Richard Hooker

Hiester Richard Hornberger Jr. (February 1, 1924 – November 4, 1997) was an American writer and surgeon who wrote under the pseudonym Richard Hooker. Hornberger's best-known work is his novel MASH (1968), based on his experiences as a wartime United States Army surgeon doctor during the Korean War (1950–1953) and written in collaboration with W.C. Heinz. It was used as the basis for an award-winning, critically and commercially successful movie – M*A*S*H (1970) — and two years later in an acclaimed long running television series (1972–1983) of the same title. Early life and education Born in Trenton, New Jersey, Hornberger attended the Peddie School in Hightstown. He graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where he was an active member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. He went to Cornell Medical School in New York City. Military experience After graduating from medical school, he was drafted into the Korean War and assigned to the 8055 Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (M.A.S.H.). M.A.S.H. units, according to one doctor assigned to the unit, "weren't on the front lines, but they were close. They lived and worked in tents. It was hot in the summer and colder than cold in the winter." The operating room consisted of stretchers balanced on carpenter's sawhorses. Many of the M.A.S.H. doctors were in their twenties, with few having advanced surgical training. During battle campaigns, units could see "as many as 1,000 casualties a day". "What characterized the fighting in Korea", one of Hornberger's fellow officers recalled, "was that you would have a period of a week or ten days when nothing much was happening, then there would be a push. When you had a push, there would suddenly be a mass of casualties that would just overwhelm us." There were, another surgeon recalled, "'long periods when not much of anything happened' in an atmosphere of apparent safety—plenty of time to play ... When things were quiet we would sit around and read. Sometimes the nurses would have a little dance." Hornberger's later assessment of his unit's behavior was: "A few flipped their lids, but most just raised hell in a variety of ways and degrees."