 When Larry Linville announced that he was leaving at the end of the  fifth season, the storyline of Margarets impending marriage to Lt.  Colonel Donald Penobscott was used as a way to write Burns off the  show. His absence was later explained by having Burns suffer a  nervous breakdown following Margarets marriage and searching all  over Seoul for her. He later was transferred back Stateside where he  was promoted to lieutenant colonel and put in charge of a Veterans  Administration hospital in his home state of Indiana.