No members of the M*A*S*H ensemble have yet chosen to write books about their life and times on M*A*S*H. Maybe they felt it would have been too painful to remember that those times are no more. I am here to say that remembering has given me more joy than pain. And so, I don't mind going first. Why not? As Klinger, I was like the class clown of the 4077 Mobile Army Surgical Hospital anyway. I was never afraid that people would laugh at me. That's why I spent my whole life in comedy, even though it wasn't always easy. I studied theater at the Pasadena Playhouse, but dropped out because I didn't have the $600 for another year's tuition. I learned comedy from the likes of Red Skelton, Danny Kaye and Dick Van Dyke, but never became a contract player on their shows. I entered the movie business under the tutelage of Hollywood's most esteemed directors -- and was still a starving actor two decades after I began. But I didn't lose hope, or my sense of laughter, and found that persistence pays. In 1972, I came to Twentieth Century-Fox for one day's work on M*A*S*H, and ended up staying eleven seasons as a "piece of absolute madness" on one of the most celebrated TV shows in history. This title is no longer in print.