Well, actually, his superior owed him a $600 cribbage debt, and sending Charles to the 4077th was his way of weasling his way out of paying.
He was offended by someone actually insisting on debts being paid… (and a little bit by someone being better at cribbage than him). 
It’s been a long time, but I think in the novels Burns was competent and less one dimensional. I think he even got his own back by times. Hawkeye was obviously the character the author most identified with, though. No doubt if I am wrong, and I am sometimes wrong, someone will correct me.
My father was a Army physician in the 1970s. IIRC, he was only on active duty for 3 or 4 years. (I think he was required to serve because he was deferred from the Vietnam draft because he was in medical school at the time.)
Anyway, he came on active duty as as Army Captain (O-3). After one or two years of service, he was promoted to Major (O-4). Then he got out a year or two later.
Nearly two decades later, I was commissioned a Naval officer. It took me a lot longer than two years to be promoted to the equivalent rank of Lieutenant Commander (O-4).
My wife is a former Navy Nurse Corps officer. She was already an experienced nurse when she joined the Navy, so she actually came on active duty as a Lieutenant, Junior Grade (O-2), and was promoted to Lieutenant (O-3) within a few months after commissioning.
(A whole separate topic is the difference between Army, Air Force, and Navy lieutenants and captains. Suffice it to say my wife still tells the story about how she got tired of being ordered around by another nurse on a Medevac flight, an Air Force captain who didn’t realize that a Navy lieutenant is the exact same rank, both O-3).
Back in about 2001, I knew a woman whose husband flew big jets for American Airlines. They were expecting their second child, her car was a 7 series BMW, they had a ginormous mortgage, and then the WTC came down on 9/11. Since her husband had trained in the military, he was called back. Very inconvenient for them but I guess somewhere in the fine print they found that they only thought he’d left dear Uncle Sam’s service forever.
So it occurred to me that for some surgeons, this might be a repeat performance. WWII ended not too long before; if Frank had served as Captain in WWII, might he return as Major in Korea? For that matter if he’d stayed on with the VA between wars…?
I think (TV) Frank may like it better than Indiana. The war is a kind of game to him. He gets to boss people around. And his wife didn’t look like much of a prize…but there’s the early evidence of Frank being bossed by a woman.
Maybe it was fine by Mrs. Burns if he served far away. She’d earned her “Mrs” degree, kind of a face-saving thing in those days when being an old maid was a big deal.
Duke (in the movie, watching MPs removing Frank Burns from camp) : “Henry, if I punch Hawkeye and nail Hot Lips, can I go home, too?”
“My family has had problems with immigrants
ever since we came to America.”
Kind of off topic, but I’m always kind of surprised by how much people make and what their expenses are. From what I gathered, airline pilots can get paid well, but they don’t get paid that much. At least, not so much that I would assume that a 7-series BMW, 2 kids, and a “ginormous mortgage”, wouldn’t be on the edge of their “means” (and I assume the wife doesn’t work since you only indicated the husband’s job).
Getting back to the OP, it’s been a long time since I watched MASH, but IIRC, the reason why Frank Burns got so much shit was that he was a pretentious, officious, ineffectual, cowardly, ass with no moral character. Which is why he, as a major, was constantly “bullied” by his subordinates.
BURNS: Everybody hates me, don’t they?
RADAR: Just your guts, sir.
She did work (as a teacher) but due to the impending birth, would have to take off, possibly without pay? In any event he was the breadwinner, so once that downshifted to military pay… And some life on the razor’s edge of their finances. I don’t know.
The thing I keep trying to figure is why, if he was such a bad doctor, that consequences didn’t ensue. Did the army just not care?
For the TV version, I put some of it down to the other doctors insulting him for its own sake…they’re A+ doctors and he’s a B- doctor, so both are “passing.” He’s ok but still relatively inferior. To their eyes he’s a hack.
However they didn’t tell us week after week that another of Frank’s patients developed an infection or anything to indicate that most of his patients didn’t survive his handiwork, etc. The commanding officer didn’t pull him aside, report him to superiors, etc. So it’s a running joke, like how bad your wife’s soup is or something.
Again, it’s been awhile, but from what I recall, Major Burns was pretty much a jerk and was somewhat less than competent. I assume the Army “didn’t care” because it was wartime and they needed doctors.
Eventually. Burns’ character and role as “foil”/“whipping boy” for Hawkeye and Pierce was eventually replaced by Major Winchester. IIRC, Winchester was also pretentious (an old money Bostoner IIRC) but was a competent surgeon and of better moral character than Burns. IOW, he was more of an “equal” to Hawkeye and Pierce instead of some ferret faced dork getting picked on by the cool kids.
When I was in basic, among the many, many lectures we got, was one, with little sticking power, other than the basic concept behind it, was that the ranks in the different branches were not equal. A Navy captain was an Army colonel, etc. If we were ever in a multi-branch situation, we’d know whose commands to follow-- the highest rank, unless our direct supervisor was there, in which case, he or she gave us a command, and took the flack if it went against the wishes of someone superior.
In other words, if some Army captain, not ours, gave a command, and a Navy captain gave a command, we, as a platoon, followed the navy captain, unless our own platoon sergeant was there, and gave a different command. Then we followed our sergeant, and he, not we, got disciplined for not following the captain.
I recall exactly one occurrence in the TV show where Burns’ skills were praised and it stands out in my memory just for that uniqueness. I think was in the pilot episode, or certainly one of the very first episodes, when Blake was telling Pierce and McIntyre to lay off Burns.
Blake: He’s a good doctor and we need him.
Blake may have been exaggerating somewhat in the interest of trying to keep his staff in line and reducing his own headaches. Personally, I remember cheering a bit when Burns had momentary victories over the others, just because it was so one-sided the rest of the time.
One recurring element that I found annoying was how the 4077 was touted for having the best patient-survival rate, which is incongruous with a grossly incompetent surgeon on staff.
My take on it was that Burns wasn’t necessarily in-competent, just that he wasn’t all that good at what he did. Kind of like how a NBA player is in no way “bad” at basketball relative to the vast run of all basketball players, just maybe not as good as other NBA players. The implication was that Hawkeye, BJ, Trapper, and Blake were all “good”, and Frank was mediocre at best. Or possibly just not up to the challenge of being a MASH surgeon.
I also assumed that he was regular Army because of the way he was so officious about doing things by the book. A big part of it as I saw it was the conflict between the essentially “civilian” doctors like Hawkeye, Trapper and BJ, and the military as a whole, as embodied in many cases by Burns. It wouldn’t make as much sense to have Burns be a draftee just like them, but with a slightly higher rank. It might make him a bit more obnoxious, but I always understood it to be that Burns’ slightly higher rank in spite of his mediocrity as a surgeon was a reward of sorts for of his love for the bureaucracy and convoluted Army way of doing things. Sort of a middle finger to Hawkeye, etc… who had no value for the bureaucracy or Army way of doing things. Basically Burns was being rewarded and promoted for his slavish adherence to the Army way, regardless of how awful or incomprehensible it may have been.
There’s also this, although I don’t remember which episode it came from–
Blake: Frank, why do you let them get to you? You know you’re a good surgeon.
Frank: Well of course I know I’m a great surgeon.
Blake: Who said great? I said fair.
Frank: You said good!
I hope it’s not perceived as thread-shitting if I say that I don’t think it’s worth it to think too hard about why Frank is a major. MASH was not always scrupulously correct when it came to military matters, and the truth is Frank is a major mostly for story reasons. Having your heroes’ nemesis be someone who has authority over them means that they can’t just ignore him without at least potentially suffering some consequences.
Yes, “12 years in practice” – the way I figured it at the time the show was running was that TV-Burns at some point finagled himself a peacetime Reserve commission back home for resumé-padding purposes and it came to bite him when he got called up. This would explain his wanting to put on “soldierly” affectations – his seeking promotion and standing for image’s sake(*). Though his rank in the movie and TV show (book-Burns is a captain) probably is meant for the scriptwriters’ purpose of giving the other lads someone to “punch up” to and to make him a nominal peer for Margaret. She, OTOH, is established as a career officer.
(*referenced also in how it is established he married into a “good family” and that’s why he can’t leave his wife for Margaret as it’s the wife’s side of the family that has the money)
Not to mention that it’s the 50s, and he had children. People with children just didn’t get divorced back then.
I think this is a huge piece of the equation – almost like an “Emperor Has No Clothes” component.
The series made no secret about the fact that the affair was no secret.
It reminds me of the Socially Conservative Republicans who always get caught in a web of their own hypocrisy – it really is the hypocrisy rather than the endless moralizing.
It also reminds me of this great scene from “Airplane:”
Sure they did. Less common, but I knew kids with parents who divorced in the 50s.
I remember one episode, where Burns was saying he and the major were in agreement on something, because they had discussed it. The specific phrase he used was “Major Houlihan and I are intimate.” The others roll their eyes - of course! We all know, Frank. Big laugh for the double meaning.
But imagine asking your dad when you are 12 what that meant. And why it was funny. Oy.