What 1968 novel introduced Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John?
Answer
MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors
The 1968 novel that introduced Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John is MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors.
Written under the pen name Richard Hooker, the book was created by former military surgeon H. Richard Hornberger with writer W. C. Heinz. It follows a fictional 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War and draws on Hornberger’s experiences with a real MASH unit in South Korea.
The novel helped establish the characters and setting that later became a major franchise. Its story was adapted into Robert Altman’s 1970 film, which starred Donald Sutherland as Hawkeye and Elliott Gould as Trapper John. The television series followed in 1972, with Alan Alda and Wayne Rogers in those roles.
A common mix-up is treating the television versions as the source of the characters. They were adaptations of the film, while the film itself came from this 1968 book. The title is sometimes printed as MASH without the television show’s familiar asterisks.