“How do you figure that, Hawkeye?” Father Mulcahy, screen capture from video snippet of M.A.S.H.
Our correspondents Jameses, Stanley and Kessler, alerted me months ago to this exchange in the old television show, “M.A.S.H.” In a discussion of the First Battle of Bull Run, we discussed war as hell.
War is worse than hell, they said. Still true.
They pointed to a scene from “M.A.S.H.”
Dialogue borrowed from IMDB:
Hawkeye: War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.
Father Mulcahy: How do you figure that, Hawkeye?
Hawkeye: Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?
Father Mulcahy: Sinners, I believe.
Hawkeye: Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them — little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.
Deep thinking, maybe wisdom, from a mobile operating room filtered through sit-com writers.
M.A.S.H., copyright 20th Century Fox
More:
- Correction and discussion of William Tecumseh Sherman’s original quote, “War is hell.”
- Collateral damage as hell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
[…] a famous quote from Korean War television series M*A*S*H that explains why war is worse than hell: “There […]
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Thanks! Didn’t occur to me to list the episode details, but surely someone will find that useful.
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Season 5, Episode 20. “The General’s Practitioner.”
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