A very popular show from the 70s through to 1983.
We much preferred the earlier episodes as after series 3/4 it more or less became more of drama with comedy added.
This particular episode was a lucky find as it is a low fade copy, if anything, there is a heavy blue presence especially on the night sequence, this however is much preferred to a faded copy. This episode was a turning point of the relationship of Hawkeye and Margaret. While they would still have an adversarial relationship it has changed. They have more respect for each other. It was also the beginning of the change of Margaret. She is beginning to see her relationship between Frank Burns is going nowhere. M*A*S*H is beginning to change from a satirical anti war comedy into more dramatic.
This episode, with the help of tv troops website,
A typical breakfast in the mess tent with the usual hostile conversation between Hawkeye and Trapper on one side and Frank and Margaret on the other is interrupted by a summons to Henry's office. He tells the officers that I Company's battalion aid station has been shelled and their surgeon killed, and the 4077th has been asked to send a surgeon, a nurse, and a corpsman until their long-term replacements arrive. Margaret immediately volunteers as the nurse, while Hawkeye, Frank, and Trapper draw burnt sausages out of a bedpan to decide which of them will accompany her; Hawkeye "wins". As for the corpsman, Father Mulcahy draws a personnel card at random, and the lucky "winner" is Klinger.

Hawkeye, Margaret, and Klinger are shocked to discover that the aid station is in a bombed out house that doesn't even have a roof, while the area is under near constant mortar fire, but they make the best of what little resources they have available, and they are quickly operating like a well-oiled machine. Back at the 4077th, their colleagues' absence has left Trapper and Frank even more at each other's throats than usual, while Radar and especially Henry are sick with worry.

Fortunately, the replacement aid station staff arrive after a few days, and Hawkeye, Margaret, and Klinger return with a newfound respect for each other and for life at the 4077th. The episode ends with another typically awful meal in the mess tent, but Hawkeye and Margaret, having seen how much worse conditions can be in the war, just smile and toast each other in silence.

A very good episode with a good mix of comedy, drama and action and a good 16mm copy with just a few splices. One of the best episodes.

I liked the way the BBC aired them without the American laughter track, this show didn't need it (you can take the laughter track out of the DVD's as well), but I bet this copy has got it, some were less intrusive, but to me wholly not needed.

I agree, the canned laughter on this and other American TV shows isso false.
The creators of the show didn't want it, this is a n extract from the wiki write up which may interest you,

Series creators Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds wanted MASH broadcast without a laugh track. Though CBS initially rejected the idea, a compromise was reached that allowed for omitting the laughter during operating room scenes if desired. "We told the network that under no circumstances would we ever can laughter during an OR scene when the doctors were working," said Gelbart in 1998. "It's hard to imagine that 300 people were in there laughing at somebody's guts being sewn up."

Seasons 1–5 utilized a more invasive laugh track; a more subdued audience was employed for Seasons 6–11 when the series shifted from sitcom to comedy drama with the departure of Gelbart and Reynolds. Several episodes ("O.R.", "The Bus", "Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler?", "The Interview", "Point of View", and "Dreams" among them) omitted the laugh track altogether; as did almost all of Season 11, including the 135-minute series finale, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen.

"They're a lie," said Gelbart in a 1992 interview. "You're telling an engineer when to push a button to produce a laugh from people who don't exist. It's just so dishonest. The biggest shows when we were on the air were all in the Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show both of which were taped before a live studio audience where laughter made sense," continued Gelbart. "But our show was a film show – supposedly shot in the middle of Korea. So the question I always asked the network was, 'Who are these laughing people? Where did they come from?'" Gelbart persuaded CBS to test the show in private screenings with and without the laugh track. The results showed no measurable difference in the audience's enjoyment. "So you know what they said?" Gelbart said. "'Since there's no difference, let's leave it alone!' The people who defend laugh tracks have no sense of humour." Gelbart summed up the situation by saying, "I always thought it cheapened the show. The network got their way. They were paying for dinner."

A great series, and a great copy to own! I have seen all the episodes, and I agree on the first seasons to be better,

Tom,
That print must be super rare! I have only seen faded prints of MASH for sale. This is the first one I have seen with such good color. I thing the earlier seasons were better as well. Later seasons seemed a bit preachy to me, and I preferred Frank to his successor Charles Emerson Winchester III. It is nice to have some of these classic TV episodes on film. I cannot abide the phoney laugh track on shows--it is way overused. Simply hearing the laugh track does not prompt me to laugh along with it...I laugh if the scene is humorous not because of a laugh track--so what is its purpose?

canned laughter is certainly pointless, I think the writers described it well when they said it's a phoney, a lie. The fact they agreed not to put it on in any of the operation scenes from the start just makes it all the more stupid, why put it in at all?
I did have a later episode I reviewed on here some time ago but they got more and more like serious dramas all the time, the goody two shoes speeches and very little comedy in between so while it was a pretty good colour print, each time we viewed it, the episode just didn't even make us break a smile so it was sold on.

This particular episode has a very good mix of comedy and drama. This episode parallels the chaotic life-and-death situation at the aid station with the relatively calmer atmosphere at the 4077th, you do get to see the chaos as the three characters try to perform life saving field operations in what is left of the building as the shelling falls around them and they lean over the patients while operating/stitching to prevent debris falling on them. It is a pity it has the canned laughter, but at least during these action sequences, it is left off.