In Korea, Hornberger pioneered a kind of surgery that was prohibited during the war. Life in a MASH unit was grueling: Aside from the constant stress of warfare and long hours in surgery, the units usually picked up and moved at least once a month. The MASH concept was simple: The hospitals were located close enough to the front lines to serve wounded soldiers, but far enough away that they weren’t in danger of bombs or direct combat. The 8055 was located on the 38th parallel, which divides the Korean Peninsula and today serves as the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.Īuthor and Korean War surgeon Richard Hornberger, who wrote under the alias Richard Hooker. The tent-based surgical hospital was one of seven fully functional, tent-based hospitals that operated at various points during the Korean War. Hornberger soon found himself in Mobile Army Surgical Hospital 8055. That included just-graduated medical students and interns like Hornberger, who was drafted in 1951. Meanwhile, the United States began drafting soldiers-and doctors. The war soon turned into a tense stalemate as truce talks between North and South failed again and again. Hornberger might have gone on to a normal career as a thoracic surgeon if not for the Korean War, which began in June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea.Ī month later, the United States sent its first troops into South Korea as part of a battle against international communism. Born in New Jersey in 1924, he struggled in his pre-med program and nearly didn’t get into med school until, according to biographer Dale Sherman, a chemistry teacher recommended him as “peculiar, but worth taking a chance on” to Cornell Medical School.
Hornberger’s books may have been whimsical, but his real-life war experiences were dead serious.
(Credit: 20th Century Fox/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock)
Alan Alda as Hawkeye Pierce in the television show MASH.
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