Name: Margaret Jane Houlihan, aka Hotlips
Rank: Major
Family: Father - Al ‘Howitzer’ Houlihan, a famous general.
Mother - Margaret’s mother is an alcoholic and a kleptomaniac (most of Margaret's pay goes for rehab and bail), but she was also a nurse at one time.
Sister – Margaret has a younger, married sister who was a Captain the last we heard of her.
Margaret was Head Nurse at the 4077th for the duration of the war. An army brat, she spent her childhood constantly moving from place to place, and didn't even know what a civilian was for many years. The military way of life was ingrained in Margaret from a very early age - she once cried because she wasn't allowed a crew cut. A lot of her childhood was spent at Fort Ord. Before coming to the 4077th she dated almost every General in Asia, which caused Hawkeye and Trapper to give her the nickname “Hotlips”.
On arrival at the 4077th, Margaret became friends with Frank Burns, and began an affair with him, despite the fact that he was married. Later, she met and married Lieutenant Colonel Donald Penobscott, but the marriage lasted only 3 months. Margaret had a brief affair with Jack Scully, a soldier visiting the camp, but that also didn’t last long.
In her early time at the 4077th, she was very strict, and by-the-book, but by the end of the war she had relaxed a lot, and matured into a fun-loving person with a greater appreciation of the people round her. She also came to be a lot more understanding of the attitude of the people who did not want to be there, such as Hawkeye, whom she had had trouble relating to in the beginning.
When the war ended, Margaret decided to leave the Army and go to work in a hospital in the US, although her father had several Army postings lined up for her.
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