Private practice and writing career Īfter the war, Hornberger worked for the U.S. 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.' Ī colleague described Hornberger as 'a very good surgeon with a tremendous sense of humor.' Although Hornberger did label his tent 'The Swamp' (as do the characters in the novel), he was politically conservative. When things were quiet we would sit around and read. 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 . '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. During battle campaigns, units could see 'as many as 1,000 casualties a day'.

doctors were in their twenties, with few having advanced surgical training. It was hot in the summer and colder than cold in the winter.' The operating room consisted of stretchers balanced on carpenter's sawhorses. units, according to one doctor assigned to the unit, 'weren't on the front lines, but they were close. He went to Cornell Medical School in New York City.Īfter graduating from medical school, he was drafted into the Korean War and assigned to the 8055 Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (M.A.S.H.). He graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where he was an active member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity.

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.īorn in Trenton, New Jersey, Hornberger attended the Peddie School in Hightstown.

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. (Febru– November 4, 1997) was an American writer and surgeon who wrote under the pseudonym Richard Hooker.

MASH by Richard Hooker