Sportswriter W. C. Heinz is considered by many of his peers to be one of the best pure writers of his time. From 1937 to 1950 Heinz enjoyed several successful writing careers with the New York Sun. Progressing from copyboy to local reporter, feature writer, and war correspondent, he turned to sportswriting in September 1945. When in 1950 the Sun was acquired by Scripps-Howard, publisher of the New York World-Telegram, Heinz rejected several other newspaper job offers to pursue a career as a freelance writer. While writing on various other subjects, he continued to emphasize sports. With the publication of his boxing novel, The Professional (1958), Heinz began a fiction writing career. He produced three medical novels, including M.A.S.H., a best-selling 1968 novel about the lives of U.S. Army surgeons during the Korean War that he wrote with H. Richard Hornberger under the pseudonym Richard Hooker. In Once They Heard...