Alright as promised, it’s: Time, for my
KOREAN WAR F*CKING TIMELINE
This is something I’ve been working on off & on while watching M*A*S*H these past months. It began as just notes taken from the Wikipedia page “Korean War,” then briefly served as a log for all the incongruous mentions of dates or time passage on the show, before I cheerfully abandoned that for something that interested me far more: the M*A*S*H AU where it’s set in the Korean War [laugh track].
This is my vision:
June 25, 1950: The conflict known in the U.S. as The Korean War breaks out. First major U.S. troop engagement is in early July. By August, North Korea has taken Seoul, and South Korea and their allied United Nations forces have been pushed south and east nearly into the sea, holding just a small area being called the Pusan Perimeter.
Ten months before the first episode of M*A*S*H, in September, 1950, Army fanboy Frank Burns and draftee surgeon Benjamin Franklin Pierce, both stated to have been there “since almost the beginning” and dealing with each other “forever,” are dispatched to a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital to provide medical aid during the push back out of the Pusan Perimeter, under greatly increased tank and air support. They are under the command of a military doctor we don’t know, but definitely regular Army. It is basically a perpetual bug out: U.S. forces keep advancing north, north, north, take Seoul back and keep going on into North Korea, making it almost to the Yalu River bordering China. Then, on October 19th: China joins the war, and promptly starts bludgeoning them right back south again.
In mid-November, 1950, facing this transformed situation with the Chinese Army’s involvement, the previous CO is taken off to another unit, and I Corps sets up civilian doctor Henry Blake in charge of the floating MASH 4077 unit still being tossed around on the shores of the war, inheriting two very differently rattled surgeons, and packed by the Army in his carry-on luggage, a young clerk fresh out of high school named Walter O’Reilly. That December sees very heavy fighting. It’s a hard winter. On January 4th, 1951, Chinese & North Korean forces re-capture Seoul.
In the first few months of the new year, the 4077 is still mostly just trying to stay above water as the line swings back and forth, but are starting to settle somewhat, geographically, near the 38th parallel. I Corps starts further filling out the unit; in early February, 1951, Margaret Houlihan and Francis Mulcahy arrive together, as she mentions, a career Army head nurse and a volunteer chaplain. On March 14th, the South Korean allies re-take Seoul again, for the final time. In their joy, Margaret and Frank, instantly smitten, officially make it unofficial.
April, 1951: President Truman relieves General MacArthur, and John McIntyre and Maxwell Klinger arrive, with the wildflowers. After the long winter, Henry looks at his wayward ghost doctor’s shadowed eyes brightening as he and Trapper grin at each other, and actually breathes a sigh of relief. The fighting is very active that spring, but the casualties are mostly on the North Korean side.
July, 1951, start of the two-year ‘stalemate’ period, in which both armies just kept shooting at each other on a line that hardly moved, and the beginning of the television show M*A*S*H.
Nine months later, another April, 1952: both Henry and Trapper are taken. Henry had been in Korea just under a year and a half; Trapper, as Hawkeye says, lived with him for a year. New (very new) doctor BJ Hunnicutt and two-war veteran CO Sherman T. Potter arrive on their heels. When baby BJ meets a bedraggled Hawkeye Pierce at the Kimpo airfield, he has been a surgeon in the 4077 for 19 months.
Three months later it’s July, 1952, and for Frank Burns, it’s finally the end of the line. He was there two months shy of two years. In the heat of the summer, Charles Emerson Winchester arrives to replace him, for the second half of the two-year period the show covers, and the final year of the war. Mapped onto this timeline, Margaret’s entire relationship with Lieutenant Colonel Donald Penobscott lasts about two and a half months. I’m proud of many things in this timeline, but this might be funniest and most true.
The Korean War will end by the time we reach the next July. Halfway through, in January, 1953, Radar goes home. Corporal O’Reilly ran this MASH for 2 years and 2 months, and when he goes, it’s immediately clear he took half its heart with him. Klinger dons fatigues and takes on the role of company clerk for the 6 months that remain.
Armistice is signed on July 27, 1953. Charles would have been there one year, BJ and Potter 16 months, Klinger 2 years and 4 months, Margaret 2 years and 6, and Hawkeye: 2 years and 10.