Please be aware... the fence where the cache is located is covered in Poison Ivy. You can see the cache. If you take a pic of the cache and send it to me, you can take credit for the find. When the area is clear in the colder weather I will decide what to do with it.
I was looking through the logs on this cache and it has been noted a couple of times that there is a lot of text on the page but there is nothing that helps with finding the cache. I would like to address these issues. This cache was designed to be difficult. Each of the caches in this series were designed with the character in mind. BJ was called "a mystery" so his cache is an unknown. Margaret went through multiple changes through the years, so her cache is a multi. Trapper John, both the character and the actor, as stated in this description, had many issues in those first three years. The producers gave Wayne Rogers a hard time over the character, and Trapper himself was the more volatile of the swamp-rats, so this cache was designed to be hard in honor of what the character was like and what the actor went through. This is not a park and grab. The difficulty is set to 3 for a reason. The hint is pretty clear as to where you should be looking and by reading prior logs you can get a feel for what and where it is. If anyone needs assistance, you can always feel free to contact me, but I won't be giving this one away in on the cache page.
"Trapper" John Francis Xavier McIntyre and Wayne Rogers were the victims of a new television show in turmoil trying to find itself.
Trapper was one of the three original doctors referenced in the title of the Novel MASH: A Story of Three Army Doctors. The first being “Hawkeye” Pierce and the third being “Duke” Forrest, played in the movie by Tom Skerritt and left out of the television show altogether. Trapper, played in the movie by the fantastic Eliot Gould, had a much more important role in the 4077th in the book and movie. He was the Thoracic Surgeon brought in at the request of Hawkeye to improve care provided by the hospital. He was the better doctor and was named to be the 4077th chief surgeon.
When the television show was developed, the idea was to put all of the eggs in the basket of Alan Alda and while the producers originally told Wayne Rogers that the characters of Hawkeye and Trapper would have equal footing, it was very quickly apparent that was not to be the case. By the 4th episode, entitled “Chief Surgeon Who”, Hawkeye was named to that role.
It is no surprise that Wayne Rogers apparently never unpacked his bags. He threatened to leave the show after the first season. The second season was a reboot with the producers of the show making some changes to the look and feel of the show. They got rid of quite a few of the background characters and streamlined the show in general. Once again, it looked as if Trapper may be treated as an equal, but that was not to be.
In the second season episode “Dear Dad… Three” the fate of Trapper John was sealed. At the end of the episode, Hawkeye is dressed as Santa about to hand out presents to local children, but a call comes in about a severely wounded soldier who cannot be moved. It makes are a great visual and gives a lot of credibility to Hawkeye that he would unquestioningly go under fire to save a life. Since he was dressed as Santa, Trapper steps up and says he will go, but Henry’s response is he nail in the coffin for the character of Trapper: “No, it’s a chest case, it better be Hawkeye.” Otherwise an incredible episode, it is actually painful to watch that scene.
There were not really any episodes that focused specifically on Trapper, thought he did have a number of secondary story lines. Trapper is more emotional than Hawkeye and he is quicker to act and sometimes his actions are not the best decision to make. In “Radar’s Report” when a North Korean prisoner grabs a knife and wounds an orderly and a nurse before being recaptured by Corporal Klinger, he knocks over a bottle of blood and contaminates the field around Trappers patient. That patient developed severe complications and died. In his anger, Trapper goes to the bed where the prisoner is and in one of the most chilling moments of the show, Trapper stares dead-eyed at the IV bottle. “Getting all that juice you need?” he asks, almost under his breath as he considers removing the IV, effectively killing the prisoner. He is brought out of his trance by Hawkeye. There is a particularly great moment when Trapper is brought back to reality. The anger turns to sadness and Trapper walks out of the tent.
Trapper had a much more volatile personality. He would be quicker to swing the fists and his responses to people are more cutting. In the movie, Trapper punched out Burns for blaming the death of a patient on an orderly when the blame was his own. In the TV show, Trapper actually attacked Hawkeye after getting drunk and threated to go AWOL to go home. (There must be something about Hawkeye, as BJ also hits Hawkeye after getting drunk in “Period of Adjustment”.)
Trapper’s instinct to respond goes both ways as well. In the episode “Kim”, a wounded 5-year old boy is brought into the hospital where Hawkeye operates on him. After Radar searches for the kids parents and comes up empty, Trapper writes his wife about the possibility of adopting the child. As they await the response and the red tape, the camp comes together to take care of the boy, but as 5-year old boys do, he went exploring and wandered in the mine-field protecting the base. Upon seeing this, Trapper took off like a bullet to run after the kid only coming to screeching halt as Hawkeye and Radar yelled after him that he had just run into the minefield. Henry, supposedly an old hand reading a map tries to direct Trapper around the mines to get to Kim, until he realizes he is not looking at the minefield map, but a World War II map of Berlin. O’Brien, the often mentioned, but never seen chopper pilot flies in to pick up Trapper and then the boy. As they get back to safely, Sister Theresa from the nearby orphanage comes up with the boy’s mother. Trapper is visibly disappointed about losing the boy.
It was a shame how things played out for Wayne Rogers and Trapper John. It would be interesting to consider how they would have gone with Trapper. Would they have played up the volatile nature of the character or would they have turned him in to more of what BJ had become.
Due to the nature of Trapper’s duration at the 4077th as well as his more difficult personality, this cache is a micro with a tougher difficulty rating.