Sometimes You Hear the Bullet

"Sometimes You Hear the Bullet" was episode seventeen of the first season of the TV series M*A*S*H. It originally aired on January 28, 1973. This was the first episode in which the medical staff failed to save a wounded soldier, and one of the first episodes of the series that showed a member of the hospital staff truly affected by death. Writer Carl Kleinschmitt was nominated for a Writers Guild Award for this episode. Hawkeye's old friend Tommy... more

"Sometimes You Hear the Bullet" was episode seventeen of the first season of the TV series M*A*S*H. It originally aired on January 28, 1973. This was the first episode in which the medical staff failed to save a wounded soldier, and one of the first episodes of the series that showed a member of the hospital staff truly affected by death. Writer Carl Kleinschmitt was nominated for a Writers Guild Award for this episode. Hawkeye's old friend Tommy appears at the 4077th. He is a soldier working on a book about life on the front lines called "You Never Hear the Bullet." The book is intended to show how death in battle can be sudden and not surrounded by any prior drama, as it often is in the movies. Later in the episode, Tommy himself shows up as a casualty on the operating table, having been shot by the enemy on the front lines. Just before being anesthetized, he weakly tells Hawkeye that he in fact had heard a bullet ricochet just before being hit, just like in the movies. Hawkeye,... less