Alan Alda credited as playing...
Capt. Benjamin Franklin 'Hawkeye' Pierce
- [Dictating a telegram]
- Hawkeye: Dear Dad, I am not dead. Stop. Hope you are the same. Stop. Thinking of selling my clubs? Stop. Spending my insurance money? Stop.
- [at Hawkeye's wake]
- B.J.: For he was a jolly good fellow.
- Col. Sherman T. Potter: He was a jolly good fellow.
- Everyone: He was a jolly good fellow.
- Hawkeye: I was much too young to die.
- Hawkeye: [lying in the morgue bus, as BJ tries to reason with him] I'm tired of death. I'm tired *to* death.
- Lt 'Digger' Detweiler: Where's the best place to look for casualties?
- Hawkeye: Try the mess tent. Hash eaters are your best bet.
- Hawkeye: [Pounding on the door of the morgue bus] Hey, Digger, open up! It's me.
- Lt 'Digger' Detweiler: What do you want, Doc?
- Hawkeye: [Climbing onto the morgue bus] The Final Reward, please, and step on it. Let's go, Digger, I'm not gettin' any younger. Where do I sit?
- Lt 'Digger' Detweiler: Nobody ever sits on this bus but me, Doc.
- Lt 'Digger' Detweiler: Hey! Hey! I'm, uh, Lieutenant Detmuller of the uh, Quartermater Corps, Morgue Detail. I'm here to pick up a body. Who do I see?
- Hawkeye: I believe Corporal Klinger can assist you in this undertaking.
- Lt 'Digger' Detweiler: Not one straight man in the whole army.
- Capt. Pratt: In your case, we'll submit to Quartermaster a request to rescind the Certificate of Death on T.A. Form 10-stroke-249 in triplicate, accompanied by an SF88-stroke-1107, signed by three officers of equal or higher rank, followed by a personal written report on Form 63-stroke-EBY by a ranking officer who actually saw the deceased not die - uh, in triplicate.
- Hawkeye: What does all this come to when you boil it down?
- Col. Sherman T. Potter: That is boiled down.
- Lt 'Digger' Detweiler: You're not dead.
- Hawkeye: Don't jump to conclusions. I have a very good tailor.
- Lt 'Digger' Detweiler: I'm lookin' for, uh, Captain Pierce.
- Hawkeye: You got him.
- Lt 'Digger' Detweiler: You can't be Pierce.
- Hawkeye: You mean somebody pasted my face in this mirror?
- Lt 'Digger' Detweiler: If you're alive, I'm in big trouble.
- Hawkeye: You're in trouble?
- Lt 'Digger' Detweiler: Three days ago, a body fell out of my bus onto the road. Last week, I came up another two bodies short. If I blow this one, they'll take me off morgue detail and put me on something worse.
- Hawkeye: What could be worse?
- Lt 'Digger' Detweiler: I don't let myself think about it.