- Hawkeye finds himself investigating a rash of petty thefts in the camp.
- Men of medicine, like the Swamp Rats, are supposed to excel at curing rashes. But, when the rashes are not itchy, red bumps but result in ill-gotten booty (or ill-booten gotty) found in Hawkeye's footlocker, the consequences can be serious. It is no laughing matter when your best friends think you could be a thief, when you are relentlessly pursued by a bush and a malicious P.A. system and needle-nose non-comms count the scalpels faster than you can wield them. Hawkeye is the past master of pranks and immature behavior; no one is really surprised. But, if Hawkeye is telling the truth and he is not playing a joke on the entire camp, then there must be a thief at the 4077. It will take some quick hands to beat Hotlips and her Court Martial forms...—LA-Lawyer
- A rash of thefts breaks out in the camp. Missing pieces include Frank's silver picture frame (Frank kept a picture of his loving mother in that frame and is very upset), Margaret's hair brush (its an ivory brush, gifted to her by her father and Houlihan did 100 strokes of that brush on her hair every night before going to sleep), Haweye's stizzle stick and Trapper's watch. Henry is shown to be in a flirty relationship with Lt. Leslie Scorch (Linda Meiklejohn). Henry gets a gift for Leslie when he returns from Tokyo, but finds it stolen as well and only the box was left behind. Henry offers an amnesty if the thief returns all the stolen articles by 1900 hrs that night. But then, even more things end up stolen from the camp. The camp is searched by Henry (which reveals many secrets like Radar sleeping with his teddy bear, Leslie's collection of under garments) and everything is found in Hawkeye's locker, leaving the other MASH personnel suspicious of, and disappointed in, Hawkeye.
Hot Lips and Frank pressure Henry to court martial Hawkeye and Hot Lips threatens Henry of escalation to Gen Blake, if he does not initiate court martial proceedings against Hawkeye. Henry is forced to Hawkeye under constant surveillance. Radar is assigned to keep an eye on Hawkeye, but he is not very good at it, and only ends up staring at him. Even in the operating room, Houlihan keeps a track of every equipment Hawkeye uses. The entire camp is against him. even father Mulcahy thinks Hawkeye did it. The nursing staff is also avoiding being seen with Hawkeye.
Hawkeye manages to let it be known to the camp the location where the recovered items are being stored (Lt. Col. Blake's desk). When the items disappear yet again, Hawkeye summons many of the MASH personnel to the mess tent in the middle of the night in order to reveal the identity of the criminal. After parodying countless detective stories by revealing possible motives others might have to frame him (Frank dislikes Hawkeye enough to have him transferred, Houlihan is Frank's sweetheart in this crime, Jones hates Hawkeye because he loses to him at poker all the time, the nurses hate him as he is a player, Trapper is jealous of his for his popularity with the ladies, Radar was the only person with access to all the tents and was short enough to go un-noticed), he tells the assembled staff that he has treated the items with a chemical which, when it comes into contact with a human being, turns that person's fingernails blue.
When Ho-Jon hides his hands, Hawkeye knows he has found the criminal. (The chemical treatment story was merely a bluff.) Ho-Jon is not punished, however, as he has stolen the items only to raise money to bribe border guards to bring his family from the north to the south. The whole squad to let Ho-Jon keep the stuff and use it bring his family to south Korea The plot was presumably inspired by a similar ruse used by the mathematician John Napier to identify a thief among his household staff
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