Swampmen

Matt Abar









Tim Foley
Mick Resio











Muriel Rose
















Mike Pesci
Mark Tosiello & Judy Tucker


Tent Number Six, the home of Forrest, Pierce and McIntyre, became a center of social activity. It also became known as The Swamp, partly because it looked like a kind of haunt one might come across in a bog and partly because Hawkeye Pierce, while in college and unable to afford a dormitory room, had lived just off the campus in a shanty that his classmates had called The Swamp. The words, in big capital letters
-THE SWAMP-
were painted in red on the door of Number Six.

Cocktail hour at The Swamp began at 4:00 PM, the hour at which the night shift normally awakened and had a few hours before supper and the hour at which the day shift, if underemployed, could begin to relax. Cocktails consisted of better booze than most of the crew had ever had at home, and martinis were a favorite, served in water glasses filled to the brim.

A frequent visitor to The Swamp was the Catholic chaplain of the area, Father John Patrick Mulcahy, a native of San Diego and former Maryknoll missionary. He was lean, hungry-looking hook-nosed, red-haired and, in the eyes of the Swampmen, one of a kind. . . . it was the Duke who hung the name of Dago Red on the Father, and the Father accepted it with good humor.

Prior to being in the Army, Dago Red had spent five years in China and seven years on the top of a mountain in Bolivia. His contacts had been limited. With Duke and Hawkeye and Trapper John he found stimulation in conversation that included politics, surgery, sin, baseball, literature and religion. Dago Red combined the dignity of his profession with the wisdom, understanding and compassion of an honest missionary with the ability to tolerate the Swampmen. He became one of them.

At two o’clock on morning, Hawkeye and Trapper John were fighting what seemed to be a losing battle in the OR with a kid who had been shot through both chest and belly. Despite control of hemorrhage and administration of blood, the patient, whose peritoneum had been contaminated for ten hours by spillage from his lacerated colon, went deeper and deeper into shock.

“Maybe we’d better get Dago Red,” said Hawkeye.
“Call Dago,” ordered Trapper John.
A corpsman when for him. Within minutes he appeared.
“What can I do for you fellows?” asked the Father.
“Put in a fix,” said Hawkeye, “this kid looks like a loser.”

Father Mulcahy administered the last rites. Shortly thereafter, the patient’s blood pressure rose from nowhere to 100, his pulse slowed to 90, and he went on to recover.

From then on Dago Red put in many a fix. With the Swampmen it was mostly a gag, but one they could not quite bring themselves to forgo when things were rough. As far as Red was concerned, of course, it was no joke. He spent many sleepless nights applying fixes and feeding beer, whisky, coffee or consolation to distraught surgeons whose patients had not responded to the fix, or who were waiting for the fix to take.

-Richard Hooker
M*A*S*H*

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