“Do you know how to do that?” : The surgeon in the cult TV series M*A*S*H*, this actor had surgery in El Salvador for real!

A scathing anti-militarist satire, witness to the counterculture that then opposed the Vietnam War, the film MASH (acronym: Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, US Army Surgical Hospital in the Field) was released in 1970 and directed by Robert Altman and was a huge success at the worldwide box office.

Palme d’Or adapted into a series

Winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the film drew more than 3.6 million viewers in France, amazed by the plight of these anti-militarist surgeons, mired in the middle of the Korean War.

The success of the film was such that it was turned into a TV series just two years later, which lasted for 11 seasons, until 1985. The longest-running US television show, with 105 million viewers watching its final episode. An absolute record that has not been broken since then.

He remains an absolute reference, especially for screenwriters, thanks to his brilliant and avant-garde writing. It was also one of the first dramas, a much more popular genre today.

Dive into the middle of a civil war

In the series, actor Mike Ferrell played surgeon Bij Hunnicutt for eight seasons; In other words, the backbone of the team. During a personal trip in 1985, his role became larger than life…

He found himself in a real operating room, helping a Los Angeles doctor operate on a female Salvadoran guerrilla commander captured by the army while the country was on fire and plunged into a terrible war. civil. The story, absolutely incredible, reports Los Angeles TimesIn an August 11, 1985 article.

He has been involved in humanitarian activities for a long timeShortly after filming the series, he traveled to Central America, El Salvador, with the NGO Amnesty International. On behalf of the latter, the observer accompanied the organization in a surveillance mission, both political and medical, with the woman. Nidia Diaz.

The commander of an armed guerrilla group called the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), he was captured by the Salvadoran army. The prisoner was all the more valuable to the authorities because Diaz had previously distinguished himself by being an important interlocutor in negotiations with the country’s president, José Napoléon Duarte.

Severely injured in her hand after being captured months earlier and poorly treated in captivity, Nidia Diaz had to be operated on by a neurosurgeon named Alejandro Sanchez. Medical aid for El SalvadorA Los Angeles-based organization that provided medical and humanitarian aid to war victims.

Delivery of heaven

Under very good military protection, Mike Ferrell found himself in the operating room with Alejandro Sanchez. But the one who imagined himself as a “simple” observer of the scene found himself directly in the operation.

Although the actor had no real medical training, Sanchez asked for help because, according to Farrell, Diaz was too difficult a case to leave to the local surgeon’s assistants to take care of him. We never know. Sometimes someone has the idea to take him from life to death instead of treating him…

The operation lasted for 2:30 hours. “When I say ‘cut,’ I mean cut.” On the way to the operation, he gave me a book on tendon surgery in the car.” said the actor, whose comments were reported by the LA Times. And what he still remembers in his memories, Just call me MikeIt was published in 2007.

Farrell still insisted that Alejandro Sanchez tell the patient that he had no experience in surgery, which might have allowed him to postpone the operation. This was clearly not the case. When Dr. Sanchez explained the situation to Nydia Diaz, she smiled and replied: “In the mountains who can, do it.”

It’s not about fighting for Mike Ferrell. “So I went into the room to do what I’ve done a hundred times before Which I first noticed when he was telling me not to smile or vomit when he started cutting.” Hats anyway.