A Lebanese American hailing from Toledo, Ohio, Maxwell Q. Klinger serves as a corpsman and later company clerk assigned to the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital unit during the Korean War.
Making no secret of his disdain for the army, Klinger constantly tried to get a discharge. Outside the occasional outlandish desertion attempt, he was unwilling to accept a dishonourable discharge and instead tried to convince his commanding officer to grant him a medical discharge on the basis of mental instability (referred to as a "Section 8" in military jargon). This often involved continually wearing women's clothes and bizarre behaviour like trying to literally eat a jeep or wearing heavy clothing during a heat wave. The commanders were never fooled and Klinger was continually frustrated. The commanders largely tolerated his antics because they were entertaining and Klinger was otherwise a conscientious and reliable orderly who made a point of never letting his schemes interfere with his work.
Eventually, Klinger gave up wearing women's clothing (this major character change was demanded by actor Farr because he felt his growing children would think poorly and be ashamed of him for appearing in women's clothing week after week on national television) and took over the exiting Radar O'Reilly's (Gary Burghoff's) position of company clerk with reasonable seriousness and eventually even got promoted to Sergeant.
At the end of the series, Klinger had fallen in love and married a native Korean woman, Soon Lee, and decided to stay in Korea to search for her relatives.