Work Text:
Blackadder in Korea
Theme song:
A sound of copters in the air
The wounded men are soon arriving
The doctors wait upon the ground
To save their lives they’ll all be striving
Blackadder, Blackadder,
A doctor without peer,
Blackadder, Blackadder,
What are you doing here?
4077th MASH, north of Uijongbu, Korea
Colonel Sherman Potter put down the phone with a snort of disgust. “Nothing goes right around here!”
Radar O’Reilly asked: “Problems getting a replacement for Major Burns, sir?”
“That surgeon we were going to get from Tokyo, Major Charles Winchester, was in a bad road accident on his way to the airport. He’s laid up and won’t be available for several months.” Potter scowled. “And we need another surgeon!”
Radar turned back to his desk. “Let me call around, sir. I may be able to find us another one.”
“Hopefully better than Burns was,” Potter grumbled. “Not that that’d be hard!” Radar paid the colonel no mind, being absorbed in getting through to his counterparts in other units. Potter knew that Radar was a genius at getting what the 4077th needed, and left him to it.
A few hours later, Potter was absorbed in paperwork when Radar came in. “Sir? I found us a surgeon. He was scheduled to leave Korea, but they say he’ll be happy to fill in here until Major Winchester can come.”
Potter smiled broadly. “Well, that’s jim-dandy? Who is he?”
“His name is Major Edmund Blackadder, sir. He’s British, and was working at one of their aid stations over here. When he found out that we needed a surgeon, he said he’d be quite willing to come. He’s bringing an enlisted servant with him, sir.”
“When he gets here, we’ll have to make sure he gets a warm welcome!” Potter leaned back, in a reminiscent mood. “Back in Dubya-Dubya-One, I served alongside the British for a while. Fine fellows, one and all. They were a bit condescending about how long it had taken us to get into the war, but they were glad to have us and taught us all they knew.”
When they got the word about the new arrival, Hawkeye Pierce and B.J. Hunnicutt were eager to meet him. “I hope he’s a better surgeon than Frank was!” B.J. said.
“That won’t be a high bar to pass,” Hawkeye said, raising a martini glass in salute. “I think a chimpanzee would be a better surgeon than Frank was!” He took a sip. “And the ape would be a better human being, too!”
A few days later a khaki-colored jeep rolled into the 4077th MASH. At the wheel was a grubby man in a bedraggled British private’s uniform, peering out at the camp myopically from behind dirty spectacles. In the passenger seat lounged a dark-haired, moustached man in a British officer’s uniform, swagger stick in hand.
When the jeep stopped, the British officer got out. Radar came running up, saluting. “Sir? Are you the British surgeon we were expecting?”
“If the surgeon you were expecting is named ‘Edmund Blackadder,’ young man, then I am he.” Pointing to the jeep, Blackadder went on: “Please show Private Baldrick here where we’re to stay while we’re here.”
Private Baldrick stumbled out of the jeep. Radar came over to him, his eyes widening at the sight of Baldrick’s vacant stare. “Uh...we’ve got Visiting Officers’ Quarters over here, Private.” With Baldrick shambling along behind him, burdened with two full footlockers, Radar led the way to a tent. “Here’s where Major Blackadder will be staying. We’ve got room in the enlisted quarters for you.” Radar wrinkled his nose. “Uh...before you go over there, you should hit the showers.”
“Right, mate,” Baldrick said, with a cheerful, rather vacant grin, as he shambled off toward yet another futile attempt to cleanse himself. Radar wrinkled his nose. He had seldom smelled anything so bad, and he’d grown up on a farm.
Meanwhile, Blackadder had gone into Colonel Potter’s office. Snapping to attention, he gave a very sharp salute. “Sah! Major Edmund Blackadder, Royal Army Medical Corps, reporting for duty, sah!”
Colonel Potter returned the salute. “At ease, Major. We’re glad to have you aboard here. You’ll find that surgery here is a little different from what you may be used to. We do ‘meatball’ surgery here. We’re primarily interested in keeping our patients alive and repairing their wounds as much as we can, not in doing elegant work. Once our patients can be moved, we send ‘em on to Seoul or Tokyo for further treatment.”
Blackadder raised an eyebrow. “I think I can handle it, sir. I’ve had a little experience with battlefield surgery.”
Potter smiled. “I’m sure you’ll fit in well here. At the moment, things are quiet, but they can pick up at any time, and then we’re absolutely swamped with work. Twenty-four hours or more at a time in the O.R.”
Blackadder nodded. “I think I can handle that. With your permission, sir, I’ll go and change into some clean clothes.”
As he turned to go, Potter said: “As for your servant, we’ll find work for him, too. There’s always a lot to do around here.”
“Best you keep an eye on him. Private Baldrick means well, but he’s not the sharpest scalpel in the operating room, sir.” With that, Blackadder took his leave. Potter smiled as he left. The British surgeon’s regimental manner was a refreshing change from the casual way his own doctors and nurses often behaved. Of course, when there were wounded to take care of, he knew his people could outdo any other MASH unit in Korea. For that, he’d gladly tolerate their sloppy ways.
When Hawkeye and B.J. first saw the British surgeon, he was sitting quietly in the mess tent, eating something the cooks had come up with and sipping on a cup of tea. They sat down on either side of him. “Hello, and welcome to the Double Natural. My name’s Benjamin Franklin Pierce, but people call me Hawkeye. I’m one of the surgeons here.”
“And I’m B.J. Hunnicutt. I’m a surgeon, too.”
“Pleased to meet you,” the British surgeon drawled, putting his tea cup down. “I’m Edmund Blackadder. Major in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Since you’re short a surgeon, I thought I’d pop around and lend a hand.”
“We’re glad to see you. You’ve got to be better than the man you were replacing.”
“Bit of a bungler, was he?” Blackadder raised an eyebrow. “I’ve run across a few of those in my army career.”
“A bit of a bungler?” Hawkeye laughed rather bitterly. “A general once said that if he’d not been drafted as a surgeon, he’d have been assigned as a pastry cook.”
“Oh, one of those. We’ve them too, unfortunately. However, I rather think I can show you that I’m not that sort.” Blackadder leaned closer. “Best keep an eye on my batman, though. Baldrick’s been with me since the year dot, but I’m the first to admit that he’s rather limited.”
“A bit dumb?”
“Thick as an asphalt sandwich, dear boy. From the beginning, we Blackadders...we’re a very old family...have had Baldricks attending us.” Blackadder sighed. “I don’t know how it started. It was so long ago. I sometimes think one of my ancestors desecrated a shrine or something like that.”
“Well, we’ll all get along. At least it’s quiet now. Here’s to it lasting.” Hawkeye raised his coffee cup, and B.J. and Blackadder raised their cups in the toast.
As it happened, things were generally quiet for a few days. Blackadder mostly kept to himself and kept Baldrick close by. However, when he chose to, Blackadder could be utterly scathing, flaying people with words with little apparent effort.
Corporal Klinger ran into Blackadder not long after he’d arrived. Blackadder raised an eyebrow at the sight of the Lebanese man in full female attire, but said nothing. Klinger, thinking that he’d boggled the Britisher, drew himself up, saluted smartly and said: “Corporal Max Klinger, sir. Section Eight from head to toe. Barking mad. I don’t belong in the Army, sir!”
Blackadder was utterly impassive in the face of this apparition. After a second, he asked: “So you say you’re insane, Corporal?”
Klinger thought he was close to success. “Yes, sir! Bats in the belfry. Totally off my rocker. Too crazy to be here.”
“And since when has insanity been a barrier to service in the military, Corporal? You do know that Napoleon Bonaparte was utterly mad and it didn’t hamper his rise to the very top. To use his phrase, you may have a marshal’s baton in your knapsack.”
Klinger had never thought of that. “Why do you say Napoleon Bonaparte was insane, sir?”
“He thought he was Napoleon, did he not?” Klinger’s jaw dropped at this example of Blackadder logic. “In addition, he blithely got all of Europe to unite against France, and for the cherry on top, marched on into Russia not knowing nor caring about the fact that Russia has cold winters.”
“You have a point, sir.” Klinger was from the Midwest, and knew about cold, snowy winters. Korea was also no picnic when the temperature dropped.
“However, Corporal, I do think that you should be discharged. Do you know why?”
Klinger drew himself up, giving Blackadder a big smile. In his mind, he was already planning his return to Toledo. “No, sir. Can you explain, please?”
Blackadder sank his barb. “Because, Corporal, color-blindness is, or should be, a disqualifying condition for service in the military. And, judging by the color combinations you’ve chosen for your clothes, ‘color-blind’ is a kind way to refer to your disability!” Blackadder’s eyes gleamed. “To complete the effect all you need is to paint your cheeks white and your nose red! Nobody’d notice another clown around here, after all!”
Klinger stood there, staring, utterly shocked, as Blackadder went on his way, a slight smile on his face.
Klinger was by no means the only person to feel Blackadder’s razor-edged tongue. One day, Margaret Houlihan had just finished reaming out Klinger when she turned, to find Blackadder watching her.
All he said was “Major, if we could weaponize your temper, this war would have been won long ago. I would say you were behaving like a fishwife, but that would be an insult to fishwives.”
“How dare you speak that way to me?”
“There’s little I dare not do, Major. In any case...what’s your date of rank?”
“My date of rank?” Margaret was taken rather aback. “I was promoted to Major in 1949.”
“I got my majority in 1946. So I believe I outrank you, Major. And I have to say I have seldom or never seen an officer with as little control over his or her temper as you seem to have.”
Margaret was livid, but she knew better than to take a swing at him, the way she might have at Hawkeye or B.J. He did outrank her. Instead of hitting him, she turned and stalked away, radiating outrage. Blackadder shook his head sadly. “That young woman has talent, but I fear her emotions will be her downfall.”
One afternoon, Hawkeye was sitting around the O-Club with B.J., waxing philosophical. “You know how Sherman said ‘War is hell,’ B.J.?”
“Yeah,” said B.J. He was used to Hawkeye’s endless complaining, and just went along with it. He missed his wife and daughter, but didn’t talk about it as much as Hawkeye did.
“Well, Sherman was wrong,” Hawkeye said. “War is war, and hell is hell. War is far worse than hell.”
“Oh?” said a British voice. Blackadder had been sitting nearby, apparently absorbed in the latest London Times. “I take it you’ve been to hell, so as to make an accurate comparison?”
“Well, no, I…”
“What an original observation to make! ‘War is horrid and bad!’ How did the human race ever struggle along without your magnificent mind to guide us? Why, until you came along, everybody thought war was an unending cavalcade of pleasures, a veritable Utopia!”
“So you like war?” Hawkeye was utterly shocked.
“Did I say that? No, I do not. However, I know better than to go around howling about how bad I have it. I take it you feel ill-used, being here?”
“I hate it here! None of us should be here!”
“I agree. But if you think you have it rough, Captain, might I suggest a trip up the road? A few hours on the front lines would make you bless the luck that keeps you here.”
Hawkeye was angry enough to start throwing punches, superior officer or no, but just then Radar ran in. “Sirs! Choppers coming! The other side made a big push!”
The next thirty hours or so were hectic. An unending stream of wounded men came in, carried by helicopters and in ambulances. Everybody was stretched to the uttermost keeping up with the rush, and the surgeons operated around the clock. While Hawkeye, B.J. and Margaret were all giving Blackadder dirty looks, the British surgeon paid them no mind, concentrating fully on his latest patient.
When at last the work was done and all the patients were either in hospital beds or on their way south to Seoul, having been stabilized enough to be moved, the doctors and nurses streamed out of the hospital tent. “Oh, man, am I beat!” groaned Hawkeye. “I hear my cot calling me by my name!”
“You and me both, Hawkeye, you and me both,” said B.J. Beside them, Margaret just made an inarticulate noise and headed off to her own tent.
Blackadder strolled on up, with Baldrick just behind him. “Ah, it does look like a spiffing day,” he said, drawing in a deep breath of air. “Balders, after I’ve got outside a spot of tea and a bit of food, I’ll expect my bunk to be waiting for me.”
“Right, Major B.!” said Baldrick. Along with all the other enlisted, he had been busy hauling wounded in on stretchers and out on gurneys to the wards, where he’d helped put them to bed. While he was not trusted with anything complicated, per Major Blackadder’s strong cautions to the other doctors, he was still strong and surprisingly useful, as long as there was someone to tell him what to do. Left to himself, he would merely stand and stare vacantly into space, or come out with ridiculous statements that made no sense.
Blackadder turned to the other surgeons. “Well, lads, can’t say it hasn’t been a little slice of paradise, but I’m knackered. If you will excuse me?” And he walked off toward the mess tent, looking utterly unruffled despite having just done over thirty hours of continuous surgery. Baldrick shuffled along behind him, his usual vacant stare more vacant than normal.
Hawkeye and B.J. looked at each other. “Do you hate him as much as I do?” asked Hawkeye.
“More, if anything,” said B.J.
Colonel Potter’s voice came from behind them, making them both start...they hadn’t seen the colonel come up. “Don’t knock him, boys. I know he can be hard to take, but for a cutter of his skill, I’d put up with a lot more than some sharp words.”
“Is there anybody in camp he hasn’t ripped to pieces?” Hawkeye asked plaintively.
“Me, sirs,” piped up Radar, who had appeared as if out of nowhere. “He said that I was one of the most useful people he’d ever seen, and he just wished I were in the British army.”
“That’s very high praise, coming from him,” B.J. remarked. “He doesn’t have much use for our army. He thinks we’re spoiled and over-supplied, and overpaid as well.”
“During Dubya-Dubya-Two, the British and Aussies used to say ‘You Yanks are overpaid, oversexed, and overhere.’ We replied ‘You’re underpaid, undersexed and under Eisenhower.’” Potter grinned wickedly. “There was some friction, but when the Fritzes were getting frisky, we all pulled together remarkably well.”
“Right now, the thing that’s pulling me is my bunk,” Hawkeye said with a big yawn. “We can complain about that supercilious bastard after I’ve had some good shut-eye.”
After the big push, things were quiet for a while. One day, Colonel Potter called Hawkeye and B.J. in.
“You two are due for a few days’ leave down in Seoul. Radar’s typing up the passes and paperwork. While you’re down there, you can look into getting us that incubator we’ve been needing,” Potter said. Hawkeye and B.J. looked at each other, grinned, and gave each other the high-five.
“What if something comes up?” asked B.J. Beside him, Hawkeye was already thinking of the dubious delights to be found in the Korean capital.
“Reports are that the front’s quiet, and no new enemy attacks are expected. If we get some wounded, Blackadder and I can almost certainly handle it, and I’ll know where you are, so if we really need you, you can be back here in jig-time.”
“Good to know, sir!” As Hawkeye and B.J. left, they grinned at each other.
“At least a few days without Blackadder!” exulted Hawkeye.
“Not to mention that servant of his,” B.J. replied. Baldrick’s reputation for inane stupidity had spread throughout the camp. When he’d met Klinger, he’d apparently been taken in by his clothing, asking what a civilian woman was doing in an Army hospital. Even Klinger had been utterly shocked. So far, he’d not caused any major catastrophes, but by common unspoken consent, the enlisted men in the camp kept a watchful eye on him and kept him away from things he could mess up.
As Hawkeye and B.J. headed to the Swamp to get packed for a few days out of camp, they ran across Baldrick talking to Klinger. “Corporal Klinger? I ‘ave a cunning plan to get you out of the army.”
“What is that?” Klinger was wary, but he wanted out badly enough to listen to anybody.
Baldrick squinted at Klinger. “We buy you some local children’s clothes, and tell everyone that you’re a poor Korean orphan that needs to be shipped back to the States! Everybody will be fooled, and you’ll be back in your home before you can say ‘Jack Robinson!’”
“Brilliant, Balders,” said Blackadder, who had come up in time to hear the colloquy. “There are only a few small holes in your cunning plan.” At Baldrick’s questioning look, Blackadder explained: “Firstly, Corporal Klinger is a six-foot-tall, well-nourished adult male of clearly non-Korean ancestry.”
“We could put some makeup on him…” Baldrick tried.
“Enough makeup to make him look three feet tall, malnourished, and ethnically Korean?” Baldrick looked awestricken at his officer’s revealed wisdom. Blackadder went on: “Secondly, Koreans’ noses, in case you haven’t noticed, are small and rather dainty. Corporal Klinger’s proboscis, on the other hand, is a proud protuberance that any eagle would be proud to call his own. We’d have as much chance convincing anybody that he’s any sort of Korean, as we would passing you off as a professor of linguistics at Oxford University. I also rather doubt that he can speak any Korean at all, much less with native fluency.”
“I just speak enough to get my face slapped, sir,” said Klinger.
“Can’t say I’m much better, Corporal. To be honest, English is not the best place to start from learning foreign languages. And I doubt you’ve had the time to study it systematically.”
“Uh, sir?” piped up Baldrick. “You said that ‘e ‘as a nose like an eagle. Could we glue feathers on ‘im an’ tell everybody that ‘e’s an eagle, sir?”
Blackadder and Klinger both rolled their eyes in exasperation. “Balders, that has about as much chance of succeeding as you do of winning this war by single-handedly charging the Communists with a bayoneted rifle and forcing their surrender.”
“Shall I go get my bundook, sir?”
“No. Just go back to my quarters and try not to have any ideas for a while. The results of your last cunning plan were catastrophic enough to make the destruction of Pompeii look like a weekend in the country.” Baldrick cheerfully saluted Blackadder and shambled off.
“So, off to Seoul, are you?” asked Blackadder. “Do have fun while you’re there. If you run into any of my fellow-countrymen, do please tell them that Edmund Blackadder sends his kindest regards.”
“Yeah, right,” muttered Hawkeye as Blackadder turned and walked away. “Considering what he’s like, I’d hate to see his unkindest regards.”
In Seoul, Hawkeye and B.J. spent a lot of time trying to untangle Army bureaucracy to get the incubator that Colonel Potter wanted. By the time they had finally got out of that office, it was getting on toward evening. They headed toward the Officers’ Club. “I hear a martini calling my name,” Hawkeye said.
“So do I,” said B.J. Soon they were sitting in the bar, martinis in hand. After the first few refreshing sips, they began to discuss their current biggest pain-in-the-ass.
“I can’t wait until this Major Winchester gets out of the hospital,” Hawkeye said. “Pity he was bashed up so badly.”
“Damn Tokyo traffic!” said B.J. “Thanks to that, we’ve got Blackadder on our hands for who-knows-how-long.”
All of a sudden, a silence fell. B.J. and Hawkeye looked up. “What?” From the next table over, a bunch of very tough-looking British officers were all staring at them. The look in their eyes would have frightened anybody.
One of them, a burly captain with a Scots bonnet, came over. “Laddie…” he said, his voice oddly gentle, “could it be ye’re talking about the famous Major Blackadder?”
“We’ve got a doctor up at our MASH unit who’s a British major, and his name is Blackadder,” Hawkeye said.
“Average height, dark brown hair and eyes, moustache? Followed around by a private that looks like they’ve started enlisting Piltdown Man?” This was from another Britisher, one with a couple of rows of unfamiliar medals on his chest, and a face as craggy as the Cliffs of Dover.
“That’s him.”
The bemedaled Briton leaned closer, until his face was inches from Hawkeye’s. Looking into his pale-blue eyes, Hawkeye shivered. He had seldom seen a more lethal-looking man, and he’d been in Korea for a while. “You have no idea how fortunate you are to have him at your hospital, but we’re not surprised. It’s the sort of thing he’d do.”
“Why are we lucky to have him?” B.J. managed to say. By then, they were surrounded by British officers, all of them bemedaled, scarred and looking very ominous.
“You don’t know?” The British all looked rather surprised. “Well...he wouldn’t have mentioned it. It’s not something he’d think was worth discussing. But when you get back to your hospital, take a long look at his service record.”
As they turned to leave, the Scottish officer got in one last shot. “Lads...only the fact that you’re doctors was keepin’ us from banjoin’ you all over the shop, here. You might want to think before you talk, next time. Or have a care who might be listenin’.”
Once they were gone, Hawkeye slammed down the rest of his martini. “Come on, B.J. Let’s get to bed, and tomorrow we’re back to the Double Natural. I want to get to the bottom of this!”
Back at the 4077th, they soon found Radar, and he shortly had a thick folder of papers for them to look through. “The British sent these along with Major Blackadder,” he said. “To be honest, I’m curious about him, too.”
Hawkeye and B.J. sat down and began to read. As they read, their eyes got bigger and bigger. “It says here he was on the Northwest Frontier of India for two years, until 1939, and involved in some fights with the Afghans.” Hawkeye put the file down, his mind spinning.
“That’s rough,” said Radar. “I’ve talked with some of the British who were up there, and they say Korea’s a picnic compared to the Khyber Pass.”
“In 1939, he was assigned to the British Expeditionary Force in France. He was at Dunkirk, and was one of the last ones evacuated. It says here he was tending to wounded on the beach, and wouldn’t let them evacuate him if it meant leaving them behind. Even on the boat back to England, he was working on wounded men. He only stopped when he dropped over from exhaustion, and that was only after he’d seen his wounded safely off to a hospital.” B.J. shook his head. “I’m ashamed of the things I’ve thought about him!”
“Here it says he was hurt in London during the Blitz. He was in the thick of things, and was stabilizing a wounded fireman when a bomb fragment got him.” Radar said, pointing to a paper. “Thanks to that, he wasn’t sent out to the Far East. His whole unit was captured in Singapore and spent the rest of the war as POWs of the Japanese.” Radar shook his head. “That had to be the luckiest wound anybody ever took!”
“It didn’t get him out of the war,” said Hawkeye. “Once he was on his feet, he volunteered for North Africa, and was right there until the German surrender. He’d already got a Distinguished Service Cross...that’s one level below the Victoria Cross...for his work at Dunkirk, and he got another one for what he did in North Africa.” Reading on, his eyes went very wide. “He got his second DSC for a time when he was at a front-line aid station that got cut off. In between working on the wounded, he took command and fought the Afrika Korps off for hours, until the British could cut their way in and rescue them.”
“A doctor, commanding in combat?” B.J. was incredulous. “Isn’t that against the rules?”
“He said afterward that he was the senior officer on scene, and it was as much his duty as attending to the wounded. If he’d not been a doctor, they might have given him the Victoria Cross.” Hawkeye chuckled at what he read next. “Of course, him missing out on the VC might have been because he had been rather scathing about the mistakes that had left him and his aid station so exposed. He called General Wavell an incompetent bungler, and said that General Montgomery was the reincarnation of Lord Cardigan...the one who led the Charge of the Light Brigade.”
“Let me guess. They heard about that?” asked B.J.
“Better still. They heard him saying it. If he’d been an ordinary officer, they’d have cashiered him. As it was, all they could do was keep him from getting the VC. Not that he gave a damn.”
“Not much for medals?”
“No, nor for promotions. If he were more tactful, he’d probably be a colonel by now, but he said that the only title he cared about was ‘medical doctor.’”
“I’m liking him more and more,” B.J. said.
The other officers were fascinated by what Hawkeye and B.J. had dug up. “Yep, I knew he was good,” Colonel Potter said. “One of the British officers I know here knew him when he was fresh out of medical school and had just joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was up on the Northwest Frontier of India. That’s not as hairy as it was before Dubya-Dubya-One...the Brits had aircraft to keep the Pathans in line...but it could get rough. He saw some fighting there.”
“And then he headed straight to Europe when Britain declared war on Germany?” Hawkeye said.
“Sure did. He was in on Dunkirk, you know.” Hawkeye and B.J. nodded. “Later on, he was in North Africa. After that, he was in Italy. Wherever the fighting was thickest, that was where you would find our Major Blackadder.” By now, B.J. and Hawkeye were both sitting there wide-eyed, as was Major Houlihan, who had come in to see what was going on.
“He was the first Allied officer into an Italian town where the Axis had had to pull out fast, leaving a hospital full of wounded...ours and theirs...behind. He took charge instantly, and pretty soon, he had that hospital running like clockwork. The Co-Belligerent Italian government gave him a medal for that.” Potter shook his head. “I’m now really glad we’ve got him.”
“Holy buckets, look at this list of medals he’s won!” gasped Margaret. “Just about every medal for bravery the British give out, except the Victoria Cross!”
“We’ve all been really wrong about him,” Hawkeye said. “I want to find him and apologize to him for the things we’ve thought and said!”
“And we’re coming with you!” said B.J., as Margaret nodded emphatically.
They found Blackadder sitting quietly in the mess tent, reading some letters he’d received. “Major?” At this, he looked up with a questioning rise of one eyebrow. “We want to talk to you.”
“Well, here I am. Do please feel free.”
“Major, sir,” said Radar, “were you really at Dunkirk?”
“Dunkirk? Why, yes, I was. Rather a sticky wicket, but nothing a British medical officer couldn’t handle. Those beastly Jerries were a nuisance, though. How’s a man expected to tend to wounded with them lobbing shells and bombs about as though they grew on every grape arbor?”
The Americans looked at each other. They had heard plenty about the Dunkirk evacuation, and hearing it dismissed as “rather a sticky wicket” was unexpected. Hawkeye asked: “What were you doing in London during the Blitz?”
Blackadder stared at him as though he’d just asked the stupidest question ever. “Tending to the wounded, of course! I’m a doctor! Where d’you think I’d be? Brighton Pavilion, maybe?”
“But didn’t you get hurt?”
“Fortune of war, old bean. When you’ve the Luftwaffe overhead, lobbing bombs ad lib, that sort of thing happens. Kept me off the boat to Singapore, though, so it’s an ill wind…”
“So you went to North Africa, instead?” asked Margaret.
“I did. You lot think this place is a rough place to do surgery?” Blackadder smiled reminiscently. “Try doing it in a rather hastily-erected tent, with untrained help trying to substitute for trained nurses, with a haboob wind blowing dust all over everything! Not to mention, we had Jerry to deal with, along with his little pals, the Eyeties.” He chuckled. “Jerry had no give-up in him at all. I must say, dealing with him was a worthy test for my comrades.”
“Then you went to Italy?”
“I certainly did. The fighting in North Africa was over, and where there are wounded to be tended, that’s where I am. At least the locals were generally friendly, but Jerry more than made up for it.”
“Why do you do it?” asked Radar.
“Why? Why? Because I’m a British army surgeon! My family’s served the Crown since before Elizabeth’s time, and my pater was an infantry officer on the Western front in the 1914-1918 show. Got himself and his pals captured going Over the Top, and spent the rest of the war in the bag in Germany. I’ve a tradition to live up to!”
“Why didn’t you tell us all about that stuff?” asked Hawkeye.
“It wasn’t relevant or important. I don’t dwell on the past. What’s important is the present. And I do believe I hear helicopters!” Sure enough, the thuttering of rotors announced the arrival of more wounded.
As they headed for the OR tent, Hawkeye heard Nurse Baker mutter: “Well, you might not think it’s important, Major, but I do! My brother was in Italy, and he was saved by British Army medics! After this is over, I’ve got a prescription for you!” Hawkeye smiled to himself as he began to scrub for surgery. He knew Nurse Baker, and he knew Blackadder was in for a very good time.
THE END