Frank (Larry Linville): There's an unexploded shell out there.
Hawkeye (Alan Alda): We know, Frank, we know.
Frank: We've got to evacuate immediately!
Hawkeye: I think I did.
If there is anything a sports fan truly loves, it is a rivalry. Nothing can get a sports fan's blood racing quite like a rivalry.
It can be an individual rivalry, like the Ali–Frazier fights. Or it can be a team rivalry, like Oklahoma and Texas or North Carolina and Duke.
And there is no rivalry that can compare to the Army–Navy rivalry.
The first game was played long before my time, of course, but I have always known that the Army–Navy football game is one of sports' most enduring rivalries. American presidents have attended the game. Instant replay was first used during an Army–Navy broadcast.
There was a time when the Army–Navy game drew national attention — and it still takes the spotlight at the tail end of the regular season although it rarely has national implications anymore (but that isn't for lack of trying. A website tries to ramp up interest by telling you exactly how much time remains until the next Army–Navy game!)
Army–Navy had national implications during World War II, and I guess it still did during the Korean War because the episode of MASH that first aired on this night in 1973, "The Army–Navy Game," used the rivalry as the backdrop of the story.
Everyone at the 4077th was following the game, even Father Mulcahy (William Christopher), although he lost interest when he realized Notre Dame wasn't playing. Henry (McLean Stevenson) located the broadcast on the radio, which reported that it was the 53rd meeting between the schools. In the timeline of the series, that would be the game that was played in 1952, which Navy won 7–0.
That wasn't the outcome in this episode, though. Well, it was the same winner, but it was a different score. Much different. The score that was reported in this episode was Navy 42, Army 36. I have looked through the scores in the series, and no Army–Navy game has ever ended with that score.
Also, since the Korean War ended in 1953, the 53rd clash between the schools would have been played less than a year before the MASH folks went home. Yet the series went on for another 10 years and underwent several cast changes.
Oh, well. Details, details.
Henry, as I say, managed to locate the game on the radio, and the teams were getting things started when the 4077th found itself under attack. After the initial explosion rocked the compound, Hawkeye (Alan Alda) remarked, "That guy can really kick the ball!"
And in the middle of everything a big bomb landed in the middle of the compound — and didn't go off.
This bomb became Priority #1 for the 4077th, which tried to contact folks in the Army and Navy who could help them defuse it.
But they were all obsessed with the game. One agreed to look into the markings that had been observed on the bomb, but he told the people at the 4077th not to call him back until halftime.
So then it became a waiting game.
While they were waiting, Henry told Radar (Gary Burghoff) a story from his college days at Illinois — when, as team manager, Henry had run out on the field to tape the injured ankle of a star player before the pivotal play in the final seconds of the football game. It turned out that Henry had taped the wrong ankle. The player fell to the ground, screaming in pain, long before he could get near the end zone.
And Illinois lost the game.
The best part of the story, though, is often cut for syndication; if you want to see it (and you should), it may be necessary to watch the episode on DVD. Radar thought the player had been tackled short of the goal line, but that, of course, was not correct. Henry confided that the star player still came to Henry's house once a year to shoot out the front porch light. Apparently he had not forgotten Henry's error, and he wanted to be sure Henry didn't forget, either.
"And he's a judge now," Henry lamented.
Eventually, it was determined that the CIA probably was behind the bomb — but the CIA wouldn't tell anyone its business so that couldn't be confirmed. So Hawkeye and Trapper (Wayne Rogers) were dispatched to defuse it. Henry would give them the best instructions they had available via megaphone — but Henry messed up the directions, and Hawkeye and Trapper tried to get away from the bomb before it went off.
They only got a few feet.
The explosion, though, was not the expected kind. It turned out to be a propaganda bomb that showered sheets of paper with "Give up. You can't win. — Douglas MacArthur" written on them.
In the best tradition of the times, MASH ridiculed both war and government in the same episode. That would be the norm in the years to come, but it was still new in 1973.
