Born and raised in Crabapple Cove, Hawkeye is the only child of Dr. Daniel Pierce, a lobsterman/fisherman. Hawkeye attended Androscoggin College. After his medical residency in Boston, Hawkeye was drafted into the U.S. Army Medical Corps and sent to serve at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (M*A*S*H) during the Korean War. Between long, intense sessions of treating critically wounded patients, he makes the best of his life in an isolated Army camp by drinking heavily, carousing, womanizing, and pulling pranks on the people around him, especially the unpleasantly stiff and callous Major Frank Burns and Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan.

Straightforward, by the book and a seeming contradiction to her name, Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan is head of the Army Nurse Corps for the 4077. Literally born into the Army, Her dad Alvin Houlihan is a Colonel and growing up in this environment is how she developed her sense of strict decorum and regimen. Major Houlihan has little patience for those she feels do not live up to her standards of discipline - notably Hawkeye Pierce, Trapper John and Col. Blake. When she's not spending her days battling with them, she's spending her nights with Major Frank Burns. Her love life is quite complicated, from her affair with the married Major Burns, to her marriage (and later divorce) to Lt. Colonel Donald Penobscott; she seems in love with the idea of being in love. She also has a brief affair with Jack Scully and seems to harbor a secret crush on Trapper John.

Here is a description of the personnel in question.

Colonel Sherman T. Potter is a career army man nearing retirement when he takes over as commander of the 4077. An Army man to the core, he is realistic about the harsh realities of war and gives leniency to his subordinates when he can. To maintain his own sanity and escape the madness of war, he frequently paints. A family man he has a wife, Mildred that he maintains constant long-distance contact with.

Corporal Walter Eugene "Radar" O'Reilly comes to the 4077 as a naive farm boy. Fond of animals, he raises several during his tour of duty. Gifted with seemingly super-human abilities to hear incoming helicopters, he is given the nickname "Radar." Starting out overwhelmed by his role as clerk, he eventually becomes indispensable to the unit, keeping it running like clock-work. Upon the death of his Uncle Ed, Radar receives a discharge and is sent back home to help run the farm. Leaving a boy, but returning a man, Radar leaves his teddy bear behind.