The doctors and nurses who worked in the Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals (MASH) during the Korean War were well-trained, dedicated and pushed to the brink. And they were young - too young to be doing what they had to do. As Richard Hooker writes in the foreword, 'A few flipped their lids, but most of them just raised hell, in a variety of ways and degrees.'

Meet the true-life heroes and lunatics who made up the 4077th MASH: such immortals as Hawkeye and Trapper John, Hot Lips Houlihan, Frank Burns and Radar O'Reilly. Experience the martini-laced mornings, the sexual escapades, and the daily hijinks that flew in the face of authority. But this is also a story of hard work, and skill in the face of enormous pressure and odds. Here is where it all began - the novel that made M*A*S*H a legend.