On the television show MASH, most of the main characters are said to be drafted. I am wondering how realistic the portrayal of conscription during the Korean war is. In particular the length of time the conscripts would be expected to serve.
Capt. "Hawkeye" Pierce is a board certified thorasic surgeon. He is already at the 4077 MASH in the summer of 1950 and remains stationed there until the last day of the war, July 17, 1953.
Cpl Klinger, a draftee Corpsman, is also there for the entire length of the war.
Lt. Col Blake is the CO of the 4077 from summer of 1950 until probably late August 1952, when he has "earned enough rotation points to go home". (He dies when his plane home is shot down). (Blake might be a reservist-- he talks a lot about being pulled away from his civilian practice but never says he is drafted. Can we assume he wasn't based on his rank?)
In the first week of Sept 1952, Capt "Trapper" John MacInytre gets his discharge orders. They are evidentally a bit of a surprise-- Hawkeye left on a week's R&R not knowing he would return to find his friend gone. Wouldn't his release from service have been scheduled months in advance?
On Sept 12 1952 BJ Hunnicutt arrives in Korea. He has been drafted "fresh out of surgical residency" with a two-month old baby at home (would this not warrant a deferral?) . He remains at the 4077 until the last day of the war.
Maj. Winchester is a thorasic surgeon who was drafted and assigned to a hospital in Tokyo until he was transferred to the 4077 sometime in autumn 1952. He remains there until the end of the war.
Cpl "Radar" O'Reilly, a clerk, is also there at the beginning of the series. He is sent home in late 1952 on a "hardship discharge" after his uncle passes away, leaving his mother unable to manage the family farm alone.
American draftees in the Korean War had an active duty service requirement of 24 months. Note that this is total time in service, not in a combat zone; time spent training in the US could account for a significant portion of this. The Army’s rotation point system further reduced time spent in combat (although I don’t know whether this applied to the other services). To quote the Army’s history website:
In September 1951 the Army had introduced a point system that tried to take into account the nature of individual service when determining eligibility for rotation home to the United States. According to this system, a soldier earned four points for every month he served in close combat, two points per month for rear-echelon duty in Korea, and one point for duty elsewhere in the Far East. Later, an additional category-divisional reserve status-was established at a rate of three points per month. The Army initially stated that enlisted men needed to earn forty-three points to be eligible for rotation back to the States, while officers required fifty-five points. In June 1952 the Army reduced these requirements to thirty-six points for enlisted men and thirty-seven points for officers. Earning the required number of points did not guarantee instant rotation; it only meant that the soldier in question was eligible to go home. Nevertheless, most soldiers did return home shortly after they met the requirement.
Draftees in Korea were a minority. However, MASH is not representative of the broader Korean War draft because it focuses on medical personnel, and the show is accurate in this regard - the US had a shortage of military doctors and started drafting doctors in August 1950, just 2 months after the war began. Exactly how many drafted doctors served in Korea is unclear. One website claims that by 1952, 90 percent of US doctors in Korea were drafted. On the other hand, the Selective Service System website says that while almost 11,000 doctors were called up in the draft, fewer than 50 were actually inducted into service. As is often the case, it’s possible that the threat of being drafted encouraged many doctors to voluntarily join, but due to the plethora of anecdotal evidence supporting drafted doctors in Korea, I also suspect that the SSS is using some creative accounting methods on its website. Notably, the author the book MASH, upon which the TV show was based, was a doctor who was drafted to serve in Korea.
As for your specific examples:
Hawkeye would have had to have volunteered to stay longer. As far as I can find, draftees weren’t involuntarily extended. Same goes for Klinger and MAJ Winchester.
Blake’s situation is pretty believable either way, as doctors up to age 51 were eligible for the draft. He could definitely already have a family and medical practice back home. I agree that it’s possible he was a reservist and that’s why he was a lieutenant colonel, but that’s not the only possibility. If he were already experienced in his field, as seems likely if he already had a practice, he could have been brought in at a higher rank than normal (the US Army continues to do this today for a handful if specialty fields, especially doctors), and promotions in wartime often come faster than normal.
I agree that Trapper getting surprise discharge orders seems unlikely, but I don’t know enough to say it’s not believable.
Radar’s situation is plausible. Hardship discharges are a real thing in the US military today, but I can’t confirm one way or another regarding Korea. Exemptions and discharges were available in WWII and Vietnam for sole surviving children and similar situations.
Hey so I don’t know if this should change your question or not, but I always understood MASH to be political satire aimed at the Vietnam War, among other things. Would it make sense to update your question so as to accommodate both the stated timeframe in the show and the contemporaneous moment of its release?
I.e. in one episode, the number of points to return home is increased - as this differs from what actually happened in the Korean War, does it match up with the Vietnam War?
Maybe this is a bad take but I think reframing the question would cover the whole context?
The show never went into the background of the characters in the book MASH: an Army Surgeon in Korea by Otto Appel MASH: an Army Surgeon in Korea
He talks about how many of the doctors sent to Korea were drafted during WWII, sent to medical school but the war ended before graduation so in order to be able to continue their medical training for free they had to agree a reserve commission as did the author Otto Appel.
He also mentioned how the Army medical corps was in a very bad position in the late 40’s/early 50s, many of the veteran army doctors had retired, the army doctors who replaced them were often young and inexperienced and the civilian doctors drafted during WWII some had enough clout to avoid being recalled or were able to avoid a combat assignment. So that left the younger doctors who may have been drafted during WWII but were still in medical school when the war ended or new army doctors were often sent to Korea.
That’s why in Col. Potter’s first episode Hawkeye makes the comment when finding out Potter was regular Army that “he’ll have them bleeding by the bucket” or something close to that.