In many - or at least some - ways, this is actually an improvement from where he'd been. Actual roofs on the buildings, walls that wouldn't leak heat from shoddy furnaces, much fresher food. But there are, of course, several negatives to go along with this "bounty," and Mulcahy is already feeling the ache of missing his friends and surrogate family at camp. At least half of his explorations were due to him not wanting to think so much about that right now and finding things to distract him.

"MASH stands for mobile army surgical hospital - field hospitals that can be packed up and moved within hours depending on how the front lines are moving, because we need to be as close as we can be to the fighting. Sometimes we're too close. But we're there to do a valuable job, because the quicker a boy gets into surgery after he's been injured, the greater his chances of survival."

Although the potato-mashing idea is honestly funnier.