I know more about war than under-educated actors

HAWKEYE in MASH is one of the best-loved TV comedy characters but one man who never became a fan was the real doctor he was based on.

Millions of viewers around the world were won over by the wisecracking army surgeon in the series.

And Alan Alda’s portrayal of Captain Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce saw him become the anti-war poster boy of the 1970s.

But that was the last thing Hawkeye’s creator wanted.

H. Richard Hornberger, who published under the name Richard Hooker, said: “I intended no messages in the book. I am a conservative Republican. I don’t hold with this anti-war nonsense.”

His novel MASH was a hit that, before its TV version, was made into a film starring Donald Sutherland.

Hornberger made the mistake of selling the small screen rights for a pittance. He only ever got 500 dollars, around £300, for every episode of the Emmy Awardwinning TV series.

Although the show stopped filming in 1983, it still airs somewhere around the globe every single hour.

Before his death in 1997 at the age of 73, Hornberger said: “If I had a percentage deal, I would have made millions.” And he was equally peeved at what he saw as the show’s stance.

He said: “No one in their right mind would be pro-war but I operated on 1,000 or so wounded kids and I know more about war than a bunch of under-educated actors who go around blithering those sanctimonious, selfrighteous noises.”

“If you’re going to start a war, you might as well play to win.”

Hornberger was born in New Jersey in 1924 and was studying to be a surgeon when the Korean War broke out in 1950.

The following year he was drafted in to the army when America joined the UN force supporting South Korea against the communist

North. Hornberger, then in his mid-20s, was assigned to Mobile Army Surgical Hospital 8055 – a tent hospital close enough to the front lines to serve injured soldiers but just out of bombing range.

Life in a MASH unit was gruelling, with the constant stress of war, long hours in surgery and regular moves.

Against regulations, Hornberger pioneered arterial repair surgery and helped to save many soldiers’ limbs that would have otherwise been