Thanks to everyone who reviewed Chapters 1 and 2. Here's the final instalment!

Exchanging Letters – Dear Daniel

Dear Daniel

This won't be the letter you expected to find in an envelope from Korea, so let me set your mind at rest before you start to imagine the worst. Hawkeye is fine. This is BJ Hunnicutt, and I'm writing to you because your son came up with a novel way to deal with a lull in activity here; namely that he would write to my wife while I wrote to you. He's sitting on his cot scratching away and smiling to himself, and I'm left wondering if my wife will ever speak to me again.

That's typical Hawkeye, although you don't need me to tell you that. When he gets some crazy scheme into his head, everyone else just gets swept along for the ride. Without even trying, he's become a kind of morale officer here, but when people expect you to be the life and soul every day it can be tough sometimes. Last week ago, after a nightmare session in OR, Father Mulcahy suggested a fancy dress party where everyone had to come as someone or something from the 4077th. It was just what we all needed, and soon we were all having fun with it, coming up with ideas and making costumes, but Hawkeye had lost a couple of patients and was in a pretty black mood. When I found him in the officers' club, he told me that he was going to go as the Grim Reaper "because death crawls all over this place". I eventually managed to talk him out of it with the help of a few more drinks, and the two of us went as Sophie, the colonel's horse. Our costume had to be seen to be believed – and boy, did I get the wrong end of that deal! The whole evening was great, a great chance to blow off some steam, and ended with a conga that should go down as the wildest ever. Of course the next day Hawkeye was his normal hyperactive self, once the hangover had worn off, but that's just the nature of the guy. He has higher highs and lower lows than anyone else I know, and when something gets to him, he has a tendency to retreat to a place where it can be difficult to reach him. He must have been a joy to know as a teenager.

But things can get to us all sometimes, and Father Mulcahy's party is a good example of how we cope with things here. We have movie nights and talentless shows, and two of the entries in our latest modelmaking competition were eliminated on the grounds of decency. We ran a whole season of cockroach races and adopted the champion as our company mascot. He was named Eric and he came along to every parade and meeting until we found him one night at the bottom of a glass of cognac belonging to our tentmate. There can be few better ways to go, we decided – although Charles wasn't too happy. He is now preserved in alcohol on a shelf in the officers' club and we drink a toast to him every evening. That's Eric, not Charles.

This may sound like schoolboy stuff, Daniel, but sometimes insanity is the only thing keeping us sane. It can be a real struggle to survive here – and I'm not talking about the wounded. Often it's either laugh or cry, and we do both, believe me. I always thought a husband and wife should share everything, but I will never be able to talk to Peg about some of the things I've seen and done here. How can I tell her that I held a seventeen year old boy in my arms in the mud, calling for his mother as Hawkeye tried and failed to stop him bleeding to death in front of us? Or about the heartbreaking choices we have to make on a daily basis, because we just can't afford to spend a long time on one patient when there are a dozen more waiting? She doesn't ever need to know about that stuff, or the rest.

I don't know if you are getting news any different to what we hear, but it seems that we could be packing up and leaving for home before too long. I can hardly believe that soon I'll be back in San Francisco with my family. I miss them so much that for a while I tried not to think about them too often, but now I suppose I'm used to the constant sense of something missing that should be there. My daughter Erin is almost two, and I've never heard her talk or seen her walk. I can't wait to get to know the person she's becoming. Everyone here is excited about going home. There's a real buzz around the place, but there's a kind of sadness too. Do you remember when you left school and promised faithfully to keep in touch with everyone? And then one day a few years down the line you suddenly wonder what became of friends who used to be the most important people in your life and whose names you can hardly remember now. I hope we don't all drift apart like that, and I have a feeling it won't happen – the things we've shared here have created an incredibly strong bond between us all. I remember Hawkeye telling me on my first day in Korea that he's closer to the people here than he's ever been to anyone except family. Now I know what he meant, and it will be tough to say goodbye.

I'm not even sure I'll be able to bring myself to say goodbye to Hawkeye. I've never met anyone like him, Daniel; I'm constantly amazed by the way he attacks life, head-on and at full speed. In the operating theatre he challenges death in the same way, daring it to defeat him. It rarely does, but every loss is a personal failure to him. If it's possible to care too much, then Hawkeye does. He lives closer to the edge than anyone here, and I think the day he goes home won't be a day too soon.

But we're in for a little R and R first. If we don't get a sudden rush of wounded, the colonel has given the okay for a bunch of us to go to the beach tomorrow. With peace finally in sight, I think we're in for a party to remember.

I hope we meet someday, Daniel. I want to see for myself whether Crabapple Cove really is the closest thing to heaven on earth as Hawkeye claims, and I can't wait to taste the famous Maine lobster I've heard so much about. I'd also like to know how much of you there is in Hawkeye. Did you know he once described you as the greatest man he's ever known? I guess that's not the sort of thing a son often tells his father, but it's the sort of thing a father should know.

With best wishes for a peaceful future

BJ Hunnicutt

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"Are you done?" asked Hawkeye, standing up and stretching.

"Yeah, just about." BJ folded his letter and sealed it into the envelope. "Let's take these across to Klinger for mailing and then get some lunch."

"You know you're in trouble when lunch is the highlight of the day," said Hawkeye as they left the Swamp. "So what did you write?"

"Nothing really. Y'know, just….stuff. You?"

"Yeah, just stuff."

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A/N: Neither of those letters turned quite the way I'd anticipated when I started, but I hope you liked them anyway!