned the word. "Hey, that's what my nose is telling me. I've smelled it before and you two should have also. And I thought the two of you would have known what it is by now."
"Should we follow it?" Igor looked to Klinger, the obvious leader in the search.
"No kidding, we should," Klinger replied, wrapping up his face again and walking down the pathway, Igor and Rizzo following closely, as if something was going to come out and scare them. The two were obviously frightened, the sudden disappearance of a nurse turning from a futile search to a scary one as they followed the blood trail down the hill.
And that seemed to be the least of their worries.
Walking and then running with anxious abandon as the drops and smears on the ground turned darker and larger in quantity, the three enlisted men followed the trail down the hill until they were way behind Rosie's Bar, where the blood trailed ended and in a location where the locals gathered sometimes. Then, using Klinger's nose, they picked up the trail again, another path that led way out of the camp, closer and closer into enemy territory to the west. Soon enough, they were deep in the woods, still following the sticky substance.
Suddenly, about two miles away from the camp and four miles away from the enemy lines, it stopped abruptly with nothing else in sight.
"What now?" Rizzo asked Klinger sarcastically, seeing that the corporal was still sniffing the air for more blood…or a body, grimly thought by all. "We've been out in this damn heat for two hours now, followin' somethin' you says was blood. Now, Klinger, you better tell us somethin' soon or I'll unwrap that –"
"Found some rope," Igor quietly interrupted, still in shock about tracking down the source of the blood. Under some bushes as he leaned in (noticing more of the blood they saw earlier), he saw a rope covered with the liquid they usually see daily. "And it's long, so let's follow it."
"Great idea, genius," Klinger quickly replied. "We might find something else."
"What about them MP's?" Rizzo asked, becoming spooked again as he saw the rope. "Maybe they can git this job done right."
"Colonel Potter said –"
"Klinger, I'm startin' to not care anymore! Let's get outta here and –"
"Find the body," Igor finished as Rizzo and Klinger were arguing once more. He had followed the rope without them and found what they were looking for right behind those bushes.
Upon seeing the discovery and realizing its implications, Igor fell to his knees, vomiting at the sight. Rizzo only stared over his shoulder, frozen in fear, while Klinger saw it and ran back to the 4077th.
~00~
"Radar, let me in please! This is desperate – I mean, we found –"
Blocking the corporal's way to Potter's office, Radar stood his ground, angry that Klinger dared to have come at a bad time (when the CO was doing important paperwork and asked not to be disturbed). "Klinger, the colonel is busy right now –"
"Yeah, but we found the dead – well, decapitated body – of Lieutenant Curtis out there and –"
"What's going on here?" Margaret finally interrupted the two. Hearing the ruckus from Post-Op as she worked, she immediately ran from her duties to the office to solve the issue, expecting to see the men at each other's throats. "Klinger, you're supposed to be out there, looking for Nurse Curtis! Where are Rizzo and –?"
"We found her, Ma'am," Klinger replied in a panic, forgetting that he was being disrespectful to Margaret by interrupting. "Igor found her. See, we followed this trail of blood up from Rosie's and around for a few miles and Igor found this rope under the bushes and followed it and –"
"Klinger, your mouth is running faster than a salmon fish going upstream," Colonel Potter interrupted as he, too, came into the office space and listened to Klinger's account of how they found Nurse Curtis. "Now, tell us what you found!"
"We found her dead body…Sir! Her head had been cut off –"
"Oh, dear!" Father Mulcahy exclaimed as he ran into the office when hearing that Klinger had come back. He, too, had been worried about the disappearance and prayed for a good conclusion, but his hopes were dashed when he saw Klinger come back in a panic.
"– and the rope, yeah, it was…was under the bush, you see, and around her body. And the head was…was…was…"
"Out with it, Klinger!" BJ said when he also came into the office. He also had come out of Post-Op to hear the news.
"Well…well…the head was cut open by the mouth and it looks like the tongue was missing or something. The body was shot up. The gun is still there on the ground."
"Are the MP's there yet?" Margaret demanded, grief for the troublesome nurse the least of her worries (as well as Radar turning green from hearing everything and running from the office, possibly heading to the latrine). "You should have gotten them first, Klinger. This is important. This might be a murder…or the enemy killing one of my nurses!"
"Yeah, we got them all right, Major," Klinger replied quietly, collapsing on Radar's cot and throwing some of the light clothing off in a frustrated gesture. "Well, I did. I ran to the nearest station. One of them had to carry Igor and Rizzo out of there because they wouldn't get out of there. They're both more…shocked than I am right now."
"You did a good job, son," Colonel Potter only said, sitting down next to Klinger, putting a friendly arm around his shoulders. "Just let the MP's do theirs. You did what you could. And, most certainly, it wasn't the prettiest sight you could have seen."
"Yeah, well, Colonel…it most certainly wasn't quite something I had seen before. I had seen dead bodies, but not like that. Not mutilated like that."
"I understand, son."
For a while, everybody in the office was quiet, thinking…giving some small piece of respect to the dead. Lieutenant Curtis was not the nicest of nurses and, most of all, they remembered her as a snickering fool who should not have been with them. However, respect was respect and they had to give her that. She had died in the worst way and now, it was more of a matter of finding out how and why it happened.
A moment later, after everybody had been given each other space to silently grieve and perhaps think about the death, Hawkeye came in, intent on going to his shift, but instead wanting to talk about the body that was discovered before he saw more wounded bodies. The word passed quickly as Klinger came into the camp and informed the MP's, but the captain did not feel any real lament that the nurse had passed away. He regretted the feeling immediately afterward, but he could not help but mourn that another life was lost senselessly. He did not like Winifred Curtis, but he preferred that she was transferred someplace else than brutally dead.
"I heard the news," Hawkeye only said, heads turning to him at the almost-rude intrusion of their privacy. "The MP's have it handled, I heard too. But who's going to take care of Radar? I just passed him on the way to the latrine and he looked as green as paper money."
"Why don't you, Pierce?" Margaret sneered, angry that she lost a nurse.
"I would…if I could get my money's worth out of it and for being there!" Hawkeye retorted as he went past the people near the doors to Post-Op, ignoring their glances as he thought back to Winifred Curtis.