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The two doctors, still mourning the loss of their friend Henry Blake, had a fight. Not just any fight. A fist shaking, door slamming, never want to talk to you again, break-up sort of fight.
Two weeks earlier, Hawkeye received word he had enough points to rotate stateside. Since he, Trapper, and Henry all deployed at the same time, he figured Trapper had gotten word too. The idea of losing Trapper, the only person really keeping him going in this stinking, olive drab hell hole, so soon after losing Henry caused a fear to run through him worse than any small, tight space or nightmare of dying childhood friends ever could. Hawkeye wanted to cling to Trapper for all they both had. Short of that, he wanted to make sure they spent what time they had left with each other.
The more Hawkeye clung, the more Trapper let go until what they once had became so one sided it was no longer an 'us,' but two individuals sharing the same space and breathing the same dust, mold, and gin filled air. The night of their fight, Trapper had shaken Hawkeye off with a "Cut it, will ya? I'm trying to write Louise. You remember my wife, right?"
Trapper slept in the VIP tent for two days until Hawkeye went alone on their 3 day R&R trip to Tokyo Henry had signed off on just days before he died. Not only did Hawkeye go alone, he cancelled reservations at the hotel the Army held for officers on R&R and stayed in a seedy geisha house under the name Capt. Daniel Tuttle. Just in case Trapper had any wise ideas and tried to follow him. Hawkeye mostly stayed holed up in his room, refusing service from the geishas, much to the madam's chagrin, and making an honest attempt at drinking himself to death.
Finding himself still alive on the last day on leave, Hawkeye cleaned himself up, put on his Class A's, and made a failed attempt at sobering up. Trapper never could resist me in my Class A's, he reasoned.
He decided the best thing he could do was apologize to Trapper and see if they could make some sort of peace. Even if Trapper never wanted to take him to the privacy of the supply tent again, he needed Trapper's friendship. Once back at the 4077th, he staggered out of the jeep, still drunk. There may have been an altercation with Frank Burns who was blowing a whistle and ordering people around as though they’d all be transported back to basic training at Fort Benning. The first thing Hawkeye truly remembered was stumbling into the Swamp to find it empty.
"You just missed him, Hawkeye." Radar was saying as he felt his legs buckle beneath him. Suddenly he was too sober. "We tried to find you, honest! We called every hotel, bar, and even geisha house in Tokyo!" Two minutes later he and Radar were bouncing down the road in his jeep toward Kimpo. "I have to find him, Radar. I have to tell him goodbye." They had to stop twice on the way for Hawkeye to be sick on the road, once from the alcohol, once from the sheer terror that gripped him stronger than any dying desperate man ever had.
“Listen, Sergeant ,” Hawkeye found himself screaming at the enlisted man behind the makeshift desk in the Kimpo airport. “I don’t care what you have to do to turn that plane around, just do it. The finest doctor in Korea is on that plane and I need him back at my MASH unit!” I need him back in my tent, he thought to himself.
“I’m sorry, sir.” the Sergeant replied. “That plane took off 10 minutes ago to Tokyo and there is no turning it back unless we’re under enemy fire. Captain McIntyre’s papers were in order. I checked them myself.”
Hawkeye gave up his yelling and sat on the nearest bench, defeated. Trapper was going home and he didn’t say good-bye. He was going home to his pretty wife, and his two pretty girls, and his practice, and a life that didn’t need an “arrangement” on the side to keep him warm in Korea any longer. Hawkeye struggled to push the tears aside and put on his mask of anger once more.
“Ten lousy minutes!” He shouted at Radar who was now standing on the road with an officer so new to Korea he was still wet behind the ears.
“Hawkeye, sir, this is Captain Hunnicutt. He’s Captain McIntyre’s replacement.”
Replacement? Replacement!
“Yeah, how ya doing?” He brushed the man off before turning to Radar again. “Ten lousy minutes! I missed him by ten lousy minutes!”
Hawkeye decided BJ was okay the moment he watched BJ retching in the grass while the three men helped wounded soldiers following a mortar attack on the way back to camp. Hawkeye decided he and BJ could be friends when BJ mooned Frank Burns upon reporting to duty so drunk he could barely stand. Hawkeye decided BJ would still never replace Trapper as he listened to BJ snoring in the bed that didn't belong to him.
Hawkeye had been drunk for 4 days straight. Yet lying awake in the darkness, he found enough clarity to push himself out of his bunk and get down on his knees. He prayed to a God he was never sure was there that Trapper's plane made it safely over the Sea of Japan.