Hiester Richard Hornberger Jr.

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 during the Korean War and written in collaboration with W. C. Heinz. It was used as the basis for the award-winning, critically and commercially successful movie M*A*S*H (1970) — and two years later, the acclaimed long running television series of the same title.

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.). According to one doctor assigned to the unit, M.A.S.H. units “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.”^[3] The operating room consisted of stretchers balanced on carpenter’s sawhorses.^[4]

Many of the M.A.S.H. doctors were in their twenties, with few having advanced surgical training.^[5] 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.”

A colleague described Hornberger as “a very good surgeon with a tremendous sense of humor.” Hornberger did label his tent “The Swamp” as do the characters in the novel

After the success of his book and its screen adaptations, Hornberger continued to practice as a surgeon in Waterville until his retirement in 1988. During the later years of his practice, Hornberger did medical research and published his research in peer-reviewed medical journals. He died at the age of 73 on November 4, 1997, of leukemia.