MASH
The television series MASH is entirely a work of fiction, based upon a film which was based upon a novel of the same name. Despite its pedigree as the product of the imagination of writers, it may be one of the most historically accurate television programs dealing with American history ever made. One of the early pioneers who helped establish the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) units near the end of the Second World War was famed cardiologist Dr. Michael DeBakey, who helped create the idea of immediate life-saving surgery and stabilization before transporting an injured person to a more sophisticated treatment facility. This was the basic idea of a MASH unit.
Under the system created by DeBakey and others, wounded or otherwise injured personnel were treated in the field by a unit medic or another soldier, transferred to a battalion aid station for preparation to be sent to a MASH unit by ground or air ambulance, and then treated to save life before being sent to a recovery center. All of these steps were shown on the television series, and the need for the MASH to be as close as possible to the front was also frequently reinforced in the scripts. During the Korean War wounded soldiers who arrived at a MASH unit still alive had a 97% survival rate, a remarkable improvement over preceding wars.
Many newly arriving surgeons and nurses found it difficult to adjust to the concept of a MASH unit and what was contemptuously referred to as the meatball surgery they found there. This was displayed in the show when new replacement surgeons arrived to take over from characters who had departed the show. Although most Korean War MASH units were much larger than that depicted on the television show, with more than ten surgeons assigned to many of them, the stages of treatment were depicted accurately. The system of triage, assigning medical priorities of treatment based on severity of injuries and likelihood of survival, was demonstrated nearly every time wounded arrived at the fictional compound.
MASH units contributed to the improvement of the new system throughout the Korean War, with new surgical techniques, equipment, and procedures emerging as the need dictated, another aspect which was shown in the series. The majority of the surgeons serving in the American MASH units were in fact draftees, while nearly all of the female nurses who served in Korea were volunteers. Other nations provided MASH units as their contribution to the support of the United Nations effort to end the North Korean invasion of the south. All of these facts were part of the television program, which ran eleven seasons.
MASH also captured the boredom prevalent in wartime, the homesickness of both the medical team and the young soldiers who were their patients, and the frustrations of dealing with a moribund military system seemingly trapped within its own bureaucracy. Although it did little as far as following the military situation was concerned, it presented the war through the eyes of those suffering the most from it, and it did it with both drama and humor. There is no doubt that as the program depicted, MASH units saved thousands of lives in Korea which would have been lost otherwise. The show displayed it the way it was.