M*A*S*H

My late father's service to this country was spent in Korea in a M*A*S*H unit. We have an old newspaper clipping showing him giving an immunity shot to a young Korean boy prior to battle (as I recall, he arrived earlier before the actual military engagements began). Other than that, we have slides of him in uniform and the countryside from the time he spent there.

My siblings and I were still children when the television show M*A*S*H was being broadcast and our father was still alive. I can still picture him sitting at the dinner table eating as we watched an episode where the characters were in the operating room, innocently asking him if his experiences were like what we were watching. All I recall him saying is in real life, there was "more blood." Having a better idea of war now, I can't even imagine the horrors he must have witnessed of wounded and dying soldiers being brought in from the battlefield and what he was protecting us from knowing.