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had hardly spoken since the tumultuous evening Colonel Cathcart had thrown him out of the officers' club at
General Dreedle's bidding after Chief White Halfoat had punched Colonel Moodus in the nose. The chaplain's
initial fear had been that the colonel intended reprimanding him for having gone back into the officers' club
without permission the evening before. He had gone there with Yossarian and Dunbar after the two had come
unexpectedly to his tent in the clearing in the woods to ask him to join them. Intimidated as he was by Colonel
Cathcart, he nevertheless found it easier to brave his displeasure than to decline the thoughtful invitation of his
two new friends, whom he had met on one of his hospital visits just a few weeks before and who had worked
so effectively to insulate him against the myriad social vicissitudes involved in his official duty to live on
closest terms of familiarity with more than nine hundred unfamiliar officers and enlisted men who thought him
an odd duck.
The chaplain glued his eyes to the pages of the magazine. He studied each photograph twice and read the
captions intently as he organized his response to the colonel's question into a grammatically complete sentence
that he rehearsed and reorganized in his mind a considerable number of times before he was able finally to
muster the courage to reply.
"I think that saying prayers before each mission is a very moral and highly laudatory procedure, sir," he
offered timidly, and waited.
"Yeah," said the colonel. "But I want to know if you think they'll work here."
"Yes, sir," answered the chaplain after a few moments. "I should think they would."
"Then I'd like to give it a try." The colonel's ponderous, farinaceous cheeks were tinted suddenly with
glowing patches of enthusiasm. He rose to his feet and began walking around excitedly. "Look how much
good they've done for these people in England. Here's a picture of a colonel in The Saturday Evening Post
whose chaplain conducts prayers before each mission. If the prayers work for him, they should work for us.
Maybe if we say prayers, they'll put my picture in The Saturday Evening Post."
The colonel sat down again and smiled distantly in lavish contemplation. The chaplain had no hint of what
he was expected to say next. With a pensive expression on his oblong, rather pale face, he allowed his gaze to
settle on several of the high bushels filled with red plum tomatoes that stood in rows against each of the walls.
He pretended to concentrate on a reply. After a while he realized that he was staring at rows and rows of
bushels of red plum tomatoes and grew so intrigued by the question of what bushels brimming with red plum
tomatoes were doing in a group commander's office that he forgot completely about the discussion of prayer
meetings until Colonel Cathcart, in a genial digression, inquired:
"Would you like to buy some, Chaplain? They come right off the farm Colonel Korn and I have up in the
hills. I can let you have a bushel wholesale."
"Oh, no, sir. I don't think so."
"That's quite all right," the colonel assured him liberally. "You don't have to. Milo is glad to snap up all we
can produce. These were picked only yesterday. Notice how firm and ripe they are, like a young girl's breasts."
The chaplain blushed, and the colonel understood at once that he had made a mistake. He lowered his head
in shame, his cumbersome face burning. His fingers felt gross and unwieldy. He hated the chaplain
venomously for being a chaplain and making a coarse blunder out of an observation that in any other
circumstances, he knew, would have been considered witty and urbane. He tried miserably to recall some
means of extricating them both from their devastating embarrassment. He recalled instead that the chaplain
was only a captain, and he straightened at once with a shocked and outraged gasp. His cheeks grew tight with
fury at the thought that he had just been duped into humiliation by a man who was almost the same age as he
was and still only a captain, and he swung upon the chaplain avengingly with a look of such murderous
antagonism that the chaplain began to tremble. The colonel punished him sadistically with a long, glowering,
malignant, hateful, silent stare.
"We were speaking about something else," he reminded the chaplain cuttingly at last. "We were not
speaking about the firm, ripe breasts of beautiful young girls but about something else entirely. We were
speaking about conducting religious services in the briefing room before each mission. Is there any reason
why we can't?"
"No, sir," the chaplain mumbled.
"Then we'll begin with this afternoon's mission." The colonel's hostility softened gradually as he applied
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himself to details. "Now, I want you to give a lot of thought to the kind of prayers we're going to say. I don't
want anything heavy or sad. I'd like you to keep it light and snappy, something that will send the boys out
feeling pretty good. Do you know what I mean? I don't want any of this Kingdom of God or Valley of Death
stuff. That's all too negative. What are you making such a sour face for?"
"I'm sorry, sir," the chaplain stammered. "I happened to be thinking of the Twenty-third Psalm just as you
said that."
"How does that one go?"
"That's the one you were just referring to, sir. 'The Lord is my shepherd; I-'"
"That's the one I was just referring to. It's out. What else have you got?"
"'Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto-'"
"No waters," the colonel decided, blowing ruggedly into his cigarette holder after flipping the butt down
into his combed-brass ash tray. "Why don't we try something musical? How about the harps on the willows?"
"That has the rivers of Babylon in it, sir," the chaplain replied. "'...there we sat down, yea, we wept, when
we remembered Zion.'"
"Zion? Let's forget about that one right now. I'd like to know how that one even got in there. Haven't you
got anything humorous that stays away from waters and valleys and God? I'd like to keep away from the
subject of religion altogether if we can."
The chaplain was apologetic. "I'm sorry, sir, but just about all the prayers I know are rather somber in tone
and make at least some passing reference to God."
"Then let's get some new ones. The men are already doing enough bitching about the missions I send them
on without our rubbing it in with any sermons about God or death or Paradise. Why can't we take a more
positive approach? Why can't we all pray for something good, like a tighter bomb pattern, for example?
Couldn't we pray for a tighter bomb pattern?"
"Well, yes, sir, I suppose so," the chaplain answered hesitantly. "You wouldn't even need me if that's all
you wanted to do. You could do that yourself."
"I know I could," the colonel responded tartly. "But what do you think you're here for? I could shop for my
own food, too, but that's Milo's job, and that's why he's doing it for every group in the area. Your job is to lead
us in prayer, and from now on you're going to lead us in a prayer for a tighter bomb pattern before every
mission. Is that clear? I think a tighter bomb pattern is something really worth praying for. It will be a feather
in all our caps with General Peckem. General Peckem feels it makes a much nicer aerial photograph when the
bombs explode close together."
"General Peckem, sir?"
"That's right, Chaplain," the colonel replied, chuckling paternally at the chaplain's look of puzzlement. "I
wouldn't want this to get around, but it looks like General Dreedle is finally on the way out and that General
Peckem is slated to replace him. Frankly, I'm not going to be sorry to see that happen. General Peckem is a
very good man, and I think we'll all be much better off under him. On the other hand, it might never take
place, and we'd still remain under General Dreedle. Frankly, I wouldn't be sorry to see that happen either,
because General Dreedle is another very good man, and I think we'll all be much better off under him too. I
hope you're going to keep all this under your hat, Chaplain. I wouldn't want either one to get the idea I was
throwing my support on the side of the other."
"Yes, sir."
"That's good," the colonel exclaimed, and stood up jovially. "But all this gossip isn't getting us into The
Saturday Evening Post, eh, Chaplain? Let's see what kind of procedure we can evolve. Incidentally, Chaplain,
not a word about this beforehand to Colonel Korn. Understand?"
"Yes, sir."
Colonel Cathcart began tramping back and forth reflectively in the narrow corridors left between his
bushels of plum tomatoes and the desk and wooden chairs in the center of the room. "I suppose we'll have to
keep you waiting outside until the briefing is over, because all that information is classified. We can slip you
in while Major Danby is synchronizing the watches. I don't think there's anything secret about the right time.
We'll allocate about a minute and a half for you in the schedule. Will a minute and a half be enough?"
"Yes, sir. If it doesn't include the time necessary to excuse the atheists from the room and admit the enlisted
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men."
Colonel Cathcart stopped in his tracks. "What atheists?" he bellowed defensively, his whole manner
changing in a flash to one of virtuous and belligerent denial. "There are no atheists in my outfit! Atheism is
against the law, isn't it?"
"No, sir."
"It isn't?" The colonel was surprised. "Then it's un-American, isn't it?"
"I'm not sure, sir," answered the chaplain.
"Well, I am!" the colonel declared. "I'm not going to disrupt our religious services just to accommodate a
bunch of lousy atheists. They're getting no special privileges from me. They can stay right where they are and
pray with the rest of us. And what's all this about enlisted men? Just how the hell do they get into this act?"
The chaplain felt his face flush. "I'm sorry, sir. I just assumed you would want the enlisted men to be
present, since they would be going along on the same mission."
"Well, I don't. They've got a God and a chaplain of their own, haven't they?"
"No, sir."
"What are you talking about? You mean they pray to the same God we do?"
"Yes, sir."
"And He listens?"
"I think so, sir."
"Well, I'll be damned," remarked the colonel, and he snorted to himself in quizzical amusement. His spirits
drooped suddenly a moment later, and he ran his hand nervously over his short, black, graying curls. "Do you
really think it's a good idea to let the enlisted men in?" he asked with concern.
"I should think it only proper, sir."
"I'd like to keep them out," confided the colonel, and began cracking his knuckles savagely as he wandered
back and forth. "Oh, don't get me wrong, Chaplain. It isn't that I think the enlisted men are dirty, common and
inferior. It's that we just don't have enough room. Frankly, though, I'd just as soon the officers and enlisted
men didn't fraternize in the briefing room. They see enough of each other during the mission, it seems to me.
Some of my very best friends are enlisted men, you understand, but that's about as close as I care to let them
come. Honestly now, Chaplain, you wouldn't want your sister to marry an enlisted man, would you?"
"My sister is an enlisted man, sir," the chaplain replied.
The colonel stopped in his tracks again and eyed the chaplain sharply to make certain he was not being
ridiculed. "Just what do you mean by that remark, Chaplain? Are you trying to be funny?"
"Oh, no, sir," the chaplain hastened to explain with a look of excruciating discomfort. "She's a master
sergeant in the Marines."
The colonel had never liked the chaplain and now he loathed and distrusted him. He experienced a keen
premonition of danger and wondered if the chaplain too were plotting against him, if the chaplain's reticent,
unimpressive manner were really just a sinister disguise masking a fiery ambition that, way down deep, was
crafty and unscrupulous. There was something funny about the chaplain, and the colonel soon detected what it
was. The chaplain was standing stiffly at attention, for the colonel had forgotten to put him at ease. Let him
stay that way, the colonel decided vindictively, just to show him who was boss and to safeguard himself
against any loss of dignity that might devolve from his acknowledging the omission.
Colonel Cathcart was drawn hypnotically toward the window with a massive, dull stare of moody
introspection. The enlisted men were always treacherous, he decided. He looked downward in mournful gloom
at the skeet-shooting range he had ordered built for the officers on his headquarters staff, and he recalled the
mortifying afternoon General Dreedle had tongue-lashed him ruthlessly in front of Colonel Korn and Major
Danby and ordered him to throw open the range to all the enlisted men and officers on combat duty. The
skeet-shooting range had been a real black eye for him, Colonel Cathcart was forced to conclude. He was
positive that General Dreedle had never forgotten it, even though he was positive that General Dreedle didn't
even remember it, which was really very unjust, Colonel Cathcart lamented, since the idea of a skeet-shooting
range itself should have been a real feather in his cap, even though it had been such a real black eye. Colonel
Cathcart was helpless to assess exactly how much ground he had gained or lost with his goddam
skeet-shooting range and wished that Colonel Korn were in his office right then to evaluate the entire episode
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for him still one more time and assuage his fears.
It was all very perplexing, all very discouraging. Colonel Cathcart took the cigarette holder out of his
mouth, stood it on end inside the pocket of his shirt, and began gnawing on the fingernails of both hands
grievously. Everybody was against him, and he was sick to his soul that Colonel Korn was not with him in this
moment of crisis to help him decide what to do about the prayer meetings. He had almost no faith at all in the
chaplain, who was still only a captain. "Do you think," he asked, "that keeping the enlisted men out might
interfere with our chances of getting results?"
The chaplain hesitated, feeling himself on unfamiliar ground again. "Yes, sir," he replied finally. "I think
it's conceivable that such an action could interfere with your chances of having the prayers for a tighter bomb
pattern answered."
"I wasn't even thinking about that!" cried the colonel, with his eyes blinking and splashing like puddles.
"You mean that God might even decide to punish me by giving us a looser bomb pattern?"
"Yes, sir," said the chaplain. "It's conceivable He might."
"The hell with it, then," the colonel asserted in a huff of independence. "I'm not going to set these damned
prayer meetings up just to make things worse than they are." With a scornful snicker, he settled himself behind
his desk, replaced the empty cigarette holder in his mouth and lapsed into parturient silence for a few
moments. "Now I think about it," he confessed, as much to himself as to the chaplain, "having the men pray to
God probably wasn't such a hot idea anyway. The editors of The Saturday Evening Post might not have
co-operated."
The colonel abandoned his project with remorse, for he had conceived it entirely on his own and had hoped
to unveil it as a striking demonstration to everyone that he had no real need for Colonel Korn. Once it was
gone, he was glad to be rid of it, for he had been troubled from the start by the danger of instituting the plan
without first checking it out with Colonel Korn. He heaved an immense sigh of contentment. He had a much
higher opinion of himself now that his idea was abandoned, for he had made a very wise decision, he felt, and,
most important, he had made this wise decision without consulting Colonel Korn.
"Will that be all, sir?" asked the chaplain.
"Yeah," said Colonel Cathcart. "Unless you've got something else to suggest."
"No, sir. Only..."
The colonel lifted his eyes as though affronted and studied the chaplain with aloof distrust. "Only what,
Chaplain?"
"Sir," said the chaplain, "some of the men are very upset since you raised the number of missions to sixty.
They've asked me to speak to you about it."
The colonel was silent. The chaplain's face reddened to the roots of his sandy hair as he waited. The colonel
kept him squirming a long time with a fixed, uninterested look devoid of all emotion.
"Tell them there's a war going on," he advised finally in a flat voice.
"Thank you, sir, I will," the chaplain replied in a flood of gratitude because the colonel had finally said
something. "They were wondering why you couldn't requisition some of the replacement crews that are
waiting in Africa to take their places and then let them go home."
"That's an administrative matter," the colonel said. "It's none of their business." He pointed languidly
toward the wall. "Help yourself to a plum tomato, Chaplain. Go ahead, it's on me."
"Thank you, sir. Sir-"
"Don't mention it. How do you like living out there in the woods, Chaplain? Is everything hunky dory?"
"Yes, sir."
"That's good. You get in touch with us if you need anything."
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Sir-"
"Thanks for dropping around, Chaplain. I've got some work to do now. You'll let me know if you can think
of anything for getting our names into The Saturday Evening Post, won't you?"
"Yes, sir, I will." The chaplain braced himself with a prodigious effort of the will and plunged ahead
brazenly. "I'm particularly concerned about the condition of one of the bombardiers, sir. Yossarian."
The colonel glanced up quickly with a start of vague recognition. "Who?" he asked in alarm.
"Yossarian, sir."
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"Yossarian?"
"Yes, sir. Yossarian. He's in a very bad way, sir. I'm afraid he won't be able to suffer much longer without
doing something desperate."
"Is that a fact, Chaplain?"
"Yes, sir. I'm afraid it is."
The colonel thought about it in heavy silence for a few moments. "Tell him to trust in God," he advised
finally.
"Thank you, sir," said the chaplain. "I will."
20 CORPORAL WHITCOMB
The late-August morning sun was hot and steamy, and there was no breeze on the balcony. The chaplain
moved slowly. He was downcast and burdened with self-reproach when he stepped without noise from the
colonel's office on his rubber-soled and rubber-heeled brown shoes. He hated himself for what he construed to
be his own cowardice. He had intended to take a much stronger stand with Colonel Cathcart on the matter of
the sixty missions, to speak out with courage, logic and eloquence on a subject about which he had begun to
feel very deeply. Instead he had failed miserably, had choked up once again in the face of opposition from a
stronger personality. It was a familiar, ignominious experience, and his opinion of himself was low.
He choked up even more a second later when he spied Colonel Korn's tubby monochrome figure trotting up
the curved, wide, yellow stone staircase toward him in lackadaisical haste from the great dilapidated lobby
below with its lofty walls of cracked dark marble and circular floor of cracked grimy tile. The chaplain was
even more frightened of Colonel Korn than he was of Colonel Cathcart. The swarthy, middle-aged lieutenant
colonel with the rimless, icy glasses and faceted, bald, domelike pate that he was always touching sensitively
with the tips of his splayed fingers disliked the chaplain and was impolite to him frequently. He kept the
chaplain in a constant state of terror with his curt, derisive tongue and his knowing, cynical eyes that the
chaplain was never brave enough to meet for more than an accidental second. Inevitably, the chaplain's
attention, as he cowered meekly before him, focused on Colonel Korn's midriff, where the shirttails bunching
up from inside his sagging belt and ballooning down over his waist gave him an appearance of slovenly girth
and made him seem inches shorter than his middle height. Colonel Korn was an untidy disdainful man with an
oily skin and deep, hard lines running almost straight down from his nose between his crepuscular jowls and
his square, clefted chin. His face was dour, and he glanced at the chaplain without recognition as the two drew
close on the staircase and prepared to pass.
"Hiya, Father," he said tonelessly without looking at the chaplain. "How's it going?"
"Good morning, sir," the chaplain replied, discerning wisely that Colonel Korn expected nothing more in
the way of a response.
Colonel Korn was proceeding up the stairs without slackening his pace, and the chaplain resisted the
temptation to remind him again that he was not a Catholic but an Anabaptist, and that it was therefore neither
necessary nor correct to address him as Father. He was almost certain now that Colonel Korn remembered and
that calling him Father with a look of such bland innocence was just another one of Colonel Korn's methods of
taunting him because he was only an Anabaptist.
Colonel Korn halted without warning when he was almost by and came whirling back down upon the
chaplain with a glare of infuriated suspicion. The chaplain was petrified.
"What are you doing with that plum tomato, Chaplain?" Colonel Korn demanded roughly.
The chaplain looked down his arm with surprise at the plum tomato Colonel Cathcart had invited him to
take. "I got it in Colonel Cathcart's office, sir," he managed to reply.
"Does the colonel know you took it?"
"Yes, sir. He gave it to me."
"Oh, in that case I guess it's okay," Colonel Korn said, mollified. He smiled without warmth, jabbing the
crumpled folds of his shirt back down inside his trousers with his thumbs. His eyes glinted keenly with a
private and satisfying mischief. "What did Colonel Cathcart want to see you about, Father?" he asked
suddenly.
The chaplain was tongue-tied with indecision for a moment. "I don't think I ought-"
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"Saying prayers to the editors of The Saturday Evening Post?"
The chaplain almost smiled. "Yes, sir."
Colonel Korn was enchanted with his own intuition. He laughed disparagingly. "You know, I was afraid
he'd begin thinking about something so ridiculous as soon as he saw this week's Saturday Evening Post. I hope
you succeeded in showing him what an atrocious idea it is."
"He has decided against it, sir."
"That's good. I'm glad you convinced him that the editors of The Saturday Evening Post were not likely to
run that same story twice just to give some publicity to some obscure colonel. How are things in the
wilderness, Father? Are you able to manage out there?"
"Yes, sir. Everything is working out."
"That's good. I'm happy to hear you have nothing to complain about. Let us know if you need anything to
make you comfortable. We all want you to have a good time out there."
"Thank you, sir. I will."
Noise of a growing stir rose from the lobby below. It was almost lunchtime, and the earliest arrivals were
drifting into the headquarters mess halls, the enlisted men and officers separating into different dining halls on
facing sides of the archaic rotunda. Colonel Korn stopped smiling.
"You had lunch with us here just a day or so ago, didn't you, Father?" he asked meaningfully.
"Yes, sir. The day before yesterday."
"That's what I thought," Colonel Korn said, and paused to let his point sink in. "Well, take it easy, Father.
I'll see you around when it's time for you to eat here again."
"Thank you, sir."
The chaplain was not certain at which of the five officers' and five enlisted men's mess halls he was
scheduled to have lunch that day, for the system of rotation worked out for him by Colonel Korn was
complicated, and he had forgotten his records back in his tent. The chaplain was the only officer attached to
Group Headquarters who did not reside in the moldering red-stone Group Headquarters building itself or in
any of the smaller satellite structures that rose about the grounds in disjuncted relationship. The chaplain lived
in a clearing in the woods about four miles away between the officers' club and the first of the four squadron
areas that stretched away from Group Headquarters in a distant line. The chaplain lived alone in a spacious,
square tent that was also his office. Sounds of revelry traveled to him at night from the officers' club and kept
him awake often as he turned and tossed on his cot in passive, half-voluntary exile. He was not able to gauge
the effect of the mild pills he took occasionally to help him sleep and felt guilty about it for days afterward.
The only one who lived with the chaplain in his clearing in the woods was Corporal Whitcomb, his
assistant. Corporal Whitcomb, an atheist, was a disgruntled subordinate who felt he could do the chaplain's job
much better than the chaplain was doing it and viewed himself, therefore, as an underprivileged victim of
social inequity. He lived in a tent of his own as spacious and square as the chaplain's. He was openly rude and
contemptuous to the chaplain once he discovered that the chaplain would let him get away with it. The borders
of the two tents in the clearing stood no more than four or five feet apart.
It was Colonel Korn who had mapped out this way of life for the chaplain. One good reason for making the
chaplain live outside the Group Headquarters building was Colonel Korn's theory that dwelling in a tent as
most of his parishioners did would bring him into closer communication with them. Another good reason was
the fact that having the chaplain around Headquarters all the time made the other officers uncomfortable. It
was one thing to maintain liaison with the Lord, and they were all in favor of that; it was something else,
though, to have Him hanging around twenty-four hours a day. All in all, as Colonel Korn described it to Major
Danby, the jittery and goggle-eyed group operations officer, the chaplain had it pretty soft; he had little more
to do than listen to the troubles of others, bury the dead, visit the bedridden and conduct religious services.
And there were not so many dead for him to bury any more, Colonel Korn pointed out, since opposition from
German fighter planes had virtually ceased and since close to ninety per cent of what fatalities there still were,
he estimated, perished behind the enemy lines or disappeared inside the clouds, where the chaplain had
nothing to do with disposing of the remains. The religious services were certainly no great strain, either, since
they were conducted only once a week at the Group Headquarters building and were attended by very few of
the men.
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Actually, the chaplain was learning to love it in his clearing in the woods. Both he and Corporal Whitcomb
had been provided with every convenience so that neither might ever plead discomfort as a basis for seeking
permission to return to the Headquarters building. The chaplain rotated his breakfasts, lunches and dinners in
separate sets among the eight squadron mess halls and ate every fifth meal in the enlisted men's mess at Group
Headquarters and every tenth meal at the officers' mess there. Back home in Wisconsin the chaplain had been
very fond of gardening, and his heart welled with a glorious impression of fertility and fruition each time he
contemplated the low, prickly boughs of the stunted trees and the waist-high weeds and thickets by which he
was almost walled in. In the spring he had longed to plant begonias and zinnias in a narrow bed around his tent
but had been deterred by his fear of Corporal Whitcomb's rancor. The chaplain relished the privacy and
isolation of his verdant surroundings and the reverie and meditation that living there fostered. Fewer people
came to him with their troubles than formerly, and he allowed himself a measure of gratitude for that too. The
chaplain did not mix freely and was not comfortable in conversation. He missed his wife and his three small
children, and she missed him.
What displeased Corporal Whitcomb most about the chaplain, apart from the fact that the chaplain believed
in God, was his lack of initiative and aggressiveness. Corporal Whitcomb regarded the low attendance at
religious services as a sad reflection of his own status. His mind germinated feverishly with challenging new
ideas for sparking the great spiritual revival of which he dreamed himself the architect-box lunches, church
socials, form letters to the families of men killed and injured in combat, censorship, Bingo. But the chaplain
blocked him. Corporal Whitcomb bridled with vexation beneath the chaplain's restraint, for he spied room for
improvement everywhere. It was people like the chaplain, he concluded, who were responsible for giving
religion such a bad name and making pariahs out of them both. Unlike the chaplain, Corporal Whitcomb
detested the seclusion of the clearing in the woods. One of the first things he intended to do after he deposed
the chaplain was move back into the Group Headquarters building, where he could be right in the thick of
things.
When the chaplain drove back into the clearing after leaving Colonel Korn, Corporal Whitcomb was
outside in the muggy haze talking in conspiratorial tones to a strange chubby man in a maroon corduroy
bathrobe and gray flannel pajamas. The chaplain recognized the bathrobe and pajamas as official hospital
attire. Neither of the two men gave him any sign of recognition. The stranger's gums had been painted purple;
his corduroy bathrobe was decorated in back with a picture of a B-25 nosing through orange bursts of flak and
in front with six neat rows of tiny bombs signifying sixty combat missions flown. The chaplain was so struck
by the sight that he stopped to stare. Both men broke off their conversation and waited in stony silence for him
to go. The chaplain hurried inside his tent. He heard, or imagined he heard, them tittering.
Corporal Whitcomb walked in a moment later and demanded, "What's doing?"
"There isn't anything new," the chaplain replied with averted eyes. "Was anyone here to see me?"
"Just that crackpot Yossarian again. He's a real troublemaker, isn't he?"
"I'm not so sure he's a crackpot," the chaplain observed.
"That's right, take his part," said Corporal Whitcomb in an injured tone, and stamped out.
The chaplain could not believe that Corporal Whitcomb was offended again and had really walked out. As
soon as he did realize it, Corporal Whitcomb walked back in.
"You always side with other people," Corporal Whitcomb accused. "You don't back up your men. That's
one of the things that's wrong with you."
"I didn't intend to side with him," the chaplain apologized. "I was just making a statement."
"What did Colonel Cathcart want?"
"It wasn't anything important. He just wanted to discuss the possibility of saying prayers in the briefing
room before each mission."
"All right, don't tell me," Corporal Whitcomb snapped and walked out again.
The chaplain felt terrible. No matter how considerate he tried to be, it seemed he always managed to hurt
Corporal Whitcomb's feelings. He gazed down remorsefully and saw that the orderly forced upon him by
Colonel Korn to keep his tent clean and attend to his belongings had neglected to shine his shoes again.
Corporal Whitcomb came back in. "You never trust me with information," he whined truculently. "You
don't have confidence in your men. That's another one of the things that's wrong with you."
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"Yes, I do," the chaplain assured him guiltily. "I have lots of confidence in you."
"Then how about those letters?"
"No, not now," the chaplain pleaded, cringing. "Not the letters. Please don't bring that up again. I'll let you
know if I have a change of mind."
Corporal Whitcomb looked furious. "Is that so? Well, it's all right for you to just sit there and shake your
head while I do all the work. Didn't you see the guy outside with all those pictures painted on his bathrobe?"
"Is he here to see me?"
"No," Corporal Whitcomb said, and walked out.
It was hot and humid inside the tent, and the chaplain felt himself turning damp. He listened like an
unwilling eavesdropper to the muffled, indistinguishable drone of the lowered voices outside. As he sat inertly
at the rickety bridge table that served as a desk, his lips were closed, his eyes were blank, and his face, with its
pale ochre hue and ancient, confined clusters of minute acne pits, had the color and texture of an uncracked
almond shell. He racked his memory for some clue to the origin of Corporal Whitcomb's bitterness toward
him. In some way he was unable to fathom, he was convinced he had done him some unforgivable wrong. It
seemed incredible that such lasting ire as Corporal Whitcomb's could have stemmed from his rejection of
Bingo or the form letters home to the families of the men killed in combat. The chaplain was despondent with
an acceptance of his own ineptitude. He had intended for some weeks to have a heart-to-heart talk with
Corporal Whitcomb in order to find out what was bothering him, but was already ashamed of what he might
find out.
Outside the tent, Corporal Whitcomb snickered. The other man chuckled. For a few precarious seconds, the
chaplain tingled with a weird, occult sensation of having experienced the identical situation before in some
prior time or existence. He endeavored to trap and nourish the impression in order to predict, and perhaps even
control, what incident would occur next, but the afatus melted away unproductively, as he had known
beforehand it would. Déjà vu. The subtle, recurring confusion between illusion and reality that was
characteristic of paramnesia fascinated the chaplain, and he knew a number of things about it. He knew, for
example, that it was called paramnesia, and he was interested as well in such corollary optical phenomena as
jamais vu, never seen, and presque vu, almost seen. There were terrifying, sudden moments when objects,
concepts and even people that the chaplain had lived with almost all his life inexplicably took on an unfamiliar
and irregular aspect that he had never seen before and which made them totally strange: jamais vu. And there
were other moments when he almost saw absolute truth in brilliant flashes of clarity that almost came to him:
presque vu. The episode of the naked man in the tree at Snowden's funeral mystified him thoroughly. It was
not déjà vu, for at the time he had experienced no sensation of ever having seen a naked man in a tree at
Snowden's funeral before. It was not jamais vu, since the apparition was not of someone, or something,
familiar appearing to him in an unfamiliar guise. And it was certainly not presque vu, for the chaplain did see
him.
A jeep started up with a backfire directly outside and roared away. Had the naked man in the tree at
Snowden's funeral been merely a hallucination? Or had it been a true revelation? The chaplain trembled at the
mere idea. He wanted desperately to confide in Yossarian, but each time he thought about the occurrence he
decided not to think about it any further, although now that he did think about it he could not be sure that he
ever really had thought about it.
Corporal Whitcomb sauntered back in wearing a shiny new smirk and leaned his elbow impertinently
against the center pole of the chaplain's tent.
"Do you know who that guy in the red bathrobe was?" he asked boastfully. "That was a C.I.D. man with a
fractured nose. He came down here from the hospital on official business. He's conducting an investigation."
The chaplain raised his eyes quickly in obsequious commiseration. "I hope you're not in any trouble. Is
there anything I can do?"
"No, I'm not in any trouble," Corporal Whitcomb replied with a grin. "You are. They're going to crack
down on you for signing Washington Irving's name to all those letters you've been signing Washington
Irving's name to. How do you like that?"
"I haven't been signing Washington Irving's name to any letters," said the chaplain.
"You don't have to lie to me," Corporal Whitcomb answered. "I'm not the one you have to convince."
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"But I'm not lying."
"I don't care whether you're lying or not. They're going to get you for intercepting Major Major's
correspondence, too. A lot of that stuff is classified information."
"What correspondence?" asked the chaplain plaintively in rising exasperation. "I've never even seen any of
Major Major's correspondence."
"You don't have to lie to me," Corporal Whitcomb replied. "I'm not the one you have to convince."
"But I'm not lying!" protested the chaplain.
"I don't see why you have to shout at me," Corporal Whitcomb retorted with an injured look. He came
away from the center pole and shook his finger at the chaplain for emphasis. "I just did you the biggest favor
anybody ever did you in your whole life, and you don't even realize it. Every time he tries to report you to his
superiors, somebody up at the hospital censors out the details. He's been going batty for weeks trying to turn
you in. I just put a censor's okay on his letter without even reading it. That will make a very good impression
for you up at C.I.D. headquarters. It will let them know that we're not the least bit afraid to have the whole
truth about you come out."
The chaplain was reeling with confusion. "But you aren't authorized to censor letters, are you?"
"Of course not," Corporal Whitcomb answered. "Only officers are ever authorized to do that. I censored it
in your name."
"But I'm not authorized to censor letters either. Am I?"
"I took care of that for you, too," Corporal Whitcomb assured him. "I signed somebody else's name for
you."
"Isn't that forgery?"
"Oh, don't worry about that either. The only one who might complain in a case of forgery is the person
whose name you forged, and I looked out for your interests by picking a dead man. I used Washington Irving's
name." Corporal Whitcomb scrutinized the chaplain's face closely for some sign of rebellion and then breezed
ahead confidently with concealed irony. "That was pretty quick thinking on my part, wasn't it?"
"I don't know," the chaplain wailed softly in a quavering voice, squinting with grotesque contortions of
anguish and incomprehension. "I don't think I understand all you've been telling me. How will it make a good
impression for me if you signed Washington Irving's name instead of my own?"
"Because they're convinced that you are Washington Irving. Don't you see? They'll know it was you."
"But isn't that the very belief we want to dispel? Won't this help them prove it?"
"If I thought you were going to be so stuffy about it, I wouldn't even have tried to help," Corporal
Whitcomb declared indignantly, and walked out. A second later he walked back in. "I just did you the biggest
favor anybody ever did you in your whole life and you don't even know it. You don't know how to show your
appreciation. That's another one of the things that's wrong with you."
"I'm sorry," the chaplain apologized contritely. "I really am sorry. It's just that I'm so completely stunned by
all you're telling me that I don't even realize what I'm saying. I'm really very grateful to you."
"Then how about letting me send out those form letters?" Corporal Whitcomb demanded immediately.
"Can I begin working on the first drafts?"
The chaplain's jaw dropped in astonishment. "No, no," he groaned. "Not now."
Corporal Whitcomb was incensed. "I'm the best friend you've got and you don't even know it," he asserted
belligerently, and walked out of the chaplain's tent. He walked back in. "I'm on your side and you don't even
realize it. Don't you know what serious trouble you're in? That C.I.D. man has gone rushing back to the
hospital to write a brand-new report on you about that tomato."
"What tomato?" the chaplain asked, blinking.
"The plum tomato you were hiding in your hand when you first showed up here. There it is. The tomato
you're still holding in your hand right this very minute!"
The captain unclenched his fingers with surprise and saw that he was still holding the plum tomato he had
obtained in Colonel Cathcart's office. He set it down quickly on the bridge table. "I got this tomato from
Colonel Cathcart," he said, and was struck by how ludicrous his explanation sounded. "He insisted I take it."
"You don't have to lie to me," Corporal Whitcomb answered. "I don't care whether you stole it from him or
not."
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"Stole it?" the chaplain exclaimed with amazement. "Why should I want to steal a plum tomato?"
"That's exactly what had us both stumped," said Corporal Whitcomb. "And then the C.I.D. man figured out
you might have some important secret papers hidden away inside it."
The chaplain sagged limply beneath the mountainous weight of his despair. "I don't have any important
secret papers hidden away inside it," he stated simply. "I didn't even want it to begin with. Here, you can have
it and see for yourself."
"I don't want it."
"Please take it away," the chaplain pleaded in a voice that was barely audible. "I want to be rid of it."
"I don't want it," Corporal Whitcomb snapped again, and stalked out with an angry face, suppressing a
smile of great jubilation at having forged a powerful new alliance with the C.I.D. man and at having succeeded
again in convincing the chaplain that he was really displeased.
Poor Whitcomb, sighed the chaplain, and blamed himself for his assistant's malaise. He sat mutely in a
ponderous, stultifying melancholy, waiting expectantly for Corporal Whitcomb to walk back in. He was
disappointed as he heard the peremptory crunch of Corporal Whitcomb's footsteps recede into silence. There
was nothing he wanted to do next. He decided to pass up lunch for a Milky Way and a Baby Ruth from his
foot locker and a few swallows of luke-warm water from his canteen. He felt himself surrounded by dense,
overwhelming fogs of possibilities in which he could perceive no glimmer of light. He dreaded what Colonel
Cathcart would think when the news that he was suspected of being Washington Irving was brought to him,
then fell to fretting over what Colonel Cathcart was already thinking about him for even having broached the
subject of sixty missions. There was so much unhappiness in the world, he reflected, bowing his head dismally
beneath the tragic thought, and there was nothing he could do about anybody's, least of all his own.
21 GENERAL DREEDLE
Colonel Cathcart was not thinking anything at all about the chaplain, but was tangled up in a brand-new,
menacing problem of his own: Yossarian!
Yossarian! The mere sound of that execrable, ugly name made his blood run cold and his breath come in
labored gasps. The chaplain's first mention of the name Yossarian! had tolled deep in his memory like a
portentous gong. As soon as the latch of the door had clicked shut, the whole humiliating recollection of the
naked man in formation came cascading down upon him in a mortifying, choking flood of stinging details. He
began to perspire and tremble. There was a sinister and unlikely coincidence exposed that was too diabolical
in implication to be anything less than the most hideous of omens. The name of the man who had stood naked
in ranks that day to receive his Distinguished Flying Cross from General Dreedle had also been-Yossarian!
And now it was a man named Yossarian who was threatening to make trouble over the sixty missions he had
just ordered the men in his group to fly. Colonel Cathcart wondered gloomily if it was the same Yossarian.
He climbed to his feet with an air of intolerable woe and began moving about his office. He felt himself in
the presence of the mysterious. The naked man in formation, he conceded cheerlessly, had been a real black
eye for him. So had the tampering with the bomb line before the mission to Bologna and the seven-day delay
in destroying the bridge at Ferrara, even though destroying the bridge at Ferrara finally, he remembered with
glee, had been a real feather in his cap, although losing a plane there the second time around, he recalled in
dejection, had been another black eye, even though he had won another real feather in his cap by getting a
medal approved for the bombardier who had gotten him the real black eye in the first place by going around
over the target twice. That bombardier's name, he remembered suddenly with another stupefying shock, had
also been Yossarian! Now there were three! His viscous eyes bulged with astonishment and he whipped
himself around in alarm to see what was taking place behind him. A moment ago there had been no
Yossarians in his life; now they were multiplying like hobgoblins. He tried to make himself grow calm.
Yossarian was not a common name; perhaps there were not really three Yossarians but only two Yossarians,
or maybe even only one Yossarian-but that really made no difference! The colonel was still in grave peril.
Intuition warned him that he was drawing close to some immense and inscrutable cosmic climax, and his
broad, meaty, towering frame tingled from head to toe at the thought that Yossarian, whoever he would
eventually turn out to be, was destined to serve as his nemesis.
Colonel Cathcart was not superstitious, but he did believe in omens, and he sat right back down behind his
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desk and made a cryptic notation on his memorandum pad to look into the whole suspicious business of the
Yossarians right away. He wrote his reminder to himself in a heavy and decisive hand, amplifying it sharply
with a series of coded punctuation marks and underlining the whole message twice, so that it read:
Yossarian! ! ! (?)!
The colonel sat back when he had finished and was extremely pleased with himself for the prompt action
he had just taken to meet this sinister crisis. Yossarian-the very sight of the name made him shudder. There
were so many esses in it. It just had to be subversive. It was like the word subversive itself. It was like
seditious and insidious too, and like socialist, suspicious, fascist and Communist. It was an odious, alien,
distasteful name, that just did not inspire confidence. It was not at all like such clean, crisp, honest, American
names as Cathcart, Peckem and Dreedle.
Colonel Cathcart rose slowly and began drifting about his office again. Almost unconsciously, he picked up
a plum tomato from the top of one of the bushels and took a voracious bite. He made a wry face at once and
threw the rest of the plum tomato into his waste-basket. The colonel did not like plum tomatoes, not even
when they were his own, and these were not even his own. These had been purchased in different market
places all over Pianosa by Colonel Korn under various identities, moved up to the colonel's farmhouse in the
hills in the dead of night, and transported down to Group Headquarters the next morning for sale to Milo, who
paid Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn premium prices for them. Colonel Cathcart often wondered if what
they were doing with the plum tomatoes was legal, but Colonel Korn said it was, and he tried not to brood
about it too often. He had no way of knowing whether or not the house in the hills was legal, either, since
Colonel Korn had made all the arrangements. Colonel Cathcart did not know if he owned the house or rented
it, from whom he had acquired it or how much, if anything, it was costing. Colonel Korn was the lawyer, and
if Colonel Korn assured him that fraud, extortion, currency manipulation, embezzlement, income tax evasion
and black-market speculations were legal, Colonel Cathcart was in no position to disagree with him.
All Colonel Cathcart knew about his house in the hills was that he had such a house and hated it. He was
never so bored as when spending there the two or three days every other week necessary to sustain the illusion
that his damp and drafty stone farmhouse in the hills was a golden palace of carnal delights. Officers' clubs
everywhere pulsated with blurred but knowing accounts of lavish, hushed-up drinking and sex orgies there and
of secret, intimate nights of ecstasy with the most beautiful, the most tantalizing, the most readily aroused and
most easily satisfied Italian courtesans, film actresses, models and countesses. No such private nights of
ecstasy or hushed-up drinking and sex orgies ever occurred. They might have occurred if either General
Dreedle or General Peckem had once evinced an interest in taking part in orgies with him, but neither ever did,
and the colonel was certainly not going to waste his time and energy making love to beautiful women unless
there was something in it for him.
The colonel dreaded his dank lonely nights at his farmhouse and the dull, uneventful days. He had much
more fun back at Group, browbeating everyone he wasn't afraid of. However, as Colonel Korn kept reminding
him, there was not much glamour in having a farmhouse in the hills if he never used it. He drove off to his
farmhouse each time in a mood of self-pity. He carried a shotgun in his jeep and spent the monotonous hours
there shooting it at birds and at the plum tomatoes that did grow there in untended rows and were too much
trouble to harvest.
Among those officers of inferior rank toward whom Colonel Cathcart still deemed it prudent to show
respect, he included Major --- de Coverley, even though he did not want to and was not sure he even had to.
Major --- de Coverley was as great a mystery to him as he was to Major Major and to everyone else who ever
took notice of him. Colonel Cathcart had no idea whether to look up or look down in his attitude toward Major
--- de Coverley. Major --- de Coverley was only a major, even though he was ages older than Colonel
Cathcart; at the same time, so many other people treated Major --- de Coverley with such profound and fearful
veneration that Colonel Cathcart had a hunch they might know something. Major --- de Coverley was an
ominous, incomprehensible presence who kept him constantly on edge and of whom even Colonel Korn
tended to be wary. Everyone was afraid of him, and no one knew why. No one even knew Major --- de
Coverley's first name, because no one had ever had the temerity to ask him. Colonel Cathcart knew that Major
--- de Coverley was away and he rejoiced in his absence until it occurred to him that Major --- de Coverley
might be away somewhere conspiring against him, and then he wished that Major --- de Coverley were back in
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his squadron where he belonged so that he could be watched.
In a little while Colonel Cathcart's arches began to ache from pacing back and forth so much. He sat down
behind his desk again and resolved to embark upon a mature and systematic evaluation of the entire military
situation. With the businesslike air of a man who knows how to get things done, he found a large white pad,
drew a straight line down the middle and crossed it near the top, dividing the page into two blank columns of
equal width. He rested a moment in critical rumination. Then he huddled over his desk, and at the head of the
left column, in a cramped and finicky hand, he wrote, "Black Eyes!!!" At the top of the right column he wrote,
"Feathers in My Cap!!! !!" He leaned back once more to inspect his chart admiringly from an objective
perspective. After a few seconds of solemn deliberation, he licked the tip of his pencil carefully and wrote
under "Black Eyes!!!," after intent intervals:
Ferrara
Bologna (bomb line moved on map during)
Skeet range
Naked man information (after Avignon)
Then he added:
Food poisoning (during Bologna)
and
Moaning (epidemic of during Avignon briefing)
Then he added:
Chaplain (hanging around officers' club every night)
He decided to be charitable about the chaplain, even though he did not like him, and under "Feathers in My
Cap!!! !!" he wrote:
Chaplain (hanging around officers' club every night)
The two chaplain entries, therefore, neutralized each other. Alongside "Ferrara" and "Naked man in
formation (after Avignon)" he then wrote:
Yossarian!
Alongside "Bologna (bomb line moved on map during)" "Food poisoning (during Bologna)" and "Moaning
(epidemic of during Avignon briefing)" he wrote in a bold, decisive hand:
?
Those entries labeled "?" were the ones he wanted to investigate immediately to determine if Yossarian had
played any part in them.
Suddenly his arm began to shake, and he was unable to write any more. He rose to his feet in terror, feeling
sticky and fat, and rushed to the open window to gulp in fresh air. His gaze fell on the skeet-range, and he
reeled away with a sharp cry of distress, his wild and feverish eyes scanning the walls of his office frantically
as though they were swarming with Yossarians.
Nobody loved him. General Dreedle hated him, although General Peckem liked him, although he couldn't
be sure, since Colonel Cargill, General Peckem's aide, undoubtedly had ambitions of his own and was
probably sabotaging him with General Peckem at every opportunity. The only good colonel, he decided, was a
dead colonel, except for himself. The only colonel he trusted was Colonel Moodus, and even he had an in with
his father-in-law. Milo, of course, had been the big feather in his cap, although having his group bombed by
Milo's planes had probably been a terrible black eye for him, even though Milo had ultimately stilled all
protest by disclosing the huge net profit the syndicate had realized on the deal with the enemy and convincing
everyone that bombing his own men and planes had therefore really been a commendable and very lucrative
blow on the side of private enterprise. The colonel was insecure about Milo because other colonels were trying
to lure him away, and Colonel Cathcart still had that lousy Big Chief White Halfoat in his group who that
lousy, lazy Captain Black claimed was the one really responsible for the bomb line's being moved during the
Big Siege of Bologna. Colonel Cathcart liked Big Chief White Halfoat because Big Chief White Halfoat kept
punching that lousy Colonel Moodus in the nose every time he got drunk and Colonel Moodus was around. He
wished that Big Chief White Halfoat would begin punching Colonel Korn in his fat face, too. Colonel Korn
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was a lousy smart aleck. Someone at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters had it in for him and sent back
every report he wrote with a blistering rebuke, and Colonel Korn had bribed a clever mail clerk there named
Wintergreen to try to find out who it was. Losing the plane over Ferrara the second time around had not done
him any good, he had to admit, and neither had having that other plane disappear inside that cloud-that was
one he hadn't even written down! He tried to recall, longingly, if Yossarian had been lost in that plane in the
cloud and realized that Yossarian could not possibly have been lost in that plane in the cloud if he was still
around now raising such a big stink about having to fly a lousy five missions more.
Maybe sixty missions were too many for the men to fly, Colonel Cathcart reasoned, if Yossarian objected
to flying them, but he then remembered that forcing his men to fly more missions than everyone else was the
most tangible achievement he had going for him. As Colonel Korn often remarked, the war was crawling with
group commanders who were merely doing their duty, and it required just some sort of dramatic gesture like
making his group fly more combat missions than any other bomber group to spotlight his unique qualities of
leadership. Certainly none of the generals seemed to object to what he was doing, although as far as he could
detect they weren't particularly impressed either, which made him suspect that perhaps sixty combat missions
were not nearly enough and that he ought to increase the number at once to seventy, eighty, a hundred, or even
two hundred, three hundred, or six thousand!
Certainly he would be much better off under somebody suave like General Peckem than he was under
somebody boorish and insensitive like General Dreedle, because General Peckem had the discernment, the
intelligence and the Ivy League background to appreciate and enjoy him at his full value, although General
Peckem had never given the slightest indication that he appreciated or enjoyed him at all. Colonel Cathcart felt
perceptive enough to realize that visible signals of recognition were never necessary between sophisticated,
self-assured people like himself and General Peckem who could warm to each other from a distance with
innate mutual understanding. It was enough that they were of like kind, and he knew it was only a matter of
waiting discreetly for preferment until the right time, although it rotted Colonel Cathcart's self-esteem to
observe that General Peckem never deliberately sought him out and that he labored no harder to impress
Colonel Cathcart with his epigrams and erudition than he did to impress anyone else in earshot, even enlisted
men. Either Colonel Cathcart wasn't getting through to General Peckem or General Peckem was not the
scintillating, discriminating, intellectual, forward-looking personality he pretended to be and it was really
General Dreedle who was sensitive, charming, brilliant and sophisticated and under whom he would certainly
be much better off, and suddenly Colonel Cathcart had absolutely no conception of how strongly he stood with
anyone and began banging on his buzzer with his fist for Colonel Korn to come running into his office and
assure him that everybody loved him, that Yossarian was a figment of his imagination, and that he was making
wonderful progress in the splendid and valiant campaign he was waging to become a general.
Actually, Colonel Cathcart did not have a chance in hell of becoming a general. For one thing, there was
ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, who also wanted to be a general and who always distorted, destroyed, rejected or
misdirected any correspondence by, for or about Colonel Cathcart that might do him credit. For another, there
already was a general, General Dreedle who knew that General Peckem was after his job but did not know
how to stop him.
General Dreedle, the wing commander, was a blunt, chunky, barrel-chested man in his early fifties. His
nose was squat and red, and he had lumpy white, bunched-up eyelids circling his small gray eyes like haloes
of bacon fat. He had a nurse and a son-in law, and he was prone to long, ponderous silences when he had not
been drinking too much. General Dreedle had wasted too much of his time in the Army doing his job well, and
now it was too late. New power alignments had coalesced without him and he was at a loss to cope with them.
At unguarded moments his hard and sullen face slipped into a somber, preoccupied look of defeat and
frustration. General Dreedle drank a great deal. His moods were arbitrary and unpredictable. "War is hell," he
declared frequently, drunk or sober, and he really meant it, although that did not prevent him from making a
good living out of it or from taking his son-in-law into the business with him, even though the two bickered
constantly.
"That bastard," General Dreedle would complain about his son-in-law with a contemptuous grunt to anyone
who happened to be standing beside him at the curve of the bar of the officers' club. "Everything he's got he
owes to me. I made him, that lousy son of a bitch! He hasn't got brains enough to get ahead on his own."
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"He thinks he knows everything," Colonel Moodus would retort in a sulking tone to his own audience at
the other end of the bar. "He can't take criticism and he won't listen to advice."
"All he can do is give advice," General Dreedle would observe with a rasping snort. "If it wasn't for me,
he'd still be a corporal."
General Dreedle was always accompanied by both Colonel Moodus and his nurse, who was as delectable a
piece of ass as anyone who saw her had ever laid eyes on. General Dreedle's nurse was chubby, short and
blonde. She had plump dimpled cheeks, happy blue eyes, and neat curly turned-up hair. She smiled at
everyone and never spoke at all unless she was spoken to. Her bosom was lush and her complexion clear. She
was irresistible, and men edged away from her carefully. She was succulent, sweet, docile and dumb, and she
drove everyone crazy but General Dreedle.
"You should see her naked," General Dreedle chortled with croupy relish, while his nurse stood smiling
proudly right at his shoulder. "Back at Wing she's got a uniform in my room made of purple silk that's so tight
her nipples stand out like bing cherries. Milo got me the fabric. There isn't even room enough for panties or a
brassière underneath. I make her wear it some nights when Moodus is around just to drive him crazy."
General Dreedle laughed hoarsely. "You should see what goes on inside that blouse of hers every time she
shifts her weight. She drives him out of his mind. The first time I catch him putting a hand on her or any other
woman I'll bust the horny bastard right down to private and put him on K.P. for a year."
"He keeps her around just to drive me crazy," Colonel Moodus accused aggrievedly at the other end of the
bar. "Back at Wing she's got a uniform made out of purple silk that's so tight her nipples stand out like bing
cherries. There isn't even room for panties or a brassière underneath. You should hear that rustle every time
she shifts her weight. The first time I make a pass at her or any other girl he'll bust me right down to private
and put me on K.P. for a year. She drives me out of my mind."
"He hasn't gotten laid since we shipped overseas," confided General Dreedle, and his square grizzled head
bobbed with sadistic laughter at the fiendish idea. "That's one of the reasons I never let him out of my sight,
just so he can't get to a woman. Can you imagine what that poor son of a bitch is going through?"
"I haven't been to bed with a woman since we shipped overseas," Colonel Moodus whimpered tearfully.
"Can you imagine what I'm going through?"
General Dreedle could be as intransigent with anyone else when displeased as he was with Colonel
Moodus. He had no taste for sham, tact or pretension, and his credo as a professional soldier was unified and
concise: he believed that the young men who took orders from him should be willing to give up their lives for
the ideals, aspirations and idiosyncrasies of the old men he took orders from. The officers and enlisted men in
his command had identity for him only as military quantities. All he asked was that they do their work; beyond
that, they were free to do whatever they pleased. They were free, as Colonel Cathcart was free, to force their
men to fly sixty missions if they chose, and they were free, as Yossarian had been free, to stand in formation
naked if they wanted to, although General Dreedle's granite jaw swung open at the sight and he went striding
dictatorially right down the line to make certain that there really was a man wearing nothing but moccasins
waiting at attention in ranks to receive a medal from him. General Dreedle was speechless. Colonel Cathcart
began to faint when he spied Yossarian, and Colonel Korn stepped up behind him and squeezed his arm in a
strong grip. The silence was grotesque. A steady warm wind flowed in from the beach, and an old cart filled
with dirty straw rumbled into view on the main road, drawn by a black donkey and driven by a farmer in a
flopping hat and faded brown work clothes who paid no attention to the formal military ceremony taking place
in the small field on his right.
At last General Dreedle spoke. "Get back in the car," he snapped over his shoulder to his nurse, who had
followed him down the line. The nurse toddled away with a smile toward his brown staff car, parked about
twenty yards away at the edge of the rectangular clearing. General Dreedle waited in austere silence until the
car door slammed and then demanded, "Which one is this?"
Colonel Moodus checked his roster. "This one is Yossarian, Dad. He gets a Distinguished Flying Cross."
"Well, I'll be damned," mumbled General Dreedle, and his ruddy monolithic face softened with
amusement. "Why aren't you wearing clothes, Yossarian?"
"I don't want to."
"What do you mean you don't want to? Why the hell don't you want to?"
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"I just don't want to, sir."
"Why isn't he wearing clothes?" General Dreedle demanded over his shoulder of Colonel Cathcart.
"He's talking to you," Colonel Korn whispered over Colonel Cathcart's shoulder from behind, jabbing his
elbow sharply into Colonel Cathcart's back.
"Why isn't he wearing clothes?" Colonel Cathcart demanded of Colonel Korn with a look of acute pain,
tenderly nursing the spot where Colonel Korn had just jabbed him.
"Why isn't he wearing clothes?" Colonel Korn demanded of Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren.
"A man was killed in his plane over Avignon last week and bled all over him," Captain Wren replied. "He
swears he's never going to wear a uniform again."
"A man was killed in his plane over Avignon last week and bled all over him," Colonel Korn reported
directly to General Dreedle. "His uniform hasn't come back from the laundry yet."
"Where are his other uniforms?"
"They're in the laundry, too."
"What about his underwear?" General Dreedle demanded.
"All his underwear's in the laundry, too," answered Colonel Korn.
"That sounds like a lot of crap to me," General Dreedle declared.
"It is a lot of crap, sir," Yossarian said.
"Don't you worry, sir," Colonel Cathcart promised General Dreedle with a threatening look at Yossarian.
"You have my personal word for it that this man will be severely punished."
"What the hell do I care if he's punished or not?" General Dreedle replied with surprise and irritation. "He's
just won a medal. If he wants to receive it without any clothes on, what the hell business is it of yours?"
"Those are my sentiments exactly, sir!" Colonel Cathcart echoed with resounding enthusiasm and mopped
his brow with a damp white handkerchief. "But would you say that, sir, even in the light of General Peckem's
recent memorandum on the subject of appropriate military attire in combat areas?"
"Peckem?" General Dreedle's face clouded.
"Yes, sir, sir," said Colonel Cathcart obsequiously. "General Peckem even recommends that we send our
men into combat in full-dress uniform so they'll make a good impression on the enemy when they're shot
down."
"Peckem?" repeated General Dreedle, still squinting with bewilderment. "Just what the hell does Peckem
have to do with it?"
Colonel Korn jabbed Colonel Cathcart sharply again in the back with his elbow.
"Absolutely nothing, sir!" Colonel Cathcart responded sprucely, wincing in extreme pain and gingerly
rubbing the spot where Colonel Korn had just jabbed him again. "And that's exactly why I decided to take
absolutely no action at all until I first had an opportunity to discuss it with you. Shall we ignore it completely,
sir?"
General Dreedle ignored him completely, turning away from him in baleful scorn to hand Yossarian his
medal in its case.
"Get my girl back from the car," he commanded Colonel Moodus crabbily, and waited in one spot with his
scowling face down until his nurse had rejoined him.
"Get word to the office right away to kill that directive I just issued ordering the men to wear neckties on
the combat missions," Colonel Cathcart whispered to Colonel Korn urgently out of the corner of his mouth.
"I told you not to do it," Colonel Korn snickered. "But you just wouldn't listen to me."
"Shhhh!" Colonel Cathcart cautioned. "Goddammit, Korn, what did you do to my back?"
Colonel Korn snickered again.
General Dreedle's nurse always followed General Dreedle everywhere he went, even into the briefing room
just before the mission to Avignon, where she stood with her asinine smile at the side of the platform and
bloomed like a fertile oasis at General Dreedle's shoulder in her pink-and-green uniform. Yossarian looked at
her and fell in love, desperately. His spirits sank, leaving him empty inside and numb. He sat gazing in
clammy want at her full red lips and dimpled cheeks as he listened to Major Danby describe in a monotonous,
didactic male drone the heavy concentrations of flak awaiting them at Avignon, and he moaned in deep
despair suddenly at the thought that he might never see again this lovely woman to whom he had never spoken
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a word and whom he now loved so pathetically. He throbbed and ached with sorrow, fear and desire as he
stared at her; she was so beautiful. He worshiped the ground she stood on. He licked his parched, thirsting lips
with a sticky tongue and moaned in misery again, loudly enough this time to attract the startled, searching
glances of the men sitting around him on the rows of crude wooden benches in their chocolate-colored
coveralls and stitched white parachute harnesses.
Nately turned to him quickly with alarm. "What is it?" he whispered. "What's the matter?"
Yossarian did not hear him. He was sick with lust and mesmerized with regret. General Dreedle's nurse was
only a little chubby, and his senses were stuffed to congestion with the yellow radiance of her hair and the
unfelt pressure of her soft short fingers, with the rounded, untasted wealth of her nubile breasts in her
Army-pink shirt that was opened wide at the throat and with the rolling, ripened, triangular confluences of her
belly and thighs in her tight, slick forest-green gabardine officer's pants. He drank her in insatiably from head
to painted toenail. He never wanted to lose her. "Oooooooooooooh," he moaned again, and this time the whole
room rippled at his quavering, drawn-out cry. A wave of startled uneasiness broke over the officers on the
dais, and even Major Danby, who had begun synchronizing the watches, was distracted momentarily as he
counted out the seconds and almost had to begin again. Nately followed Yossarian's transfixed gaze down the
long frame auditorium until he came to General Dreedle's nurse. He blanched with trepidation when he
guessed what was troubling Yossarian.
"Cut it out, will you?" Nately warned in a fierce whisper.
"Ooooooooooooooooooooh," Yossarian moaned a fourth time, this time loudly enough for everyone to
hear him distinctly.
"Are you crazy?" Nately hissed vehemently. "You'll get into trouble."
"Ooooooooooooooooooooh," Dunbar answered Yossarian from the opposite end of the room.
Nately recognized Dunbar's voice. The situation was now out of control, and he turned away with a small
moan. "Ooh."
"Ooooooooooooooooooooh," Dunbar moaned back at him.
"Ooooooooooooooooooooh," Nately moaned out loud in exasperation when he realized that he had just
moaned.
"Ooooooooooooooooooooh," Dunbar moaned back at him again.
"Ooooooooooooooooooooh," someone entirely new chimed in from another section of the room, and
Nately's hair stood on end.
Yossarian and Dunbar both replied while Nately cringed and hunted about futilely for some hole in which
to hide and take Yossarian with him. A sprinkling of people were smothering laughter. An elfin impulse
possessed Nately and he moaned intentionally the next time there was a lull. Another new voice answered.
The flavor of disobedience was titillating, and Nately moaned deliberately again, the next time he could
squeeze one in edgewise. Still another new voice echoed him. The room was boiling irrepressibly into bedlam.
An eerie hubbub of voices was rising. Feet were scuffled, and things began to drop from people's
fingers-pencils, computers, map cases, clattering steel flak helmets. A number of men who were not moaning
were now giggling openly, and there was no telling how far the unorganized insurrection of moaning might
have gone if General Dreedle himself had not come forward to quell it, stepping out determinedly in the center
of the platform directly in front of Major Danby, who, with his earnest, persevering head down, was still
concentrating on his wrist watch and saying, "...twenty-five seconds... twenty... fifteen..." General Dreedle's
great, red domineering face was gnarled with perplexity and oaken with awesome resolution.
"That will be all, men," he ordered tersely, his eyes glaring with disapproval and his square jaw firm, and
that's all there was. "I run a fighting outfit," he told them sternly, when the room had grown absolutely quiet
and the men on the benches were all cowering sheepishly, "and there'll be no more moaning in this group as
long as I'm in command. Is that clear?"
It was clear to everybody but Major Danby, who was still concentrating on his wrist watch and counting
down the seconds aloud. "...four... three... two... one... time!" called out Major Danby, and raised his eyes
triumphantly to discover that no one had been listening to him and that he would have to begin all over again.
"Ooooh," he moaned in frustration.
"What was that?" roared General Dreedle incredulously, and whirled around in a murderous rage upon
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Major Danby, who staggered back in terrified confusion and began to quail and perspire. "Who is this man?"
"M-major Danby, sir," Colonel Cathcart stammered. "My group operations officer."
"Take him out and shoot him," ordered General Dreedle.
"S-sir?"
"I said take him out and shoot him. Can't you hear?"
"Yes, sir!" Colonel Cathcart responded smartly, swallowing hard, and turned in a brisk manner to his
chauffeur and his meteorologist. "Take Major Danby out and shoot him."
"S-sir?" his chauffeur and his meteorologist stammered.
"I said take Major Danby out and shoot him," Colonel Cathcart snapped. "Can't you hear?"
The two young lieutenants nodded lumpishly and gaped at each other in stunned and flaccid reluctance,
each waiting for the other to initiate the procedure of taking Major Danby outside and shooting him. Neither
had ever taken Major Danby outside and shot him before. They inched their way dubiously toward Major
Danby from opposite sides. Major Danby was white with fear. His legs collapsed suddenly and he began to
fall, and the two young lieutenants sprang forward and seized him under both arms to save him from slumping
to the floor. Now that they had Major Danby, the rest seemed easy, but there were no guns. Major Danby
began to cry. Colonel Cathcart wanted to rush to his side and comfort him, but did not want to look like a sissy
in front of General Dreedle. He remembered that Appleby and Havermeyer always brought their .45
automatics on the missions, and he began to scan the rows of men in search of them.
As soon as Major Danby began to cry, Colonel Moodus, who had been vacillating wretchedly on the
sidelines, could restrain himself no longer and stepped out diffidently toward General Dreedle with a sickly air
of self-sacrifice. "I think you'd better wait a minute, Dad," he suggested hesitantly. "I don't think you can shoot
him."
General Dreedle was infuriated by his intervention. "Who the hell says I can't?" he thundered pugnaciously
in a voice loud enough to rattle the whole building. Colonel Moodus, his face flushing with embarrassment,
bent close to whisper into his ear. "Why the hell can't I?" General Dreedle bellowed. Colonel Moodus
whispered some more. "You mean I can't shoot anyone I want to?" General Dreedle demanded with
uncompromising indignation. He pricked up his ears with interest as Colonel Moodus continued whispering.
"Is that a fact?" he inquired, his rage tamed by curiosity.
"Yes, Dad. I'm afraid it is."
"I guess you think you're pretty goddam smart, don't you?" General Dreedle lashed out at Colonel Moodus
suddenly.
Colonel Moodus turned crimson again. "No, Dad, it isn't-"
"All right, let the insubordinate son of a bitch go," General Dreedle snarled, turning bitterly away from his
son-in-law and barking peevishly at Colonel Cathcart's chauffeur and Colonel Cathcart's meteorologist. "But
get him out of this building and keep him out. And let's continue this goddam briefing before the war ends.
I've never seen so much incompetence."
Colonel Cathcart nodded lamely at General Dreedle and signaled his men hurriedly to push Major Danby
outside the building. As soon as Major Danby had been pushed outside, though, there was no one to continue
the briefing. Everyone gawked at everyone else in oafish surprise. General Dreedle turned purple with rage as
nothing happened. Colonel Cathcart had no idea what to do. He was about to begin moaning aloud when
Colonel Korn came to the rescue by stepping forward and taking control. Colonel Cathcart sighed with
enormous, tearful relief, almost overwhelmed with gratitude.
"Now, men, we're going to synchronize our watches," Colonel Korn began promptly in a sharp,
commanding manner, rolling his eyes flirtatiously in General Dreedle's direction. "We're going to synchronize
our watches one time and one time only, and if it doesn't come off in that one time, General Dreedle and I are
going to want to know why. Is that clear?" He fluttered his eyes toward General Dreedle again to make sure
his plug had registered. "Now set your watches for nine-eighteen."
Colonel Korn synchronized their watches without a single hitch and moved ahead with confidence. He
gave the men the colors of the day and reviewed the weather conditions with an agile, flashy versatility,
casting sidelong, simpering looks at General Dreedle every few seconds to draw increased encouragement
from the excellent impression he saw he was making. Preening and pruning himself effulgendy and strutting
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vaingloriously about the platform as he picked up momentum, he gave the men the colors of the day again and
shifted nimbly into a rousing pep talk on the importance of the bridge at Avignon to the war effort and the
obligation of each man on the mission to place love of country above love of life. When his inspiring
dissertation was finished, he gave the men the colors of the day still one more time, stressed the angle of
approach and reviewed the weather conditions again. Colonel Korn felt himself at the full height of his
powers. He belonged in the spotlight.
Comprehension dawned slowly on Colonel Cathcart; when it came, he was struck dumb. His face grew
longer and longer as he enviously watched Colonel Korn's treachery continue, and he was almost afraid to
listen when General Dreedle moved up beside him and, in a whisper blustery enough to be heard throughout
the room, demanded,
"Who is that man?"
Colonel Cathcart answered with wan foreboding, and General Dreedle then cupped his hand over his mouth
and whispered something that made Colonel Cathcart's face glow with immense joy. Colonel Korn saw and
quivered with uncontainable rapture. Had he just been promoted in the field by General Dreedle to full
colonel? He could not endure the suspense. With a masterful flourish, he brought the briefing to a close and
turned expectantly to receive ardent congratulations from General Dreedle-who was already striding out of the
building without a glance backward, trailing his nurse and Colonel Moodus behind him. Colonel Korn was
stunned by this disappointing sight, but only for an instant. His eyes found Colonel Cathcart, who was still
standing erect in a grinning trance, and he rushed over jubilantly and began pulling on his arm.
"What'd he say about me?" he demanded excitedly in a fervor of proud and blissful anticipation. "What did
General Dreedle say?"
"He wanted to know who you were."
"I know that. I know that. But what'd he say about me? What'd he say?"
"You make him sick."
22 MILO THE MAYOR
That was the mission on which Yossarian lost his nerve. Yossarian lost his nerve on the mission to
Avignon because Snowden lost his guts, and Snowden lost his guts because their pilot that day was Huple,
who was only fifteen years old, and their co-pilot was Dobbs, who was even worse and who wanted Yossarian
to join with him in a plot to murder Colonel Cathcart. Huple was a good pilot, Yossarian knew, but he was
only a kid, and Dobbs had no confidence in him, either, and wrested the controls away without warning after
they had dropped their bombs, going berserk in mid-air and tipping the plane over into that heart-stopping,
ear-splitting, indescribably petrifying fatal dive that tore Yossarian's earphones free from their connection and
hung him helplessly to the roof of the nose by the top of his head.
Oh, God! Yossarian had shrieked soundlessly as he felt them all falling. Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh,
God! he had shrieked beseechingly through lips that could not open as the plane fell and he dangled without
weight by the top of his head until Huple managed to seize the controls back and leveled the plane out down
inside the crazy, craggy, patchwork canyon of crashing antiaircraft fire from which they had climbed away
and from which they would now have to escape again. Almost at once there was a thud and a hole the size of a
big fist in the plexiglass. Yossarian's cheeks were stinging with shimmering splinters. There was no blood.
"What happened? What happened?" he cried, and trembled violently when he could not hear his own voice
in his ears. He was cowed by the empty silence on the intercom and almost too horrified to move as he
crouched like a trapped mouse on his hands and knees and waited without daring to breathe until he finally
spied the gleaming cylindrical jack plug of his headset swinging back and forth in front of his eyes and
jammed it back into its receptacle with fingers that rattled. Oh, God! he kept shrieking with no abatement of
terror as the flak thumped and mushroomed all about him. Oh, God!
Dobbs was weeping when Yossarian jammed his jack plug back into the intercom system and was able to
hear again.
"Help him, help him," Dobbs was sobbing. "Help him, help him."
"Help who? Help who?" Yossarian called back. "Help who?"
"The bombardier, the bombardier," Dobbs cried. "He doesn't answer. Help the bombardier, help the
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bombardier."
"I'm the bombardier," Yossarian cried back at him. "I'm the bombardier. I'm all right. I'm all right."
"Then help him, help him," Dobbs wept. "Help him, help him."
"Help who? Help who?"
"The radio-gunner," Dobbs begged. "Help the radio-gunner."
"I'm cold," Snowden whimpered feebly over the intercom system then in a bleat of plaintive agony. "Please
help me. I'm cold."
And Yossarian crept out through the crawlway and climbed up over the bomb bay and down into the rear
section of the plane where Snowden lay on the floor wounded and freezing to death in a yellow splash of
sunlight near the new tail-gunner lying stretched out on the floor beside him in a dead faint.
Dobbs was the worst pilot in the world and knew it, a shattered wreck of a virile young man who was
continually striving to convince his superiors that he was no longer fit to pilot a plane. None of his superiors
would listen, and it was the day the number of missions was raised to sixty that Dobbs stole into Yossarian's
tent while Orr was out looking for gaskets and disclosed the plot he had formulated to murder Colonel
Cathcart. He needed Yossarian's assistance.
"You want us to kill him in cold blood?" Yossarian objected.
"That's right," Dobbs agreed with an optimistic smile, encouraged by Yossarian's ready grasp of the
situation. "We'll shoot him to death with the Luger I brought back from Sicily that nobody knows I've got."
"I don't think I could do it," Yossarian concluded, after weighing the idea in silence awhile.
Dobbs was astonished. "Why not?"
"Look. Nothing would please me more than to have the son of a bitch break his neck or get killed in a crash
or to find out that someone else had shot him to death. But I don't think I could kill him."
"He'd do it to you," Dobbs argued. "In fact, you're the one who told me he is doing it to us by keeping us in
combat so long."
"But I don't think I could do it to him. He's got a right to live, too, I guess."
"Not as long as he's trying to rob you and me of our right to live. What's the matter with you?" Dobbs was
flabbergasted. "I used to listen to you arguing that same thing with Clevinger. And look what happened to
him. Right inside that cloud."
"Stop shouting, will you?" Yossarian shushed him.
"I'm not shouting!" Dobbs shouted louder, his face red with revolutionary fervor. His eyes and nostrils were
running, and his palpitating crimson lower lip was splattered with a foamy dew. "There must have been close
to a hundred men in the group who had finished their fifty-five missions when he raised the number to sixty.
There must have been at least another hundred like you with just a couple more to fly. He's going to kill us all
if we let him go on forever. We've got to kill him first."
Yossarian nodded expressionlessly, without committing himself. "Do you think we could get away with
it?"
"I've got it all worked out. I-"
"Stop shouting, for Christ's sake!"
"I'm not shouting. I've got it-"
"Will you stop shouting!"
"I've got it all worked out," Dobbs whispered, gripping the side of Orr's cot with white-knuckled hands to
constrain them from waving. "Thursday morning when he's due back from that goddam farmhouse of his in
the hills, I'll sneak up through the woods to that hairpin turn in the road and hide in the bushes. He has to slow
down there, and I can watch the road in both directions to make sure there's no one else around. When I see
him coming, I'll shove a big log out into the road to make him stop his jeep. Then I'll step out of the bushes
with my Luger and shoot him in the head until he's dead. I'll bury the gun, come back down through the woods
to the squadron and go about my business just like everybody else. What could possibly go wrong?"
Yossarian had followed each step attentively. "Where do I come in?" he asked in puzzlement.
"I couldn't do it without you," Dobbs explained. "I need you to tell me to go ahead."
Yossarian found it hard to believe him. "Is that all you want me to do? Just tell you to go ahead?"
"That's all I need from you," Dobbs answered. "Just tell me to go ahead and I'll blow his brains out all by
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myself the day after tomorrow." His voice was accelerating with emotion and rising again. "I'd like to shoot
Colonel Korn in the head, too, while we're at it, although I'd like to spare Major Danby, if that's all right with
you. Then I'd murder Appleby and Havermeyer also, and after we finish murdering Appleby and Havermeyer
I'd like to murder McWatt."
"McWatt?" cried Yossarian, almost jumping up in horror. "McWatt's a friend of mine. What do you want
from McWatt?"
"I don't know," Dobbs confessed with an air of floundering embarrassment. "I just thought that as long as
we were murdering Appleby and Havermeyer we might as well murder McWatt too. Don't you want to murder
McWatt?"
Yossarian took a firm stand. "Look, I might keep interested in this if you stop shouting it all over the island
and if you stick to killing Colonel Cathcart. But if you're going to turn this into a blood bath, you can forget
about me."
"All right, all right," Dobbs sought to placate him. "Just Colonel Cathcart. Should I do it? Tell me to go
ahead."
Yossarian shook his head. "I don't think I could tell you to go ahead."
Dobbs was frantic. "I'm willing to compromise," he pleaded vehemently. "You don't have to tell me to go
ahead. Just tell me it's a good idea. Okay? Is it a good idea?"
Yossarian still shook his head. "It would have been a great idea if you had gone ahead and done it without
even speaking to me. Now it's too late. I don't think I can tell you anything. Give me some more time. I might
change my mind."
"Then it will be too late."
Yossarian kept shaking his head. Dobbs was disappointed. He sat for a moment with a hangdog look, then
spurted to his feet suddenly and stamped away to have another impetuous crack at persuading Doc Daneeka to
ground him, knocking over Yossarian's washstand with his hip when he lurched around and tripping over the
fuel line of the stove Orr was still constructing. Doc Daneeka withstood Dobbs's blustering and gesticulating
attack with a series of impatient nods and sent him to the medical tent to describe his symptoms to Gus and
Wes, who painted his gums purple with gentian-violet solution the moment he started to talk. They painted his
toes purple, too, and forced a laxative down his throat when he opened his mouth again to complain, and then
they sent him away.
Dobbs was in even worse shape than Hungry Joe, who could at least fly missions when he was not having
nightmares. Dobbs was almost as bad as Orr, who seemed happy as an undersized, grinning lark with his
deranged and galvanic giggle and shivering warped buck teeth and who was sent along for a rest leave with
Milo and Yossarian on the trip to Cairo for eggs when Milo bought cotton instead and took off at dawn for
Istanbul with his plane packed to the gun turrets with exotic spiders and unripened red bananas. Orr was one
of the homeliest freaks Yossarian had ever encountered, and one of the most attractive. He had a raw bulgy
face, with hazel eyes squeezing from their sockets like matching brown halves of marbles and thick, wavy
particolored hair sloping up to a peak on the top of his head like a pomaded pup tent. Orr was knocked down
into the water or had an engine shot out almost every time he went up, and he began jerking on Yossarian's
arm like a wild man after they had taken off for Naples and come down in Sicily to find the scheming,
cigar-smoking, ten-year-old pimp with the two twelve-year-old virgin sisters waiting for them in town in front
of the hotel in which there was room for only Milo. Yossarian pulled back from Orr adamantly, gazing with
some concern and bewilderment at Mt. Etna instead of Mt. Vesuvius and wondering what they were doing in
Sicily instead of Naples as Orr kept entreating him in a tittering, stuttering, concupiscent turmoil to go along
with him behind the scheming ten-year-old pimp to his two twelve-year-old virgin sisters who were not really
virgins and not really sisters and who were really only twenty-eight.
"Go with him," Milo instructed Yossarian laconically. "Remember your mission."
"All right," Yossarian yielded with a sigh, remembering his mission. "But at least let me try to find a hotel
room first so I can get a good night's sleep afterward."
"You'll get a good night's sleep with the girls," Milo replied with the same air of intrigue. Remember your
mission."
But they got no sleep at all, for Yossarian and Orr found themselves jammed into the same double bed with
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the two twelve-year-old twenty-eight-year-old prostitutes, who turned out to be oily and obese and who kept
waking them up all night long to ask them to switch partners. Yossarian's perceptions were soon so fuzzy that
he paid no notice to the beige turban the fat one crowding into him kept wearing until late the next morning
when the scheming ten-year-old pimp with the Cuban panatella snatched it off in public in a bestial caprice
that exposed in the brilliant Sicilian daylight her shocking, misshapen and denudate skull. Vengeful neighbors
had shaved her hair to the gleaming bone because she had slept with Germans. The girl screeched in feminine
outrage and waddled comically after the scheming ten-year-old pimp, her grisly, bleak, violated scalp
slithering up and down ludicrously around the queer darkened wart of her face like something bleached and
obscene. Yossarian had never laid eyes on anything so bare before. The pimp spun the turban high on his
finger like a trophy and kept himself skipping inches ahead of her finger tips as he led her in a tantalizing
circle around the square congested with people who were howling with laughter and pointing to Yossarian
with derision when Milo strode up with a grim look of haste and puckered his lips reprovingly at the unseemly
spectacle of so much vice and frivolity. Milo insisted on leaving at once for Malta.
"We're sleepy," Orr whined.
"That's your own fault," Milo censured them both selfrighteously. "If you had spent the night in your hotel
room instead of with these immoral girls, you'd both feel as good as I do today."
"You told us to go with them," Yossarian retorted accusingly. "And we didn't have a hotel room. You were
the only one who could get a hotel room."
"That wasn't my fault, either," Milo explained haughtily. "How was I supposed to know all the buyers
would be in town for the chick-pea harvest?"
"You knew it," Yossarian charged. "That explains why we're here in Sicily instead of Naples. You've
probably got the whole damned plane filled with chick-peas already."
"Shhhhhh!" Milo cautioned sternly, with a meaningful glance toward Orr. "Remember your mission."
The bomb bay, the rear and tail sections of the plane and most of the top turret gunner's section were all
filled with bushels of chick-peas when they arrived at the airfield to take off for Malta.
Yossarian's mission on the trip was to distract Orr from observing where Milo bought his eggs, even
though Orr was a member of Milo's syndicate and, like every other member of Milo's syndicate, owned a
share. His mission was silly, Yossarian felt, since it was common knowledge that Milo bought his eggs in
Malta for seven cents apiece and sold them to the mess halls in his syndicate for five cents apiece.
"I just don't trust him," Milo brooded in the plane, with a backward nod toward Orr, who was curled up like
a tangled rope on the low bushels of chick-peas, trying torturedly to sleep. "And I'd just as soon buy my eggs
when he's not around to learn my business secrets. What else don't you understand?"
Yossarian was riding beside him in the co-pilot's seat. "I don't understand why you buy eggs for seven
cents apiece in Malta and sell them for five cents."
"I do it to make a profit."
"But how can you make a profit? You lose two cents an egg."
"But I make a profit of three and a quarter cents an egg by selling them for four and a quarter cents an egg
to the people in Malta I buy them from for seven cents an egg. Of course, I don't make the profit. The
syndicate makes the profit. And everybody has a share."
Yossarian felt he was beginning to understand. "And the people you sell the eggs to at four and a quarter
cents apiece make a profit of two and three quarter cents apiece when they sell them back to you at seven cents
apiece. Is that right? Why don't you sell the eggs directly to you and eliminate the people you buy them from?"
"Because I'm the people I buy them from," Milo explained. "I make a profit of three and a quarter cents
apiece when I sell them to me and a profit of two and three quarter cents apiece when I buy them back from
me. That's a total profit of six cents an egg. I lose only two cents an egg when I sell them to the mess halls at
five cents apiece, and that's how I can make a profit buying eggs for seven cents apiece and selling them for
five cents apiece. I pay only one cent apiece at the hen when I buy them in Sicily."
"In Malta," Yossarian corrected. "You buy your eggs in Malta, not Sicily."
Milo chortled proudly. "I don't buy eggs in Malta," he confessed, with an air of slight and clandestine
amusement that was the only departure from industrious sobriety Yossarian had ever seen him make. "I buy
them in Sicily for one cent apiece and transfer them to Malta secretly at four and a half cents apiece in order to
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get the price of eggs up to seven cents apiece when people come to Malta looking for them."
"Why do people come to Malta for eggs when they're so expensive there?"
"Because they've always done it that way."
"Why don't they look for eggs in Sicily?"
"Because they've never done it that way."
"Now I really don't understand. Why don't you sell your mess halls the eggs for seven cents apiece instead
offer five cents apiece?"
"Because my mess halls would have no need for me then. Anyone can buy seven-cents-apiece eggs for
seven cents apiece."
"Why don't they bypass you and buy the eggs directly from you in Malta at four and a quarter cents
apiece?"
"Because I wouldn't sell it to them."
"Why wouldn't you sell it to them?"
"Because then there wouldn't be as much room for profit. At least this way I can make a bit for myself as a
middleman."
"Then you do make a profit for yourself," Yossarian declared.
"Of course I do. But it all goes to the syndicate. And everybody has a share. Don't you understand? It's
exactly what happens with those plum tomatoes I sell to Colonel Cathcart."
"Buy," Yossarian corrected him. "You don't sell plum tomatoes to Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn. You
buy plum tomatoes from them."
"No, sell," Milo corrected Yossarian. "I distribute my plum tomatoes in markets all over Pianosa under an
assumed name so that Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn can buy them up from me under their assumed
names at four cents apiece and sell them back to me the next day for the syndicate at five cents apiece. They
make a profit of one cent apiece. I make a profit of three and a half cents apiece, and everybody comes out
ahead."
"Everybody but the syndicate," said Yossarian with a snort. "The syndicate is paying five cents apiece for
plum tomatoes that cost you only half a cent apiece. How does the syndicate benefit?"
"The syndicate benefits when I benefit," Milo explained, "because everybody has a share. And the
syndicate gets Colonel Cathcart's and Colonel Korn's support so that they'll let me go out on trips like this one.
You'll see how much profit that can mean in about fifteen minutes when we land in Palermo."
"Malta," Yossarian corrected him. "We're flying to Malta now, not Palermo."
"No, we're flying to Palermo," Milo answered. "There's an endive exporter in Palermo I have to see for a
minute about a shipment of mushrooms to Bern that were damaged by mold."
"Milo, how do you do it?" Yossarian inquired with laughing amazement and admiration. "You fill out a
flight plan for one place and then you go to another. Don't the people in the control towers ever raise hell?"
"They all belong to the syndicate," Milo said. "And they know that what's good for the syndicate is good
for the country, because that's what makes Sammy run. The men in the control towers have a share, too, and
that's why they always have to do whatever they can to help the syndicate."
"Do I have a share?"
"Everybody has a share."
"Does Orr have a share?"
"Everybody has a share."
"And Hungry Joe? He has a share, too?"
"Everybody has a share."
"Well, I'll be damned," mused Yossarian, deeply impressed with the idea of a share for the very first time.
Milo turned toward him with a faint glimmer of mischief. "I have a sure-fire plan for cheating the federal
government out of six thousand dollars. We can make three thousand dollars apiece without any risk to either
of us. Are you interested?"
"No."
Milo looked at Yossarian with profound emotion. "That's what I like about you," he exclaimed. "You're
honest! You're the only one I know that I can really trust. That's why I wish you'd try to be of more help to me.
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I really was disappointed when you ran off with those two tramps in Catania yesterday."
Yossarian stared at Milo in quizzical disbelief. "Milo, you told me to go with them. Don't you remember?"
"That wasn't my fault," Milo answered with dignity. "I had to get rid of Orr some way once we reached
town. It will be a lot different in Palermo. When we land in Palermo, I want you and Orr to leave with the girls
right from the airport."
"With what girls?"
"I radioed ahead and made arrangements with a four-year-old pimp to supply you and Orr with two
eight-year-old virgins who are half Spanish. He'll be waiting at the airport in a limousine. Go right in as soon
as you step out of the plane."
"Nothing doing," said Yossarian, shaking his head. "The only place I'm going is to sleep."
Milo turned livid with indignation, his slim long nose flickering spasmodically between his black eyebrows
and his unbalanced orange-brown mustache like the pale, thin flame of a single candle. "Yossarian, remember
your mission," he reminded reverently.
"To hell with my mission," Yossarian responded indifferently. "And to hell with the syndicate too, even
though I do have a share. I don't want any eight-year-old virgins, even if they are half Spanish."
"I don't blame you. But these eight-year-old virgins are really only thirty-two. And they're not really half
Spanish but only one-third Estonian."
"I don't care for any virgins."
"And they're not even virgins," Milo continued persuasively. "The one I picked out for you was married for
a short time to an elderly schoolteacher who slept with her only on Sundays, so she's really almost as good as
new."
But Orr was sleepy, too, and Yossarian and Orr were both at Milo's side when they rode into the city of
Palermo from the airport and discovered that there was no room for the two of them at the hotel there either,
and, more important, that Milo was mayor.
The weird, implausible reception for Milo began at the airfield, where civilian laborers who recognized him
halted in their duties respectfully to gaze at him with full expressions of controlled exuberance and adulation.
News of his arrival preceded him into the city, and the outskirts were already crowded with cheering citizens
as they sped by in their small uncovered truck. Yossarian and Orr were mystified and mute and pressed close
against Milo for security.
Inside the city, the welcome for Milo grew louder as the truck slowed and eased deeper toward the middle
of town. Small boys and girls had been released from school and were lining the sidewalks in new clothes,
waving tiny flags. Yossarian and Orr were absolutely speechless now. The streets were jammed with joyous
throngs, and strung overhead were huge banners bearing Milo's picture. Milo had posed for these pictures in a
drab peasant's blouse with a high collar, and his scrupulous, paternal countenance was tolerant, wise, critical
and strong as he stared out at the populace omnisciently with his undisciplined mustache and disunited eyes.
Sinking invalids blew kisses to him from windows. Aproned shopkeepers cheered ecstatically from the narrow
doorways of their shops. Tubas crumped. Here and there a person fell and was trampled to death. Sobbing old
women swarmed through each other frantically around the slow-moving truck to touch Milo's shoulder or
press his hand. Milo bore the tumultuous celebrations with benevolent grace. He waved back to everyone in
elegant reciprocation and showered generous handfuls of foilcovered Hershey kisses to the rejoicing
multitudes. Lines of lusty young boys and girls skipped along behind him with their arms linked, chanting in
hoarse and glassy-eyed adoration, "Milo! Mi-lo! Mi-lo!"
Now that his secret was out, Milo relaxed with Yossarian and Orr and inflated opulently with a vast, shy
pride. His cheeks turned flesh-colored. Milo had been elected mayor of Palermo-and of nearby Carini,
Monreale, Bagheria, Termini Imerese, Cefalu, Mistretta and Nicosia as well-because he had brought Scotch to
Sicily.
Yossarian was amazed. "The people here like to drink Scotch that much?"
"They don't drink any of the Scotch," Milo explained. "Scotch is very expensive, and these people here are
very poor."
"Then why do you import it to Sicily if nobody drinks any?"
"To build up a price. I move the Scotch here from Malta to make more room for profit when I sell it back to
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me for somebody else. I created a whole new industry here. Today Sicily is the third largest exporter of Scotch
in the world, and that's why they elected me mayor."
"How about getting us a hotel room if you're such a hotshot?" Orr grumbled impertinently in a voice
slurred with fatigue.
Milo responded contritely. "That's just what I'm going to do," he promised. "I'm really sorry about
forgetting to radio ahead for hotel rooms for you two. Come along to my office and I'll speak to my deputy
mayor about it right now."
Milo's office was a barbershop, and his deputy mayor was a pudgy barber from whose obsequious lips
cordial greetings foamed as effusively as the lather he began whipping up in Milo's shaving cup.
"Well, Vittorio," said Milo, settling back lazily in one of Vittorio's barber chairs, "how were things in my
absence this time?"
"Very sad, Signor Milo, very sad. But now that you are back, the people are all happy again."
"I was wondering about the size of the crowds. How come all the hotels are full?"
"Because so many people from other cities are here to see you, Signor Milo. And because we have all the
buyers who have come into town for the artichoke auction."
Milo's hand soared up perpendicularly like an eagle and arrested Vittorio's shaving brush. "What's
artichoke?" he inquired.
"Artichoke, Signor Milo? An artichoke is a very tasty vegetable that is popular everywhere. You must try
some artichokes while you are here, Signor Milo. We grow the best in the world."
"Really?" said Milo. "How much are artichokes selling for this year?"
"It looks like a very good year for artichokes. The crops were very bad."
"Is that a fact?" mused Milo, and was gone, sliding from his chair so swiftly that his striped barber's apron
retained his shape for a second or two after he had gone before it collapsed. Milo had vanished from sight by
the time Yossarian and Orr rushed after him to the doorway.
"Next?" barked Milo's deputy mayor officiously. "Who's next?"
Yossarian and Orr walked from the barbershop in dejection. Deserted by Milo, they trudged homelessly
through the reveling masses in futile search of a place to sleep. Yossarian was exhausted. His head throbbed
with a dull, debilitating pain, and he was irritable with Orr, who had found two crab apples somewhere and
walked with them in his cheeks until Yossarian spied them there and made him take them out. Then Orr found
two horse chestnuts somewhere and slipped those in until Yossarian detected them and snapped at him again
to take the crab apples out of his mouth. Orr grinned and replied that they were not crab apples but horse
chestnuts and that they were not in his mouth but in his hands, but Yossarian was not able to understand a
single word he said because of the horse chestnuts in his mouth and made him take them out anyway. A sly
light twinkled in Orr's eyes. He rubbed his forehead harshly with his knuckles, like a man in an alcoholic
stupor, and snickered lewdly.
"Do you remember that girl-" He broke off to snicker lewdly again. "Do you remember that girl who was
hitting me over the head with that shoe in that apartment in Rome, when we were both naked?" he asked with
a look of cunning expectation. He waited until Yossarian nodded cautiously. "If you let me put the chestnuts
back in my mouth I'll tell you why she was hitting me. Is that a deal?"
Yossarian nodded, and Orr told him the whole fantastic story of why the naked girl in Nately's whore's
apartment was hitting him over the head with her shoe, but Yossarian was not able to understand a single word
because the horse chestnuts were back in his mouth. Yossarian roared with exasperated laughter at the trick,
but in the end there was nothing for them to do when night fell but eat a damp dinner in a dirty restaurant and
hitch a ride back to the airfield, where they slept on the chill metal floor of the plane and turned and tossed in
groaning torment until the truck drivers blasted up less than two hours later with their crates of artichokes and
chased them out onto the ground while they filled up the plane. A heavy rain began falling. Yossarian and Orr
were dripping wet by the time the trucks drove away and had no choice but to squeeze themselves back into
the plane and roll themselves up like shivering anchovies between the jolting corners of the crates of
artichokes that Milo flew up to Naples at dawn and exchanged for the cinnamon sticks, cloves, vanilla beans
and pepper pods that he rushed right back down south with that same day to Malta, where, it turned out, he
was Assistant Governor-General. There was no room for Yossarian and Orr in Malta either. Milo was Major
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Sir Milo Minderbinder in Malta and had a gigantic office in the governor-general's building. His mahogany
desk was immense. In a panel of the oak wall, between crossed British flags, hung a dramatic arresting
photograph of Major Sir Milo Minderbinder in the dress uniform of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. His mustache
in the photograph was clipped and narrow, his chin was chiseled, and his eyes were sharp as thorns. Milo had
been knighted, commissioned a major in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and named Assistant Governor-General of
Malta because he had brought the egg trade there. He gave Yossarian and Orr generous permission to spend
the night on the thick carpet in his office, but shortly after he left a sentry in battle dress appeared and drove
them from the building at the tip of his bayonet, and they rode out exhaustedly to the airport with a surly cab
driver, who overcharged them, and went to sleep inside the plane again, which was filled now with leaking
gunny sacks of cocoa and freshly ground coffee and reeking with an odor so rich that they were both outside
retching violently against the landing gear when Milo was chauffeured up the first thing the next morning,
looking fit as a fiddle, and took right off for Oran, where there was again no room at the hotel for Yossarian
and Orr, and where Milo was Vice-Shah. Milo had at his disposal sumptuous quarters inside a salmon-pink
palace, but Yossarian and Orr were not allowed to accompany him inside because they were Christian infidels.
They were stopped at the gates by gargantuan Berber guards with scimitars and chased away. Orr was
snuffling and sneezing with a crippling head cold. Yossarian's broad back was bent and aching. He was ready
to break Milo's neck, but Milo was Vice-Shah of Oran and his person was sacred. Milo was not only the
Vice-Shah of Oran, as it turned out, but also the Caliph of Baghdad, the Imam of Damascus, and the Sheik of
Araby. Milo was the corn god, the rain god and the rice god in backward regions where such crude gods were
still worshiped by ignorant and superstitious people, and deep inside the jungles of Africa, he intimated with
becoming modesty, large graven images of his mustached face could be found overlooking primitive stone
altars red with human blood. Everywhere they touched he was acclaimed with honor, and it was one triumphal
ovation after another for him in city after city until they finally doubled back through the Middle East and
reached Cairo, where Milo cornered the market on cotton that no one else in the world wanted and brought
himself promptly to the brink of ruin. In Cairo there was at last room at the hotel for Yossarian and Orr. There
were soft beds for them with fat fluffed-up pillows and clean, crisp sheets. There were closets with hangers for
their clothes. There was water to wash with. Yossarian and Orr soaked their rancid, unfriendly bodies pink in a
steaming-hot tub and then went from the hotel with Milo to eat shrimp cocktails and filet mignon in a very
fine restaurant with a stock ticker in the lobby that happened to be clicking out the latest quotation for
Egyptian cotton when Milo inquired of the captain of waiters what kind of machine it was. Milo had never
imagined a machine so beautiful as a stock ticker before.
"Really?" he exclaimed when the captain of waiters had finished his explanation. "And how much is
Egyptian cotton selling for?" The captain of waiters told him, and Milo bought the whole crop.
But Yossarian was not nearly so frightened by the Egyptian cotton Milo bought as he was by the bunches
of green red bananas Milo had spotted in the native market place as they drove into the city, and his fears
proved justified, for Milo shook him awake out of a deep sleep just after twelve and shoved a partly peeled
banana toward him. Yossarian choked back a sob.
"Taste it," Milo urged, following Yossarian's writhing face around with the banana insistently.
"Milo, you bastard," moaned Yossarian, "I've got to get some sleep."
"Eat it and tell me if it's good," Milo persevered. "Don't tell Orr I gave it to you. I charged him two piasters
for his."
Yossarian ate the banana submissively and closed his eyes after telling Milo it was good, but Milo shook
him awake again and instructed him to get dressed as quickly as he could, because they were leaving at once
for Pianosa.
"You and Orr have to load the bananas into the plane right away," he explained. "The man said to watch
out for spiders while you're handling the bunches."
"Milo, can't we wait until morning?" Yossarian pleaded. "I've got to get some sleep."
"They're ripening very quickly," answered Milo, "and we don't have a minute to lose. Just think how happy
the men back at the squadron will be when they get these bananas."
But the men back at the squadron never even saw any of the bananas, for it was a seller's market for
bananas in Istanbul and a buyer's market in Beirut for the caraway seeds Milo rushed with to Bengasi after
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selling the bananas, and when they raced back into Pianosa breathlessly six days later at the conclusion of
Orr's rest leave, it was with a load of best white eggs from Sicily that Milo said were from Egypt and sold to
his mess halls for only four cents apiece so that all the commanding officers in his syndicate would implore
him to speed right back to Cairo for more bunches of green red bananas to sell in Turkey for the caraway seeds
in demand in Bengasi. And everybody had a share.
23 NATELY's OLD MAN
The only one back in the squadron who did see any of Milo's red bananas was Aarfy, who picked up two
from an influential fraternity brother of his in the Quartermaster Corps when the bananas ripened and began
streaming into Italy through normal black-market channels and who was in the officer's apartment with
Yossarian the evening Nately finally found his whore again after so many fruitless weeks of mournful
searching and lured her back to the apartment with two girl friends by promising them thirty dollars each.
"Thirty dollars each?" remarked Aarfy slowly, poking and patting each of the three strapping girls
skeptically with the air of a grudging connoisseur. "Thirty dollars is a lot of money for pieces like these.
Besides, I never paid for it in my life."
"I'm not asking you to pay for it," Nately assured him quickly. "I'll pay for them all. I just want you guys to
take the other two. Won't you help me out?"
Aarfy smirked complacently and shook his soft round head. "Nobody has to pay for it for good old Aarfy. I
can get all I want any time I want it. I'm just not in the mood right now."
"Why don't you just pay all three and send the other two away?" Yossarian suggested.
"Because then mine will be angry with me for making her work for her money," Nately replied with an
anxious look at his girl, who was glowering at him restlessly and starting to mutter. "She says that if I really
like her I'd send her away and go to bed with one of the others."
"I have a better idea," boasted Aarfy. "Why don't we keep the three of them here until after the curfew and
then threaten to push them out into the street to be arrested unless they give us all their money? We can even
threaten to push them out the window."
"Aarfy!" Nately was aghast.
"I was only trying to help," said Aarfy sheepishly. Aarfy was always trying to help Nately because Nately's
father was rich and prominent and in an excellent position to help Aarfy after the war. "Gee whiz," he
defended himself querulously. "Back in school we were always doing things like that. I remember one day we
tricked these two dumb high-school girls from town into the fraternity house and made them put out for all the
fellows there who wanted them by threatening to call up their parents and say they were putting out for us. We
kept them trapped in bed there for more than ten hours. We even smacked their faces a little when they started
to complain. Then we took away their nickels and dimes and chewing gum and threw them out. Boy, we used
to have fun in that fraternity house," he recalled peacefully, his corpulent cheeks aglow with the jovial,
rubicund warmth of nostalgic recollection. "We used to ostracize everyone, even each other."
But Aarfy was no help to Nately now as the girl Nately had fallen so deeply in love with began swearing at
him sullenly with rising, menacing resentment. Luckily, Hungry Joe burst in just then, and everything was all
right again, except that Dunbar staggered in drunk a minute later and began embracing one of the other
giggling girls at once. Now there were four men and three girls, and the seven of them left Aarfy in the
apartment and climbed into a horse-drawn cab, which remained at the curb at a dead halt while the girls
demanded their money in advance. Nately gave them ninety dollars with a gallant flourish, after borrowing
twenty dollars from Yossarian, thirty-five dollars from Dunbar and seventeen dollars from Hungry Joe. The
girls grew friendlier then and called an address to the driver, who drove them at a clopping pace halfway
across the city into a section they had never visited before and stopped in front of an old, tall building on a
dark street. The girls led them up four steep, very long flights of creaking wooden stairs and guided them
through a doorway into their own wonderful and resplendent tenement apartment, which burgeoned
miraculously with an infinite and proliferating flow of supple young naked girls and contained the evil and
debauched ugly old man who irritated Nately constantly with his caustic laughter and the clucking, proper old
woman in the ash-gray woolen sweater who disapproved of everything immoral that occurred there and tried
her best to tidy up.
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The amazing place was a fertile, seething cornucopia of female nipples and navels. At first, there were just
their own three girls, in the dimly-lit, drab brown sitting room that stood at the juncture of three murky
hallways leading in separate directions to the distant recesses of the strange and marvelous bordello. The girls
disrobed at once, pausing in different stages to point proudly to their garish underthings and bantering all the
while with the gaunt and dissipated old man with the shabby long white hair and slovenly white unbuttoned
shirt who sat cackling lasciviously in a musty blue armchair almost in the exact center of the room and bade
Nately and his companions welcome with a mirthful and sardonic formality. Then the old woman trudged out
to get a girl for Hungry Joe, dipping her captious head sadly, and returned with two big-bosomed beauties, one
already undressed and the other in only a transparent pink half slip that she wiggled out of while sitting down.
Three more naked girls sauntered in from a different direction and remained to chat, then two others. Four
more girls passed through the room in an indolent group, engrossed in conversation; three were barefoot and
one wobbled perilously on a pair of unbuckled silver dancing shoes that did not seem to be her own. One more
girl appeared wearing only panties and sat down, bringing the total congregating there in just a few minutes to
eleven, all but one of them completely unclothed.
There was bare flesh lounging everywhere, most of it plump, and Hungry Joe began to die. He stood stock
still in rigid, cataleptic astonishment while the girls ambled in and made themselves comfortable. Then he let
out a piercing shriek suddenly and bolted toward the door in a headlong dash back toward the enlisted men's
apartment for his camera, only to be halted in his tracks with another frantic shriek by the dreadful, freezing
premonition that this whole lovely, lurid, rich and colorful pagan paradise would be snatched away from him
irredeemably if he were to let it out of his sight for even an instant. He stopped in the doorway and sputtered,
the wiry veins and tendons in his face and neck pulsating violently. The old man watched him with victorious
merriment, sitting in his musty blue armchair like some satanic and hedonistic deity on a throne, a stolen U.S.
Army blanket wrapped around his spindly legs to ward off a chill. He laughed quietly, his sunken, shrewd
eyes sparkling perceptively with a cynical and wanton enjoyment. He had been drinking. Nately reacted on
sight with bristling enmity to this wicked, depraved and unpatriotic old man who was old enough to remind
him of his father and who made disparaging jokes about America.
"America," he said, "will lose the war. And Italy will win it."
"America is the strongest and most prosperous nation on earth," Nately informed him with lofty fervor and
dignity. "And the American fighting man is second to none."
"Exactly," agreed the old man pleasantly, with a hint of taunting amusement. "Italy, on the other hand, is
one of the least prosperous nations on earth. And the Italian fighting man is probably second to all. And that's
exactly why my country is doing so well in this war while your country is doing so poorly."
Nately guffawed with surprise, then blushed apologetically for his impoliteness. "I'm sorry I laughed at
you," he said sincerely, and he continued in a tone of respectful condescension. "But Italy was occupied by the
Germans and is now being occupied by us. You don't call that doing very well, do you?"
"But of course I do," exclaimed the old man cheerfully. "The Germans are being driven out, and we are still
here. In a few years you will be gone, too, and we will still be here. You see, Italy is really a very poor and
weak country, and that's what makes us so strong. Italian soldiers are not dying any more. But American and
German soldiers are. I call that doing extremely well. Yes, I am quite certain that Italy will survive this war
and still be in existence long after your own country has been destroyed."
Nately could scarcely believe his ears. He had never heard such shocking blasphemies before, and he
wondered with instinctive logic why G-men did not appear to lock the traitorous old man up. "America is not
going to be destroyed!" he shouted passionately.
"Never?" prodded the old man softly.
"Well..." Nately faltered.
The old man laughed indulgently, holding in check a deeper, more explosive delight. His goading remained
gentle. "Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great
countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think your own country will last?
Forever? Keep in mind that the earth itself is destined to be destroyed by the sun in twenty-five million years
or so."
Nately squirmed uncomfortably. "Well, forever is a long time, I guess."
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"A million years?" persisted the jeering old man with keen, sadistic zest. "A half million? The frog is
almost five hundred million years old. Could you really say with much certainty that America, with all its
strength and prosperity, with its fighting man that is second to none, and with its standard of living that is the
highest in the world, will last as long as... the frog?"
Nately wanted to smash his leering face. He looked about imploringly for help in defending his country's
future against the obnoxious calumnies of this sly and sinful assailant. He was disappointed. Yossarian and
Dunbar were busy in a far corner pawing orgiastically at four or five frolicsome girls and six bottles of red
wine, and Hungry Joe had long since tramped away down one of the mystic hallways, propelling before him
like a ravening despot as many of the broadest-hipped young prostitutes as he could contain in his frail
wind-milling arms and cram into one double bed.
Nately felt himself at an embarrassing loss. His own girl sat sprawled out gracelessly on an overstuffed sofa
with an expression of otiose boredom. Nately was unnerved by her torpid indifference to him, by the same
sleepy and inert poise that he remembered so vivdly, so sweetly, and so miserably from the first time she had
seen him and ignored him at the packed penny-ante blackjack game in the living room of the enlisted men's
apartment. Her lax mouth hung open in a perfect O, and God alone knew at what her glazed and smoky eyes
were staring in such brute apathy. The old man waited tranquilly, watching him with a discerning smile that
was both scornful and sympathetic. A lissome, blond, sinuous girl with lovely legs and honey-colored skin
laid herself out contentedly on the arm of the old man's chair and began molesting his angular, pale, dissolute
face languidly and coquettishly. Nately stiffened with resentment and hostility at the sight of such lechery in a
man so old. He turned away with a sinking heart and wondered why he simply did not take his own girl and go
to bed.
This sordid, vulturous, diabolical old man reminded Nately of his father because the two were nothing at all
alike. Nately's father was a courtly white-haired gentleman who dressed impeccably; this old man was an
uncouth bum. Nately's father was a sober, philosophical and responsible man; this old man was fickle and
licentious. Nately's father was discreet and cultured; this old man was a boor. Nately's father believed in honor
and knew the answer to everything; this old man believed in nothing and had only questions. Nately's father
had a distinguished white mustache; this old man had no mustache at all. Nately's father-and everyone else's
father Nately had ever met-was dignified, wise and venerable; this old man was utterly repellent, and Nately
plunged back into debate with him, determined to repudiate his vile logic and insinuations with an ambitious
vengeance that would capture the attention of the bored, phlegmatic girl he had fallen so intensely in love with
and win her admiration forever.
"Well, frankly, I don't know how long America is going to last," he proceeded dauntlessly. "I suppose we
can't last forever if the world itself is going to be destroyed someday. But I do know that we're going to
survive and triumph for a long, long time."
"For how long?" mocked the profane old man with a gleam of malicious elation. "Not even as long as the
frog?"
"Much longer than you or me," Nately blurted out lamely.
"Oh, is that all! That won't be very much longer then, considering that you're so gullible and brave and that
I am already such an old, old man."
"How old are you?" Nately asked, growing intrigued and charmed with the old man in spite of himself.
"A hundred and seven." The old man chuckled heartily at Nately's look of chagrin. "I see you don't believe
that either."
"I don't believe anything you tell me," Nately replied, with a bashful mitigating smile. "The only thing I do
believe is that America is going to win the war."
"You put so much stock in winning wars," the grubby iniquitous old man scoffed. "The real trick lies in
losing wars, in knowing which wars can be lost. Italy has been losing wars for centuries, and just see how
splendidly we've done nonetheless. France wins wars and is in a continual state of crisis. Germany loses and
prospers. Look at our own recent history. Italy won a war in Ethiopia and promptly stumbled into serious
trouble. Victory gave us such insane delusions of grandeur that we helped start a world war we hadn't a chance
of winning. But now that we are losing again, everything has taken a turn for the better, and we will certainly
come out on top again if we succeed in being defeated."
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Nately gaped at him in undisguised befuddlement. "Now I really don't understand what you're saying. You
talk like a madman."
"But I live like a sane one. I was a fascist when Mussolini was on top, and I am an anti-fascist now that he
has been deposed. I was fanatically pro-German when the Germans were here to protect us against the
Americans, and now that the Americans are here to protect us against the Germans I am fanatically
pro-American. I can assure you, my outraged young friend"-the old man's knowing, disdainful eyes shone
even more effervescently as Nately's stuttering dismay increased-"that you and your country will have a no
more loyal partisan in Italy than me-but only as long as you remain in Italy."
"But," Nately cried out in disbelief, "you're a turncoat! A time-server! A shameful, unscrupulous
opportunist!"
"I am a hundred and seven years old," the old man reminded him suavely.
"Don't you have any principles?"
"Of course not."
"No morality?"
"Oh, I am a very moral man," the villainous old man assured him with satiric seriousness, stroking the bare
hip of a buxom black-haired girl with pretty dimples who had stretched herself out seductively on the other
arm of his chair. He grinned at Nately sarcastically as he sat between both naked girls in smug and threadbare
splendor, with a sovereign hand on each.
"I can't believe it," Nately remarked grudgingly, trying stubbornly not to watch him in relationship to the
girls. "I simply can't believe it."
"But it's perfectly true. When the Germans marched into the city, I danced in the streets like a youthful
ballerina and shouted, 'Heil Hitler!' until my lungs were hoarse. I even waved a small Nazi flag that I snatched
away from a beautiful little girl while her mother was looking the other way. When the Germans left the city, I
rushed out to welcome the Americans with a bottle of excellent brandy and a basket of flowers. The brandy
was for myself, of course, and the flowers were to sprinkle upon our liberators. There was a very stiff and
stuffy old major riding in the first car, and I hit him squarely in the eye with a red rose. A marvelous shot! You
should have seen him wince."
Nately gasped and was on his feet with amazement, the blood draining from his cheeks. "Major --- de
Coverley!" he cried.
"Do you know him?" inquired the old man with delight. "What a charming coincidence!"
Nately was too astounded even to hear him. "So you're the one who wounded Major --- de Coverley!" he
exclaimed in horrified indignation. "How could you do such a thing?"
The fiendish old man was unperturbed. "How could I resist, you mean. You should have seen the arrogant
old bore, sitting there so sternly in that car like the Almighty Himself, with his big, rigid head and his foolish,
solemn face. What a tempting target he made! I got him in the eye with an American Beauty rose. I thought
that was most appropriate. Don't you?"
"That was a terrible thing to do!" Nately shouted at him reproachfully. "A vicious and criminal thing!
Major --- de Coverley is our squadron executive officer!"
"Is he?" teased the unregenerate old man, pinching his pointy jaw gravely in a parody of repentance. "In
that case, you must give me credit for being impartial. When the Germans rode in, I almost stabbed a robust
young Oberleutnant to death with a sprig of edelweiss."
Nately was appalled and bewildered by the abominable old man's inability to perceive the enormity of his
offence. "Don't you realize what you've done?" he scolded vehemently. "Major --- de Coverley is a noble and
wonderful person, and everyone admires him."
"He's a silly old fool who really has no right acting like a silly young fool. Where is he today? Dead?"
Nately answered softly with somber awe. "Nobody knows. He seems to have disappeared."
"You see? Imagine a man his age risking what little life he has left for something so absurd as a country."
Nately was instantly up in arms again. "There is nothing so absurd about risking your life for your
country!" he declared.
"Isn't there?" asked the old man. "What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides
by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America,
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Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting
in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for."
"Anything worth living for," said Nately, "is worth dying for."
"And anything worth dying for," answered the sacrilegious old man, "is certainly worth living for. You
know, you're such a pure and naive young man that I almost feel sorry for you. How old are you?
Twenty-five? Twenty-six?"
"Nineteen," said Nately. "I'll be twenty in January."
"If you live." The old man shook his head, wearing, for a moment, the same touchy, meditating frown of
the fretful and disapproving old woman. "They are going to kill you if you don't watch out, and I can see now
that you are not going to watch out. Why don't you use some sense and try to be more like me? You might live
to be a hundred and seven, too."
"Because it's better to die on one's feet than live on one's knees," Nately retorted with triumphant and lofty
conviction. "I guess you've heard that saying before."
"Yes, I certainly have," mused the treacherous old man, smiling again. "But I'm afraid you have it
backward. It is better to live on one's feet than die on one's knees. That is the way the saying goes."
"Are you sure?" Nately asked with sober confusion. "It seems to make more sense my way."
"No, it makes more sense my way. Ask your friends."
Nately turned to ask his friends and discovered they had gone. Yossarian and Dunbar had both disappeared.
The old man roared with contemptuous merriment at Nately's look of embarrassed surprise. Nately's face
darkened with shame. He vacillated helplessly for a few seconds and then spun himself around and fled inside
the nearest of the hallways in search of Yossarian and Dunbar, hoping to catch them in time and bring them
back to the rescue with news of the remarkable clash between the old man and Major --- de Coverley. All the
doors in the hallways were shut. There was light under none. It was already very late. Nately gave up his
search forlornly. There was nothing left for him to do, he realized finally, but get the girl he was in love with
and lie down with her somewhere to make tender, courteous love to her and plan their future together; but she
had gone off to bed, too, by the time he returned to the sitting room for her, and there was nothing left for him
to do then but resume his abortive discussion with the loathsome old man, who rose from his armchair with
jesting civility and excused himself for the night, abandoning Nately there with two bleary-eyed girls who
could not tell him into which room his own whore had gone and who padded off to bed several seconds later
after trying in vain to interest him in themselves, leaving him to sleep alone in the sitting room on the small,
lumpy sofa.
Nately was a sensitive, rich, good-looking boy with dark hair, trusting eyes, and a pain in his neck when he
awoke on the sofa early the next morning and wondered dully where he was. His nature was invariably gentle
and polite. He had lived for almost twenty years without trauma, tension, hate, or neurosis, which was proof to
Yossarian of just how crazy he really was. His childhood had been a pleasant, though disciplined, one. He got
on well with his brothers and sisters, and he did not hate his mother and father, even though they had both
been very good to him.
Nately had been brought up to detest people like Aarfy, whom his mother characterized as climbers, and
people like Milo, whom his father characterized as pushers, but he had never learned how, since he had never
been permitted near them. As far as he could recall, his homes in Philadelphia, New York, Maine, Palm
Beach, Southampton, London, Deauville, Paris and the south of France had always been crowded only with
ladies and gentlemen who were not climbers or pushers. Nately's mother, a descendant of the New England
Thorntons, was a Daughter of the American Revolution. His father was a Son of a Bitch.
"Always remember," his mother had reminded him frequently, "that you are a Nately. You are not a
Vanderbilt, whose fortune was made by a vulgar tugboat captain, or a Rockefeller, whose wealth was amassed
through unscrupulous speculations in crude petroleum; or a Reynolds or Duke, whose income was derived
from the sale to the unsuspecting public of products containing cancer-causing resins and tars; and you are
certainly not an Astor, whose family, I believe, still lets rooms. You are a Nately, and the Natelys have never
done anything for their money."
"What your mother means, son," interjected his father affably one time with that flair for graceful and
economical expression Nately admired so much, "is that old money is better than new money and that the
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newly rich are never to be esteemed as highly as the newly poor. Isn't that correct, my dear?"
Nately's father brimmed continually with sage and sophisticated counsel of that kind. He was as ebullient
and ruddy as mulled claret, and Nately liked him a great deal, although he did not like mulled claret. When
war broke out, Nately's family decided that he would enlist in the armed forces, since he was too young to be
placed in the diplomatic service, and since his father had it on excellent authority that Russia was going to
collapse in a matter of weeks or months and that Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Mussolini, Gandhi, Franco,
Peron and the Emperor of Japan would then all sign a peace treaty and live together happily ever after. It was
Nately's father's idea that he join the Air Corps, where he could train safely as a pilot while the Russians
capitulated and the details of the armistice were worked out, and where, as an officer, he would associate only
with gentlemen.
Instead, he found himself with Yossarian, Dunbar and Hungry Joe in a whore house in Rome, poignantly in
love with an indifferent girl there with whom he finally did lie down the morning after the night he slept alone
in the sitting room, only to be interrupted almost immediately by her incorrigible kid sister, who came bursting
in without warning and hurled herself onto the bed jealously so that Nately could embrace her, too. Nately's
whore sprang up snarling to whack her angrily and jerked her to her feet by her hair. The twelve-year-old girl
looked to Nately like a plucked chicken or like a twig with the bark peeled off her sapling body embarrassed
everyone in her precocious attempts to imitate her elders, and she was always being chased away to put
clothes on and ordered out into the street to play in the fresh air with the other children. The two sisters swore
and spat at each other now savagely, raising a fluent, deafening commotion that brought a whole crowd of
hilarious spectators swarming into the room. Nately gave up in exasperation. He asked his girl to get dressed
and took her downstairs for breakfast. The kid sister tagged along, and Nately felt like the proud head of a
family as the three of them ate respectably in a nearby open-air café. But Nately's whore was already bored
by the time they started back, and she decided to go streetwalking with two other girls rather than spend more
time with him. Nately and the kid sister followed meekly a block behind, the ambitious youngster to pick up
valuable pointers, Nately to eat his liver in mooning frustration, and both were saddened when the girls were
stopped by soldiers in a staff car and driven away.
Nately went back to the café and bought the kid sister chocolate ice cream until her spirits improved and
then returned with her to the apartment, where Yossarian and Dunbar were flopped out in the sitting room with
an exhausted Hungry Joe, who was still wearing on his battered face the blissful, numb, triumphant smile with
which he had limped into view from his massive harem that morning like a person with numerous broken
bones. The lecherous and depraved old man was delighted with Hungry Joe's split lips and black-and-blue
eyes. He greeted Nately warmly, still wearing the same rumpled clothes of the evening before. Nately was
profoundly upset by his seedy and disreputable appearance, and whenever he came to the apartment he wished
that the corrupt, immoral old man would put on a clean Brooks Brothers shirt, shave, comb his hair, wear a
tweed jacket, and grow a dapper white mustache so that Nately would not have to suffer such confusing shame
each time he looked at him and was reminded of his father.
24 MILO
April had been the best month of all for Milo. Lilacs bloomed in April and fruit ripened on the vine.
Heartbeats quickened and old appetites were renewed. In April a livelier iris gleamed upon the burnished
dove. April was spring, and in the spring Milo Minderbinder's fancy had lightly turned to thoughts of
tangerines.
"Tangerines?"
"Yes, sir."
"My men would love tangerines," admitted the colonel in Sardinia who commanded four squadrons of
B-26s.
"There'll be all the tangerines they can eat that you're able to pay for with money from your mess fund,"
Milo assured him.
"Casaba melons?"
"Are going for a song in Damascus."
"I have a weakness for casaba melons. I've always had a weakness for casaba melons."
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"Just lend me one plane from each squadron, just one plane, and you'll have all the casabas you can eat that
you've money to pay for."
"We buy from the syndicate?"
"And everybody has a share."
"It's amazing, positively amazing. How can you do it?"
"Mass purchasing power makes the big difference. For example, breaded veal cutlets."
"I'm not so crazy about breaded veal cutlets," grumbled the skeptical B-25 commander in the north of
Corsica.
"Breaded veal cutlets are very nutritious," Milo admonished him piously. "They contain egg yolk and bread
crumbs. And so are lamb chops."
"Ah, lamb chops," echoed the B-25 commander. "Good lamb chops?"
"The best," said Milo, "that the black market has to offer."
"Baby lamb chops?"
"In the cutest little pink paper panties you ever saw. Are going for a song in Portugal."
"I can't send a plane to Portugal. I haven't the authority."
"I can, once you lend the plane to me. With a pilot to fly it. And don't forget-you'll get General Dreedle."
"Will General Dreedle eat in my mess hall again?"
"Like a pig, once you start feeding him my best white fresh eggs fried in my pure creamery butter. There'll
be tangerines too, and casaba melons, honeydews, filet of Dover sole, baked Alaska, and cockles and
mussels."
"And everybody has a share?"
"That," said Milo, "is the most beautiful part of it."
"I don't like it," growled the unco-operative fighter-plane commander, who didn't like Milo either.
"There's an unco-operative fighter-plane commander up north who's got it in for me," Milo complained to
General Dreedle. "It takes just one person to ruin the whole thing, and then you wouldn't have your fresh eggs
fried in my pure creamery butter any more."
General Dreedle had the unco-operative fighter-plane commander transferred to the Solomon Islands to dig
graves and replaced him with a senile colonel with bursitis and a craving for litchi nuts who introduced Milo
to the B-17 general on the mainland with a yearning for Polish sausage.
"Polish sausage is going for peanuts in Cracow," Milo informed him.
"Polish sausage," sighed the general nostalgically. "You know, I'd give just about anything for a good hunk
of Polish sausage. Just about anything."
"You don't have to give anything. Just give me one plane for each mess hall and a pilot who will do what
he's told. And a small down payment on your initial order as a token of good faith."
"But Cracow is hundreds of miles behind the enemy lines. How will you get to the sausage?"
"There's an international Polish sausage exchange in Geneva. I'll just fly the peanuts into Switzerland and
exchange them for Polish sausage at the open market rate. They'll fly the peanuts back to Cracow and I'll fly
the Polish sausage back to you. You buy only as much Polish sausage as you want through the syndicate.
There'll be tangerines too, with only a little artificial coloring added. And eggs from Malta and Scotch from
Sicily. You'll be paying the money to yourself when you buy from the syndicate, since you'll own a share, so
you'll really be getting everything you buy for nothing. Doesn't that makes sense?"
"Sheer genius. How in the world did you ever think of it?"
"My name is Milo Minderbinder. I am twenty-seven years old."
Milo Minderbinder's planes flew in from everywhere, the pursuit planes, bombers, and cargo ships
streaming into Colonel Cathcart's field with pilots at the controls who would do what they were told. The
planes were decorated with flamboyant squadron emblems illustrating such laudable ideals as Courage, Might,
Justice, Truth, Liberty, Love, Honor and Patriotism that were painted out at once by Milo's mechanics with a
double coat of flat white and replaced in garish purple with the stenciled name M & M ENTERPRISES, FINE
FRUITS AND PRODUCE. The 'M & M' In 'M & M ENTERPRISES' stood for Milo & Minderbinder, and the
& was inserted, Milo revealed candidly, to nullify any impression that the syndicate was a one-man operation.
Planes arrived for Milo from airfields in Italy, North Africa and England, and from Air Transport Command
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stations in Liberia, Ascension Island, Cairo, and Karachi. Pursuit planes were traded for additional cargo ships
or retained for emergency invoice duty and small-parcel service; trucks and tanks were procured from the
ground forces and used for short-distance road hauling. Everybody had a share, and men got fat and moved
about tamely with toothpicks in their greasy lips. Milo supervised the whole expanding operation by himself.
Deep otter-brown lines of preoccupation etched themselves permanently into his careworn face and gave him
a harried look of sobriety and mistrust. Everybody but Yossarian thought Milo was a jerk, first for
volunteering for the job of mess officer and next for taking it so seriously. Yossarian also thought that Milo
was a jerk; but he also knew that Milo was a genius.
One day Milo flew away to England to pick up a load of Turkish halvah and came flying back from
Madagascar leading four German bombers filled with yams, collards, mustard greens and black-eyed Georgia
peas. Milo was dumbfounded when he stepped down to the ground and found a contingent of armed M.P.s
waiting to imprison the German pilots and confiscate their planes. Confiscate! The mere word was anathema
to him, and he stormed back and forth in excoriating condemnation, shaking a piercing finger of rebuke in the
guilt-ridden faces of Colonel Cathcart, Colonel Korn and the poor battle-scarred captain with the submachine
gun who commanded the M.P.s.
"Is this Russia?" Milo assailed them incredulously at the top of his voice. "Confiscate?" he shrieked, as
though he could not believe his own ears. "Since when is it the policy of the American government to
confiscate the private property of its citizens? Shame on you! Shame on all of you for even thinking such a
horrible thought."
"But Milo," Major Danby interrupted timidly, "we're at war with Germany, and those are German planes."
"They are no such thing!" Milo retorted furiously. "Those planes belong to the syndicate, and everybody
has a share. Confiscate? How can you possibly confiscate your own private property? Confiscate, indeed! I've
never heard anything so depraved in my whole life."
And sure enough, Milo was right, for when they looked, his mechanics had painted out the German
swastikas on the wings, tails and fuselages with double coats of flat white and stenciled in the words M & M
ENTERPRISES, FINE FRUITS AND PRODUCE. Right before their eyes he had transformed his syndicate
into an international cartel.
Milo's argosies of plenty now filled the air. Planes poured in from Norway, Denmark, France, Germany,
Austria, Italy, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Sweden, Finland, Poland-from everywhere in Europe, in fact,
but Russia, with whom Milo refused to do business. When everybody who was going to had signed up with M
& M Enterprises, Fine Fruits and Produce, Milo created a wholly owned subsidiary, M & M Fancy Pastry, and
obtained more airplanes and more money from the mess funds for scones and crumpets from the British Isles,
prune and cheese Danish from Copenhagen, éclairs, cream puffs, Napoleons and petits fours from Paris,
Reims and Grenoble, Kugelhopf, pumpernickel and Pfefferkuchen from Berlin, Linzer and Dobos Torten from
Vienna, Strudel from Hungary and baklava from Ankara. Each morning Milo sent planes aloft all over Europe
and North Africa hauling long red tow signs advertising the day's specials in large square letters:
"EYEROUND, 79¢... WHITING, 21¢." He boosted cash income for the syndicate by leasing tow signs to
Pet Milk, Gaines Dog Food, and Noxzema. In a spirit of civic enterprise, he regularly allotted a certain amount
of free aerial advertising space to General Peckem for the propagation of such messages in the public interest
as NEATNESS COUNTS, HASTE MAKES WASTE, and THE FAMILY THAT PRAYS TOGETHER
STAYS TOGETHER. Milo purchased spot radio announcements on Axis Sally's and Lord Haw Haw's daily
propaganda broadcasts from Berlin to keep things moving. Business boomed on every battlefront.
Milo's planes were a familiar sight. They had freedom of passage everywhere, and one day Milo contracted
with the American military authorities to bomb the German-held highway bridge at Orvieto and with the
German military authorities to defend the highway bridge at Orvieto with antiaircraft fire against his own
attack. His fee for attacking the bridge for America was the total cost of the operation plus six per cent and his
fee from Germany for defending the bridge was the same cost-plus-six agreement augmented by a merit bonus
of a thousand dollars for every American plane he shot down. The consummation of these deals represented an
important victory for private enterprise, he pointed out, since the armies of both countries were socialized
institutions. Once the contracts were signed, there seemed to be no point in using the resources of the
syndicate to bomb and defend the bridge, inasmuch as both governments had ample men and material right
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there to do so and were perfectly happy to contribute them, and in the end Milo realized a fantastic profit from
both halves of his project for doing nothing more than signing his name twice.
The arrangements were fair to both sides. Since Milo did have freedom of passage everywhere, his planes
were able to steal over in a sneak attack without alerting the German antiaircraft gunners; and since Milo knew
about the attack, he was able to alert the German antiaircraft gunners in sufficient time for them to begin firing
accurately the moment the planes came into range. It was an ideal arrangement for everyone but the dead man
in Yossarian's tent, who was killed over the target the day he arrived.
"I didn't kill him!" Milo kept replying passionately to Yossarian's angry protest. "I wasn't even there that
day, I tell you. Do you think I was down there on the ground firing an antiaircraft gun when the planes came
over?"
"But you organized the whole thing, didn't you?" Yossarian shouted back at him in the velvet darkness
cloaking the path leading past the still vehicles of the motor pool to the open-air movie theater.
"And I didn't organize anything," Milo answered indignantly, drawing great agitated sniffs of air in through
his hissing, pale, twitching nose. "The Germans have the bridge, and we were going to bomb it, whether I
stepped into the picture or not. I just saw a wonderful opportunity to make some profit out of the mission, and
I took it. What's so terrible about that?"
"What's so terrible about it? Milo, a man in my tent was killed on that mission before he could even unpack
his bags."
"But I didn't kill him."
"You got a thousand dollars extra for it."
"But I didn't kill him. I wasn't even there, I tell you. I was in Barcelona buying olive oil and skinless and
boneless sardines, and I've got the purchase orders to prove it. And I didn't get the thousand dollars. That
thousand dollars went to the syndicate, and everybody got a share, even you." Milo was appealing to
Yossarian from the bottom of his soul. "Look, I didn't start this war, Yossarian, no matter what that lousy
Wintergreen is saying. I'm just trying to put it on a businesslike basis. Is anything wrong with that? You know,
a thousand dollars ain't such a bad price for a medium bomber and a crew. If I can persuade the Germans to
pay me a thousand dollars for every plane they shoot down, why shouldn't I take it?"
"Because you're dealing with the enemy, that's why. Can't you understand that we're fighting a war? People
are dying. Look around you, for Christ's sake!"
Milo shook his head with weary forbearance. "And the Germans are not our enemies," he declared. "Oh I
know what you're going to say. Sure, we're at war with them. But the Germans are also members in good
standing of the syndicate, and it's my job to protect their rights as shareholders. Maybe they did start the war,
and maybe they are killing millions of people, but they pay their bills a lot more promptly than some allies of
ours I could name. Don't you understand that I have to respect the sanctity of my contract with Germany?
Can't you see it from my point of view?"
"No," Yossarian rebuffed him harshly.
Milo was stung and made no effort to disguise his wounded feelings. It was a muggy, moonlit night filled
with gnats, moths, and mosquitoes. Milo lifted his arm suddenly and pointed toward the open-air theater,
where the milky, dust-filled beam bursting horizontally from the projector slashed a conelike swath in the
blackness and draped in a fluorescent membrane of light the audience tilted on the seats there in hypnotic sags,
their faces focused upward toward the aluminized movie screen. Milo's eyes were liquid with integrity, and his
artless and uncorrupted face was lustrous with a shining mixture of sweat and insect repellent.
"Look at them," he exclaimed in a voice choked with emotion. "They're my friends, my countrymen, my
comrades in arms. A fellow never had a better bunch of buddies. Do you think I'd do a single thing to harm
them if I didn't have to? Haven't I got enough on my mind? Can't you see how upset I am already about all that
cotton piling up on those piers in Egypt?" Milo's voice splintered into fragments, and he clutched at
Yossarian's shirt front as though drowning. His eyes were throbbing visibly like brown caterpillars.
"Yossarian, what am I going to do with so much cotton? It's all your fault for letting me buy it."
The cotton was piling up on the piers in Egypt, and nobody wanted any. Milo had never dreamed that the
Nile Valley could be so fertile or that there would be no market at all for the crop he had bought. The mess
halls in his syndicate would not help; they rose up in uncompromising rebellion against his proposal to tax
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them on a per capita basis in order to enable each man to own his own share of the Egyptian cotton crop. Even
his reliable friends the Germans failed him in this crisis: they preferred ersatz. Milo's mess halls would not
even help him store the cotton, and his warehousing costs skyrocketed and contributed to the devastating drain
upon his cash reserves. The profits from the Orvieto mission were sucked away. He began writing home for
the money he had sent back in better days; soon that was almost gone. And new bales of cotton kept arriving
on the wharves at Alexandria every day. Each time he succeeded in dumping some on the world market for a
loss it was snapped up by canny Egyptian brokers in the Levant, who sold it back to him at the original price,
so that he was really worse off than before.
M & M Enterprises verged on collapse. Milo cursed himself hourly for his monumental greed and stupidity
in purchasing the entire Egyptian cotton crop, but a contract was a contract and had to be honored, and one
night, after a sumptuous evening meal, all Milo's fighters and bombers took off, joined in formation directly
overhead and began dropping bombs on the group. He had landed another contract with the Germans, this time
to bomb his own outfit. Milo's planes separated in a well co-ordinated attack and bombed the fuel stocks and
the ordnance dump, the repair hangars and the B-25 bombers resting on the lollipop-shaped hardstands at the
field. His crews spared the landing strip and the mess halls so that they could land safely when their work was
done and enjoy a hot snack before retiring. They bombed with their landing lights on, since no one was
shooting back. They bombed all four squadrons, the officers' club and the Group Headquarters building. Men
bolted from their tents in sheer terror and did not know in which direction to turn. Wounded soon lay
screaming everywhere. A cluster of fragmentation bombs exploded in the yard of the officers' club and
punched jagged holes in the side of the wooden building and in the bellies and backs of a row of lieutenants
and captains standing at the bar. They doubled over in agony and dropped. The rest of the officers fled toward
the two exits in panic and jammed up the doorways like a dense, howling dam of human flesh as they shrank
from going farther.
Colonel Cathcart clawed and elbowed his way through the unruly, bewildered mass until he stood outside
by himself. He stared up at the sky in stark astonishment and horror. Milo's planes, ballooning serenely in over
the blossoming treetops with their bomb bay doors open and wing flaps down and with their monstrous,
bug-eyed, blinding, fiercely flickering, eerie landing lights on, were the most apocalyptic sight he had ever
beheld. Colonel Cathcart let go a stricken gasp of dismay and hurled himself headlong into his jeep, almost
sobbing. He found the gas pedal and the ignition and sped toward the airfield as fast as the rocking car would
carry him, his huge flabby hands clenched and bloodless on the wheel or blaring his horn tormentedly. Once
he almost killed himself when he swerved with a banshee screech of tires to avoid plowing into a bunch of
men running crazily toward the hills in their underwear with their stunned faces down and their thin arms
pressed high around their temples as puny shields. Yellow, orange and red fires were burning on both sides of
the road. Tents and trees were in flames, and Milo's planes kept coming around interminably with their
blinking white landing lights on and their bomb bay doors open. Colonel Cathcart almost turned the jeep over
when he slammed the brakes on at the control tower. He leaped from the car while it was still skidding
dangerously and hurtled up the flight of steps inside, where three men were busy at the instruments and the
controls. He bowled two of them aside in his lunge for the nickel-plated microphone, his eyes glittering wildly
and his beefy face contorted with stress. He squeezed the microphone in a bestial grip and began shouting
hysterically at the top of his voice.
"Milo, you son of a bitch! Are you crazy? What the hell are you doing? Come down! Come down!"
"Stop hollering so much, will you?" answered Milo, who was standing there right beside him in the control
tower with a microphone of his own. "I'm right here." Milo looked at him with reproof and turned back to his
work. "Very good, men, very good," he chanted into his microphone. "But I see one supply shed still standing.
That will never do, Purvis-I've spoken to you about that kind of shoddy work before. Now, you go right back
there this minute and try it again. And this time come in slowly... slowly. Haste makes waste, Purvis. Haste
makes waste. If I've told you that once, I must have told you that a hundred times. Haste makes waste."
The loudspeaker overhead began squawking. "Milo, this is Alvin Brown. I've finished dropping my bombs.
What should I do now?"
"Strafe," said Milo.
"Strafe?" Alvin Brown was shocked.
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"We have no choice," Milo informed him resignedly. "It's in the contract."
"Oh, okay, then," Alvin Brown acquiesced. "In that case I'll strafe."
This time Milo had gone too far. Bombing his own men and planes was more than even the most
phlegmatic observer could stomach, and it looked like the end for him. High-ranking government officials
poured in to investigate. Newspapers inveighed against Milo with glaring headlines, and Congressmen
denounced the atrocity in stentorian wrath and clamored for punishment. Mothers with children in the service
organized into militant groups and demanded revenge. Not one voice was raised in his defense. Decent people
everywhere were affronted, and Milo was all washed up until he opened his books to the public and disclosed
the tremendous profit he had made. He could reimburse the government for all the people and property he had
destroyed and still have enough money left over to continue buying Egyptian cotton. Everybody, of course,
owned a share. And the sweetest part of the whole deal was that there really was no need to reimburse the
government at all.
"In a democracy, the government is the people," Milo explained. "We're people, aren't we? So we might
just as well keep the money and eliminate the middleman. Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of
war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry. If we pay the government everything we owe it,
we'll only be encouraging government control and discouraging other individuals from bombing their own
men and planes. We'll be taking away their incentive."
Milo was correct, of course, as everyone soon agreed but a few embittered misfits like Doc Daneeka, who
sulked cantankerously and muttered offensive insinuations about the morality of the whole venture until Milo
mollified him with a donation, in the name of the syndicate, of a lightweight aluminum collapsible garden
chair that Doc Daneeka could fold up conveniently and carry outside his tent each time Chief White Halfoat
came inside his tent and carry back inside his tent each time Chief White Halfoat came out. Doc Daneeka had
lost his head during Milo's bombardment; instead of running for cover, he had remained out in the open and
performed his duty, slithering along the ground through shrapnel, strafing and incendiary bombs like a furtive,
wily lizard from casualty to casualty, administering tourniquets, morphine, splints and sulfanilamide with a
dark and doleful visage, never saying one word more than he had to and reading in each man's bluing wound a
dreadful portent of his own decay. He worked himself relentlessly into exhaustion before the long night was
over and came down with a snife the next day that sent him hurrying querulously into the medical tent to have
his temperature taken by Gus and Wes and to obtain a mustard plaster and vaporizer.
Doc Daneeka tended each moaning man that night with the same glum and profound and introverted grief
he showed at the airfield the day of the Avignon mission when Yossarian climbed down the few steps of his
plane naked, in a state of utter shock, with Snowden smeared abundantly all over his bare heels and toes,
knees, arms and fingers, and pointed inside wordlessly toward where the young radio-gunner lay freezing to
death on the floor beside the still younger tail-gunner who kept falling back into a dead faint each time he
opened his eyes and saw Snowden dying.
Doc Daneeka draped a blanket around Yossarian's shoulders almost tenderly after Snowden had been
removed from the plane and carried into an ambulance on a stretcher. He led Yossarian toward his jeep.
McWatt helped, and the three drove in silence to the squadron medical tent, where McWatt and Doc Daneeka
guided Yossarian inside to a chair and washed Snowden off him with cold wet balls of absorbent cotton. Doc
Daneeka gave him a pill and a shot that put him to sleep for twelve hours. When Yossarian woke up and went
to see him, Doc Daneeka gave him another pill and a shot that put him to sleep for another twelve hours.
When Yossarian woke up again and went to see him, Doc Daneeka made ready to give him another pill and a
shot.
"How long are you going to keep giving me those pills and shots?" Yossarian asked him.
"Until you feel better."
"I feel all right now."
Doc Daneeka's frail suntanned forehead furrowed with surprise. "Then why don't you put some clothes on?
Why are you walking around naked?"
"I don't want to wear a uniform any more."
Doc Daneeka accepted the explanation and put away his hypodermic syringe. "Are you sure you feel all
right?"
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"I feel fine. I'm just a little logy from all those pills and shots you've been giving me."
Yossarian went about his business with no clothes on all the rest of that day and was still naked late the
next morning when Milo, after hunting everywhere else, finally found him sitting up a tree a small distance in
back of the quaint little military cemetery at which Snowden was being buried. Milo was dressed in his
customary business attire-olive-drab trousers, a fresh olive-drab shirt and tie, with one silver first lieutenant's
bar gleaming on the collar, and a regulation dress cap with a stiff leather bill.
"I've been looking all over for you," Milo called up to Yossarian from the ground reproachfully.
"You should have looked for me in this tree," Yossarian answered. "I've been up here all morning."
"Come on down and taste this and tell me if it's good. It's very important."
Yossarian shook his head. He sat nude on the lowest limb of the tree and balanced himself with both hands
grasping the bough directly above. He refused to budge, and Milo had no choice but to stretch both arms about
the trunk in a distasteful hug and start climbing. He struggled upward clumsily with loud grunts and wheezes,
and his clothes were squashed and crooked by the time he pulled himself up high enough to hook a leg over
the limb and pause for breath. His dress cap was askew and in danger of falling. Milo caught it just in time
when it began slipping. Globules of perspiration glistened like transparent pearls around his mustache and
swelled like opaque blisters under his eyes. Yossarian watched him impassively. Cautiously Milo worked
himself around in a half circle so that he could face Yossarian. He unwrapped tissue paper from something
soft, round and brown and handed it to Yossarian.
"Please taste this and let me know what you think. I'd like to serve it to the men."
"What is it?" asked Yossarian, and took a big bite.
"Chocolate-covered cotton."
Yossarian gagged convulsively and sprayed his big mouthful of chocolate-covered cotton right into Milo's
face. "Here, take it back!" he spouted angrily. "Jesus Christ! Have you gone crazy? You didn't even take the
goddam seeds out."
"Give it a chance, will you?" Milo begged. "It can't be that bad. Is it really that bad?"
"It's even worse."
"But I've got to make the mess halls feed it to the men."
"They'll never be able to swallow it."
"They've got to swallow it," Milo ordained with dictatorial grandeur, and almost broke his neck when he let
go with one arm to wave a righteous finger in the air.
"Come on out here," Yossarian invited him. "You'll be much safer, and you can see everything."
Gripping the bough above with both hands, Milo began inching his way out on the limb sideways with
utmost care and apprehension. His face was rigid with tension, and he sighed with relief when he found
himself seated securely beside Yossarian. He stroked the tree affectionately. "This is a pretty good tree," he
observed admiringly with proprietary gratitude.
"It's the tree of life," Yossarian answered, waggling his toes, "and of knowledge of good and evil, too."
Milo squinted closely at the bark and branches. "No it isn't," he replied. "It's a chestnut tree. I ought to
know. I sell chestnuts."
"Have it your way."
They sat in the tree without talking for several seconds, their legs dangling and their hands almost straight
up on the bough above, the one completely nude but for a pair of crepe-soled sandals, the other completely
dressed in a coarse olive-drab woolen uniform with his tie knotted tight. Milo studied Yossarian diffidently
through the corner of his eye, hesitating tactfully.
"I want to ask you something," he said at last. "You don't have any clothes on. I don't want to butt in or
anything, but I just want to know. Why aren't you wearing your uniform?"
"I don't want to."
Milo nodded rapidly like a sparrow pecking. "I see, I see," he stated quickly with a look of vivid confusion.
"I understand perfectly. I heard Appleby and Captain Black say you had gone crazy, and I just wanted to find
out." He hesitated politely again, weighing his next question. "Aren't you ever going to put your uniform on
again?"
"I don't think so."
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Milo nodded with spurious vim to indicate he still understood and then sat silent, ruminating gravely with
troubled misgiving. A scarlet-crested bird shot by below, brushing sure dark wings against a quivering bush.
Yossarian and Milo were covered in their bower by tissue-thin tiers of sloping green and largely surrounded
by other gray chestnut trees and a silver spruce. The sun was high overhead in a vast sapphire-blue sky beaded
with low, isolated, puffy clouds of dry and immaculate white. There was no breeze, and the leaves about them
hung motionless. The shade was feathery. Everything was at peace but Milo, who straightened suddenly with
a muffled cry and began pointing excitedly.
"Look at that!" he exclaimed in alarm. "Look at that! That's a funeral going on down there. That looks like
the cemetery. Isn't it?"
Yossarian answered him slowly in a level voice. "They're burying that kid who got killed in my plane over
Avignon the other day. Snowden."
"What happened to him?" Milo asked in a voice deadened with awe.
"He got killed."
"That's terrible," Milo grieved, and his large brown eyes filled with tears. "That poor kid. It really is
terrible." He bit his trembling lip hard, and his voice rose with emotion when he continued. "And it will get
even worse if the mess halls don't agree to buy my cotton. Yossarian, what's the matter with them? Don't they
realize it's their syndicate? Don't they know they've all got a share?"
"Did the dead man in my tent have a share?" Yossarian demanded caustically.
"Of course he did," Milo assured him lavishly. "Everybody in the squadron has a share."
"He was killed before he even got into the squadron."
Milo made a deft grimace of tribulation and turned away. "I wish you'd stop picking on me about that dead
man in your tent," he pleaded peevishly. "I told you I didn't have anything to do with killing him. Is it my fault
that I saw this great opportunity to corner the market on Egyptian cotton and got us into all this trouble? Was I
supposed to know there was going to be a glut? I didn't even know what a glut was in those days. An
opportunity to corner a market doesn't come along very often, and I was pretty shrewd to grab the chance
when I had it." Milo gulped back a moan as he saw six uniformed pallbearers lift the plain pine coffin from the
ambulance and set it gently down on the ground beside the yawning gash of the freshly dug grave. "And now I
can't get rid of a single penny's worth," he mourned.
Yossarian was unmoved by the fustian charade of the burial ceremony, and by Milo's crushing
bereavement. The chaplain's voice floated up to him through the distance tenuously in an unintelligible, almost
inaudible monotone, like a gaseous murmur. Yossarian could make out Major Major by his towering and
lanky aloofness and thought he recognized Major Danby mopping his brow with a handkerchief. Major Danby
had not stopped shaking since his run-in with General Dreedle. There were strands of enlisted men molded in
a curve around the three officers, as inflexible as lumps of wood, and four idle gravediggers in streaked
fatigues lounging indifferently on spades near the shocking, incongruous heap of loose copperred earth. As
Yossarian stared, the chaplain elevated his gaze toward Yossarian beatifically, pressed his fingers down over
his eyeballs in a manner of affliction, peered upward again toward Yossarian searchingly, and bowed his head,
concluding what Yossarian took to be a climactic part of the funeral rite. The four men in fatigues lifted the
coffin on slings and lowered it into the grave. Milo shuddered violently.
"I can't watch it," he cried, turning away in anguish. "I just can't sit here and watch while those mess halls
let my syndicate die." He gnashed his teeth and shook his head with bitter woe and resentment. "If they had
any loyalty, they would buy my cotton till it hurts so that they can keep right on buying my cotton till it hurts
them some more. They would build fires and burn up their underwear and summer uniforms just to create
bigger demand. But they won't do a thing. Yossarian, try eating the rest of this chocolate-covered cotton for
me. Maybe it will taste delicious now."
Yossarian pushed his hand away. "Give up, Milo. People can't eat cotton."
Milo's face narrowed cunningly. "It isn't really cotton," he coaxed. "I was joking. It's really cotton candy,
delicious cotton candy. Try it and see."
"Now you're lying."
"I never lie!" Milo rejoindered with proud dignity.
"You're lying now."
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"I only lie when it's necessary," Milo explained defensively, averting his eyes for a moment and blinking
his lashes winningly. "This stuff is better than cotton candy, really it is. It's made out of real cotton. Yossarian,
you've got to help me make the men eat it. Egyptian cotton is the finest cotton in the world."
"But it's indigestible," Yossarian emphasized. "It will make them sick, don't you understand? Why don't
you try living on it yourself if you don't believe me?"
"I did try," admitted Milo gloomily. "And it made me sick."
The graveyard was yellow as hay and green as cooked cabbage. In a little while the chaplain stepped back,
and the beige crescent of human forms began to break up sluggishly, like flotsam. The men drifted without
haste or sound to the vehicles parked along the side of the bumpy dirt road. With their heads down
disconsolately, the chaplain, Major Major and Major Danby moved toward their jeeps in an ostracized group,
each holding himself friendlessly several feet away from the other two.
"It's all over," observed Yossarian.
"It's the end," Milo agreed despondently. "There's no hope left. And all because I left them free to make
their own decisions. That should teach me a lesson about discipline the next time I try something like this."
"Why don't you sell your cotton to the government?" Yossarian suggested casually, as he watched the four
men in streaked fatigues shoveling heaping bladefuls of the copper-red earth back down inside the grave.
Milo vetoed the idea brusquely. "It's a matter of principle," he explained firmly. "The government has no
business in business, and I would be the last person in the world to ever try to involve the government in a
business of mine. But the business of government is business," he remembered alertly, and continued with
elation. "Calvin Coolidge said that, and Calvin Coolidge was a President, so it must be true. And the
government does have the responsibility of buying all the Egyptian cotton I've got that no one else wants so
that I can make a profit, doesn't it?" Milo's face clouded almost as abruptly, and his spirits descended into a
state of sad anxiety. "But how will I get the government to do it?"
"Bribe it," Yossarian said.
"Bribe it!" Milo was outraged and almost lost his balance and broke his neck again. "Shame on you!" he
scolded severely, breathing virtuous fire down and upward into his rusty mustache through his billowing
nostrils and prim lips. "Bribery is against the law, and you know it. But it's not against the law to make a
profit, is it? So it can't be against the law for me to bribe someone in order to make a fair profit, can it? No, of
course not!" He fell to brooding again, with a meek, almost pitiable distress. "But how will I know who to
bribe?"
"Oh, don't you worry about that," Yossarian comforted him with a toneless snicker as the engines of the
jeeps and ambulance fractured the drowsy silence and the vehicles in the rear began driving away backward.
"You make the bribe big enough and they'll find you. Just make sure you do everything right out in the open.
Let everyone know exactly what you want and how much you're willing to pay for it. The first time you act
guilty or ashamed, you might get into trouble."
"I wish you'd come with me," Milo remarked. "I won't feel safe among people who take bribes. They're no
better than a bunch of crooks."
"You'll be all right," Yossarian assured him with confidence. "If you run into trouble, just tell everybody
that the security of the country requires a strong domestic Egyptian-cotton speculating industry."
"It does," Milo informed him solemnly. "A strong Egyptian-cotton speculating industry means a much
stronger America."
"Of course it does. And if that doesn't work, point out the great number of American families that depend
on it for income."
"A great many American families do depend on it for income."
"You see?" said Yossarian. "You're much better at it than I am. You almost make it sound true."
"It is true," Milo exclaimed with a strong trace of old hauteur.
"That's what I mean. You do it with just the right amount of conviction."
"You're sure you won't come with me?"
Yossarian shook his head.
Milo was impatient to get started. He stuffed the remainder of the chocolate-covered cotton ball into his
shirt pocket and edged his way back gingerly along the branch to the smooth gray trunk. He threw this arms
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about the trunk in a generous and awkward embrace and began shinnying down, the sides of his leather-soled
shoes slipping constantly so that it seemed many times he would fall and injure himself. Halfway down, he
changed his mind and climbed back up. Bits of tree bark stuck to his mustache, and his straining face was
flushed with exertion.
"I wish you'd put your uniform on instead of going around naked that way," he confided pensively before
he climbed back down again and hurried away. "You might start a trend, and then I'll never get rid of all this
goldarned cotton."
25 THE CHAPLAIN
It was already some time since the chaplain had first begun wondering what everything was all about. Was
there a God? How could he be sure? Being an Anabaptist minister in the American Army was difficult enough
under the best of circumstances; without dogma, it was almost intolerable.
People with loud voices frightened him. Brave, aggressive men of action like Colonel Cathcart left him
feeling helpless and alone. Wherever he went in the Army, he was a stranger. Enlisted men and officers did
not conduct themselves with him as they conducted themselves with other enlisted men and officers, and even
other chaplains were not as friendly toward him as they were toward each other. In a world in which success
was the only virtue, he had resigned himself to failure. He was painfully aware that he lacked the ecclesiastical
aplomb and savoir-faire that enabled so many of his colleagues in other faiths and sects to get ahead. He was
just not equipped to excel. He thought of himself as ugly and wanted daily to be home with his wife.
Actually, the chaplain was almost good-looking, with a pleasant, sensitive face as pale and brittle as
sandstone. His mind was open on every subject.
Perhaps he really was Washington Irving, and perhaps he really had been signing Washington Irving's
name to those letters he knew nothing about. Such lapses of memory were not uncommon in medical annals,
he knew. There was no way of really knowing anything. He remembered very distinctly-or was under the
impression he remembered very distinctly-his feeling that he had met Yossarian somewhere before the first
time he had met Yossarian lying in bed in the hospital. He remembered experiencing the same disquieting
sensation almost two weeks later when Yossarian appeared at his tent to ask to be taken off combat duty. By
that time, of course, the chaplain had met Yossarian somewhere before, in that odd, unorthodox ward in which
every patient seemed delinquent but the unfortunate patient covered from head to toe in white bandages and
plaster who was found dead one day with a thermometer in his mouth. But the chaplain's impression of a prior
meeting was of some occasion far more momentous and occult than that, of a significant encounter with
Yossarian in some remote, submerged and perhaps even entirely spiritual epoch in which he had made the
identical, foredooming admission that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, he could do to help him.
Doubts of such kind gnawed at the chaplain's lean, suffering frame insatiably. Was there a single true faith,
or a life after death? How many angels could dance on the head of a pin, and with what matters did God
occupy himself in all the infinite aeons before the Creation? Why was it necessary to put a protective seal on
the brow of Cain if there were no other people to protect him from? Did Adam and Eve produce daughters?
These were the great, complex questions of ontology that tormented him. Yet they never seemed nearly as
crucial to him as the question of kindness and good manners. He was pinched perspinngly in the
epistemological dilemma of the skeptic, unable to accept solutions to problems he was unwilling to dismiss as
unsolvable. He was never without misery, and never without hope.
"Have you ever," he inquired hesitantly of Yossarian that day in his tent as Yossarian sat holding in both
hands the warm bottle of Coca-Cola with which the chaplain had been able to solace him, "been in a situation
which you felt you had been in before, even though you knew you were experiencing it for the first time?"
Yossarian nodded perfunctorily, and the chaplain's breath quickened in anticipation as he made ready to join
his will power with Yossarian's in a prodigious effort to rip away at last the voluminous black folds shrouding
the eternal mysteries of existence. "Do you have that feeling now?"
Yossarian shook his head and explained that déjà vu was just a momentary infinitesimal lag in the
operation of two coactive sensory nerve centers that commonly functioned simultaneously. The chaplain
scarcely heard him. He was disappointed, but not inclined to believe Yossarian, for he had been given a sign, a
secret, enigmatic vision that he still lacked the boldness to divulge. There was no mistaking the awesome
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implications of the chaplain's revelation: it was either an insight of divine origin or a hallucination; he was
either blessed or losing his mind. Both prospects filled him with equal fear and depression. It was neither
déjà vu, presque vu nor jamais vu. It was possible that there were other vus of which he had never heard
and that one of these other vus would explain succinctly the bafing phenomenon of which he had been both a
witness and a part; it was even possible that none of what he thought had taken place, really had taken place,
that he was dealing with an aberration of memory rather than of perception, that he never really had thought he
had seen, that his impression now that he once had thought so was merely the illusion of an illusion, and that
he was only now imagining that he had ever once imagined seeing a naked man sitting in a tree at the
cemetery.
It was obvious to the chaplain now that he was not particularly well suited to his work, and he often
speculated whether he might not be happier serving in some other branch of the service, as a private in the
infantry or field artillery, perhaps, or even as a paratrooper. He had no real friends. Before meeting Yossarian,
there was no one in the group with whom he felt at ease, and he was hardly at ease with Yossarian, whose
frequent rash and insubordinate outbursts kept him almost constantly on edge and in an ambiguous state of
enjoyable trepidation. The chaplain felt safe when he was at the officers' club with Yossarian and Dunbar, and
even with just Nately and McWatt. When he sat with them he had no need to sit with anyone else; his problem
of where to sit was solved, and he was protected against the undesired company of all those fellow officers
who invariably welcomed him with excessive cordiality when he approached and waited uncomfortably for
him to go away. He made so many people uneasy. Everyone was always very friendly toward him, and no one
was ever very nice; everyone spoke to him, and no one ever said anything. Yossarian and Dunbar were much
more relaxed, and the chaplain was hardly uncomfortable with them at all. They even defended him the night
Colonel Cathcart tried to throw him out of the officers' club again, Yossarian rising truculently to intervene
and Nately shouting out, "Yossarian!" to restrain him. Colonel Cathcart turned white as a sheet at the sound of
Yossarian's name, and, to everyone's amazement, retreated in horrified disorder until he bumped into General
Dreedle, who elbowed him away with annoyance and ordered him right back to order the chaplain to start
coming into the officers' club every night again.
The chaplain had almost as much trouble keeping track of his status at the officers' club as he had
remembering at which of the ten mess halls in the group he was scheduled to eat his next meal. He would just
as soon have remained kicked out of the officers' club, had it not been for the pleasure he was now finding
there with his new companions. If the chaplain did not go to the officers' club at night, there was no place else
he could go. He would pass the time at Yossarian's and Dunbar's table with a shy, reticent smile, seldom
speaking unless addressed, a glass of thick sweet wine almost untasted before him as he toyed unfamiliarly
with the tiny corncob pipe that he affected selfconsciously and occasionally stuffed with tobacco and smoked.
He enjoyed listening to Nately, whose maudlin, bittersweet lamentations mirrored much of his own romantic
desolation and never failed to evoke in him resurgent tides of longing for his wife and children. The chaplain
would encourage Nately with nods of comprehension or assent, amused by his candor and immaturity. Nately
did not glory too immodestly that his girl was a prostitute, and the chaplain's awareness stemmed mainly from
Captain Black, who never slouched past their table without a broad wink at the chaplain and some tasteless,
wounding gibe about her to Nately. The chaplain did not approve of Captain Black and found it difficult not to
wish him evil.
No one, not even Nately, seemed really to appreciate that he, Chaplain Robert Oliver Shipman, was not just
a chaplain but a human being, that he could have a charming, passionate, pretty wife whom he loved almost
insanely and three small blue-eyed children with strange, forgotten faces who would grow up someday to
regard him as a freak and who might never forgive him for all the social embarrassment his vocation would
cause them. Why couldn't anybody understand that he was not really a freak but a normal, lonely adult trying
to lead a normal, lonely adult life? If they pricked him, didn't he bleed? And if he was tickled, didn't he laugh?
It seemed never to have occurred to them that he, just as they, had eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses and
affections, that he was wounded by the same kind of weapons they were, warmed and cooled by the same
breezes and fed by the same kind of food, although, he was forced to concede, in a different mess hall for each
successive meal. The only person who did seem to realize he had feelings was Corporal Whitcomb, who had
just managed to bruise them all by going over his head to Colonel Cathcart with his proposal for sending form
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letters of condolence home to the families of men killed or wounded in combat.
The chaplain's wife was the one thing in the world he could be certain of, and it would have been sufficient,
if only he had been left to live his life out with just her and the children. The chaplain's wife was a reserved,
diminutive, agreeable woman in her early thirties, very dark and very attractive, with a narrow waist, calm
intelligent eyes, and small, bright, pointy teeth in a childlike face that was vivacious and petite; he kept
forgetting what his children looked like, and each time he returned to their snapshots it was like seeing their
faces for the first time. The chaplain loved his wife and children with such tameless intensity that he often
wanted to sink to the ground helplessly and weep like a castaway cripple. He was tormented inexorably by
morbid fantasies involving them, by dire, hideous omens of illness and accident. His meditations were
polluted with threats of dread diseases like Ewing's tumor and leukemia; he saw his infant son die two or three
times every week because he had never taught his wife how to stop arterial bleeding; watched, in tearful,
paralyzed silence, his whole family electrocuted, one after the other, at a baseboard socket because he had
never told her that a human body would conduct electricity; all four went up in flames almost every night
when the water heater exploded and set the two-story wooden house afire; in ghastly, heartless, revolting
detail he saw his poor dear wife's trim and fragile body crushed to a viscous pulp against the brick wall of a
market building by a half-wined drunken automobile driver and watched his hysterical five-year-old daughter
being led away from the grisly scene by a kindly middle-aged gentleman with snow-white hair who raped and
murdered her repeatedly as soon as he had driven her off to a deserted sandpit, while his two younger children
starved to death slowly in the house after his wife's mother, who had been baby-sitting, dropped dead from a
heart attack when news of his wife's accident was given to her over the telephone. The chaplain's wife was a
sweet, soothing, considerate woman, and he yearned to touch the warm flesh of her slender arm again and
stroke her smooth black hair, to hear her intimate, comforting voice. She was a much stronger person than he
was. He wrote brief, untroubled letters to her once a week, sometimes twice. He wanted to write urgent love
letters to her all day long and crowd the endless pages with desperate, uninhibited confessions of his humble
worship and need and with careful instructions for administering artificial respiration. He wanted to pour out
to her in torrents of self-pity all his unbearable loneliness and despair and warn her never to leave the boric
acid or the aspirin in reach of the children or to cross a street against the traffic light. He did not wish to worry
her. The chaplain's wife was intuitive, gentle, compassionate and responsive. Almost inevitably, his reveries of
reunion with her ended in explicit acts of love-making.
The chaplain felt most deceitful presiding at funerals, and it would not have astonished him to learn that the
apparition in the tree that day was a manifestation of the Almighty's censure for the blasphemy and pride
inherent in his function. To simulate gravity, feign grief and pretend supernatural intelligence of the hereafter
in so fearsome and arcane a circumstance as death seemed the most criminal of offenses. He recalled-or was
almost convinced he recalled-the scene at the cemetery perfectly. He could still see Major Major and Major
Danby standing somber as broken stone pillars on either side of him, see almost the exact number of enlisted
men and almost the exact places in which they had stood, see the four unmoving men with spades, the
repulsive coffin and the large, loose, triumphant mound of reddish-brown earth, and the massive, still,
depthless, muffling sky, so weirdly blank and blue that day it was almost poisonous. He would remember
them forever, for they were all part and parcel of the most extraordinary event that had ever befallen him, an
event perhaps marvelous, perhaps pathological-the vision of the naked man in the tree. How could he explain
it? It was not already seen or never seen, and certainly not almost seen; neither déjà vu, jamais vu nor
presque vu was elastic enough to cover it. Was it a ghost, then? The dead man's soul? An angel from heaven
or a minion from hell? Or was the whole fantastic episode merely the figment of a diseased imagination, his
own, of a deteriorating mind, a rotting brain? The possibility that there really had been a naked man in the
tree-two men, actually, since the first had been joined shortly by a second man clad in a brown mustache and
sinister dark garments from head to toe who bent forward ritualistically along the limb of the tree to offer the
first man something to drink from a brown goblet-never crossed the chaplain's mind.
The chaplain was sincerely a very helpful person who was never able to help anyone, not even Yossarian
when he finally decided to seize the bull by the horns and visit Major Major secretly to learn if, as Yossarian
had said, the men in Colonel Cathcart's group really were being forced to fly more combat missions than
anyone else. It was a daring, impulsive move on which the chaplain decided after quarreling with Corporal
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Whitcomb again and washing down with tepid canteen water his joyless lunch of Milky Way and Baby Ruth.
He went to Major Major on foot so that Corporal Whitcomb would not see him leaving, stealing into the forest
noiselessly until the two tents in his clearing were left behind, then dropping down inside the abandoned
railroad ditch, where the footing was surer. He hurried along the fossilized wooden ties with accumulating
mutinous anger. He had been browbeaten and humiliated successively that morning by Colonel Cathcart,
Colonel Korn and Corporal Whitcomb. He just had to make himself felt in some respect! His slight chest was
soon puffing for breath. He moved as swiftly as he could without breaking into a run, fearing his resolution
might dissolve if he slowed. Soon he saw a uniformed figure coming toward him between the rusted rails. He
clambered immediately up the side of the ditch, ducked inside a dense copse of low trees for concealment and
sped along in his original direction a narrow, overgrown mossy path he found winding deep inside the shaded
forest. It was tougher going there, but he plunged ahead with the same reckless and consuming determination,
slipping and stumbling often and stinging his unprotected hands on the stubborn branches blocking his way
until the bushes and tall ferns on both sides spread open and he lurched past an olive-drab military trailer on
cinder blocks clearly visible through the thinning underbrush. He continued past a tent with a luminous
pearl-gray cat sunning itself outside and past another trailer on cinder blocks and then burst into the clearing of
Yossarian's squadron. A salty dew had formed on his lips. He did not pause, but strode directly across the
clearing into the orderly room, where he was welcomed by a gaunt, stoop-shouldered staff sergeant with
prominent cheekbones and long, very light blond hair, who informed him graciously that he could go right in,
since Major Major was out.
The chaplain thanked him with a curt nod and proceeded alone down the aisle between the desks and
typewriters to the canvas partition in the rear. He bobbed through the triangular opening and found himself
inside an empty office. The flap fell closed behind him. He was breathing hard and sweating profusely. The
office remained empty. He thought he heard furtive whispering. Ten minutes passed. He looked about in stern
displeasure, his jaws clamped together indomitably, and then turned suddenly to water as he remembered the
staff sergeant's exact words: he could go right in, since Major Major was out. The enlisted men were playing a
practical joke! The chaplain shrank back from the wall in terror, bitter tears springing to his eyes. A pleading
whimper escaped his trembling lips. Major Major was elsewhere, and the enlisted men in the other room had
made him the butt of an inhuman prank. He could almost see them waiting on the other side of the canvas
wall, bunched up expectantly like a pack of greedy, gloating omnivorous beasts of prey, ready with their
barbaric mirth and jeers to pounce on him brutally the moment he reappeared. He cursed himself for his
gullibility and wished in panic for something like a mask or a pair of dark glasses and a false mustache to
disguise him, or for a forceful, deep voice like Colonel Cathcart's and broad, muscular shoulders and biceps to
enable him to step outside fearlessly and vanquish his malevolent persecutors with an overbearing authority
and self-confidence that would make them all quail and slink away cravenly in repentance. He lacked the
courage to face them. The only other way out was the window. The coast was clear, and the chaplain jumped
out of Major Major's office through the window, darted swiftly around the corner of the tent, and leaped down
inside the railroad ditch to hide.
He scooted away with his body doubled over and his face contorted intentionally into a nonchalant,
sociable smile in case anyone chanced to see him. He abandoned the ditch for the forest the moment he saw
someone coming toward him from the opposite direction and ran through the cluttered forest frenziedly like
someone pursued, his cheeks burning with disgrace. He heard loud, wild peals of derisive laughter crashing all
about him and caught blurred glimpses of wicked, beery faces smirking far back inside the bushes and high
overhead in the foliage of the trees. Spasms of scorching pains stabbed through his lungs and slowed him to a
crippled walk. He lunged and staggered onward until he could go no farther and collapsed all at once against a
gnarled apple tree, banging his head hard against the trunk as he toppled forward and holding on with both
arms to keep from falling. His breathing was a rasping, moaning din in his ears. Minutes passed like hours
before he finally recognized himself as the source of the turbulent roar that was overwhelming him. The pains
in his chest abated. Soon he felt strong enough to stand. He cocked his ears craftily. The forest was quiet.
There was no demonic laughter, no one was chasing him. He was too tired and sad and dirty to feel relieved.
He straightened his disheveled clothing with fingers that were numb and shaking and walked the rest of the
way to the clearing with rigid self-control. The chaplain brooded often about the danger of heart attack.
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Corporal Whitcomb's jeep was still parked in the clearing. The chaplain tiptoed stealthily around the back
of Corporal Whitcomb's tent rather than pass the entrance and risk being seen and insulted by him. Heaving a
grateful sigh, he slipped quickly inside his own tent and found Corporal Whitcomb ensconced on his cot, his
knees propped up. Corporal Whitcomb's mud-caked shoes were on the chaplain's blanket, and he was eating
one of the chaplain's candy bars as he thumbed with sneering expression through one of the chaplain's Bibles.
"Where've you been?" he demanded rudely and disinterestedly, without looking up.
The chaplain colored and turned away evasively. "I went for a walk through the woods."
"All right," Corporal Whitcomb snapped. "Don't take me into your confidence. But just wait and see what
happens to my morale." He bit into the chaplain's candy bar hungrily and continued with a full mouth. "You
had a visitor while you were gone. Major Major."
The chaplain spun around with surprise and cried: "Major Major? Major Major was here?"
"That's who we're talking about, isn't it?"
"Where did he go?"
"He jumped down into that railroad ditch and took off like a frightened rabbit." Corporal Whitcomb
snickered. "What a jerk!"
"Did he say what he wanted?"
"He said he needed your help in a matter of great importance."
The chaplain was astounded. "Major Major said that?"
"He didn't say that," Corporal Whitcomb corrected with withering precision. "He wrote it down in a sealed
personal letter he left on your desk."
The chaplain glanced at the bridge table that served as his desk and saw only the abominable orange-red
pear-shaped plum tomato he had obtained that same morning from Colonel Cathcart, still lying on its side
where he had forgotten it like an indestructible and incamadine symbol of his own ineptitude. "Where is the
letter?"
"I threw it away as soon as I tore it open and read it." Corporal Whitcomb slammed the Bible shut and
jumped up. "What's the matter? Won't you take my word for it?" He walked out. He walked right back in and
almost collided with the chaplain, who was rushing out behind him on his way back to Major Major. "You
don't know how to delegate responsibility," Corporal Whitcomb informed him sullenly. "That's another one of
the things that's wrong with you."
The chaplain nodded penitently and hurried past, unable to make himself take the time to apologize. He
could feel the skillful hand of fate motivating him imperatively. Twice that day already, he realized now,
Major Major had come racing toward him inside the ditch; and twice that day the chaplain had stupidly
postponed the destined meeting by bolting into the forest. He seethed with self-recrimination as he hastened
back as rapidly as he could stride along the splintered, irregularly spaced railroad ties. Bits of grit and gravel
inside his shoes and socks were grinding the tops of his toes raw. His pale, laboring face was screwed up
unconsciously into a grimace of acute discomfort. The early August afternoon was growing hotter and more
humid. It was almost a mile from his tent to Yossarian's squadron. The chaplain's summer-tan shirt was
soaking with perspiration by the time he arrived there and rushed breathlessly back inside the orderly room
tent, where he was halted peremptorily by the same treacherous, soft-spoken staff sergeant with round
eyeglasses and gaunt cheeks, who requested him to remain outside because Major Major was inside and told
him he would not be allowed inside until Major Major went out. The chaplain looked at him in an
uncomprehending daze. Why did the sergeant hate him? he wondered. His lips were white and trembling. He
was aching with thirst. What was the matter with people? Wasn't there tragedy enough? The sergeant put his
hand out and held the chaplain steady.
"I'm sorry, sir," he said regretfully in a low, courteous, melancholy voice. "But those are Major Major's
orders. He never wants to see anyone."
"He wants to see me," the chaplain pleaded. "He came to my tent to see me while I was here before."
"Major Major did that?" the sergeant asked.
"Yes, he did. Please go in and ask him."
"I'm afraid I can't go in, sir. He never wants to see me either. Perhaps if you left a note."
"I don't want to leave a note. Doesn't he ever make an exception?"
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"Only in extreme circumstances. The last time he left his tent was to attend the funeral of one of the
enlisted men. The last time he saw anyone in his office was a time he was forced to. A bombardier named
Yossarian forced-"
"Yossarian?" The chaplain lit up with excitement at this new coincidence. Was this another miracle in the
making? "But that's exactly whom I want to speak to him about! Did they talk about the number of missions
Yossarian has to fly?"
"Yes, sir, that's exactly what they did talk about. Captain Yossarian had flown fifty-one missions, and he
appealed to Major Major to ground him so that he wouldn't have to fly four more. Colonel Cathcart wanted
only fifty-five missions then."
"And what did Major Major say?"
"Major Major told him there was nothing he could do."
The chaplain's face fell. "Major Major said that?"
"Yes, sir. In fact, he advised Yossarian to go see you for help. Are you certain you wouldn't like to leave a
note, sir? I have a pencil and paper right here."
The chaplain shook his head, chewing his clotted dry lower lip forlornly, and walked out. It was still so
early in the day, and so much had already happened. The air was cooler in the forest. His throat was parched
and sore. He walked slowly and asked himself ruefully what new misfortune could possibly befall him a
moment before the mad hermit in the woods leaped out at him without warning from behind a mulberry bush.
The chaplain screamed at the top of his voice.
The tall, cadaverous stranger fell back in fright at the chaplain's cry and shrieked, "Don't hurt me!"
"Who are you?" the chaplain shouted.
"Please don't hurt me!" the man shouted back.
"I'm the chaplain!"
"Then why do you want to hurt me?"
"I don't want to hurt you!" the chaplain insisted with a rising hint of exasperation, even though he was still
rooted to the spot. "Just tell me who you are and what you want from me."
"I just want to find out if Chief White Halfoat died of pneumonia yet," the man shouted back. "That's all I
want. I live here. My name is Flume. I belong to the squadron, but I live here in the woods. You can ask
anyone."
The chaplain's composure began trickling back as he studied the queer, cringing figure intently. A pair of
captain's bars ulcerated with rust hung on the man's ragged shirt collar. He had a hairy, tar-black mole on the
underside of one nostril and a heavy rough mustache the color of poplar bark.
"Why do you live in the woods if you belong to the squadron?" the chaplain inquired curiously.
"I have to live in the woods," the captain replied crabbily, as though the chaplain ought to know. He
straightened slowly, still watching the chaplain guardedly although he towered above him by more than a full
head.
"Don't you hear everybody talking about me? Chief White Halfoat swore he was going to cut my throat
some night when I was fast asleep, and I don't dare lie down in the squadron while he's still alive."
The chaplain listened to the implausible explanation distrustfully. "But that's incredible," he replied. "That
would be premeditated murder. Why didn't you report the incident to Major Major?"
"I did report the incident to Major Major," said the captain sadly, "and Major Major said he would cut my
throat if I ever spoke to him again." The man studied the chaplain fearfully. "Are you going to cut my throat,
too?"
"Oh, no, no, no," the chaplain assured him. "Of course not. Do you really live in the forest?"
The captain nodded, and the chaplain gazed at his porous gray pallor of fatigue and malnutrition with a
mixture of pity and esteem. The man's body was a bony shell inside rumpled clothing that hung on him like a
disorderly collection of sacks. Wisps of dried grass were glued all over him; he needed a haircut badly. There
were great, dark circles under his eyes. The chaplain was moved almost to tears by the harassed, bedraggled
picture the captain presented, and he filled with deference and compassion at the thought of the many severe
rigors the poor man had to endure daily. In a voice hushed with humility, he said,
"Who does your laundry?"
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The captain pursed his lips in a businesslike manner. "I have it done by a washerwoman in one of the
farmhouses down the road. I keep my things in my trailer and sneak inside once or twice a day for a clean
handkerchief or a change of underwear."
"What will you do when winter comes?"
"Oh, I expect to be back in the squadron by then," the captain answered with a kind of martyred
confidence. "Chief White Halfoat kept promising everyone that he was going to die of pneumonia, and I guess
I'll have to be patient until the weather turns a little colder and damper." He scrutinized the chaplain
perplexedly. "Don't you know all this? Don't you hear all the fellows talking about me?"
"I don't think I've ever heard anyone mention you."
"Well, I certainly can't understand that." The captain was piqued, but managed to carry on with a pretense
of optimism. "Well, here it is almost September already, so I guess it won't be too long now. The next time
any of the boys ask about me, why, just tell them I'll be back grinding out those old publicity releases again as
soon as Chief White Halfoat dies of pneumonia. Will you tell them that? Say I'll be back in the squadron as
soon as winter comes and Chief Halfoat dies of pneumonia. Okay?"
The chaplain memorized the prophetic words solemnly, entranced further by their esoteric import. "Do you
live on berries, herbs and roots?" he asked.
"No, of course not," the captain replied with surprise. "I sneak into the mess hall through the back and eat
in the kitchen. Milo gives me sandwiches and milk."
"What do you do when it rains?"
The captain answered frankly. "I get wet."
"Where do you sleep?"
Swiftly the captain ducked down into a crouch and began backing away. "You too?" he cried frantically.
"Oh, no," cried the chaplain. "I swear to you."
"You do want to cut my throat!" the captain insisted.
"I give my word," the chaplain pleaded, but it was too late, for the homely hirsute specter had already
vanished, dissolving so expertly inside the blooming, dappled, fragmented malformations of leaves, light and
shadows that the chaplain was already doubting that he had even been there. So many monstrous events were
occurring that he was no longer positive which events were monstrous and which were really taking place. He
wanted to find out about the madman in the woods as quickly as possible, to check if there ever really had
been a Captain Flume, but his first chore, he recalled with reluctance, was to appease Corporal Whitcomb for
neglecting to delegate enough responsibility to him. He plodded along the zigzagging path through the forest
listlessly, clogged with thirst and feeling almost too exhausted to go on. He was remorseful when he thought
of Corporal Whitcomb. He prayed that Corporal Whitcomb would be gone when he reached the clearing so
that he could undress without embarrassment, wash his arms and chest and shoulders thoroughly, drink water,
lie down refreshed and perhaps even sleep for a few minutes; but he was in for still another disappointment
and still another shock, for Corporal Whitcomb was Sergeant Whitcomb by the time he arrived and was sitting
with his shirt off in the chaplain's chair sewing his new sergeant's stripes on his sleeve with the chaplain's
needle and thread. Corporal Whitcomb had been promoted by Colonel Cathcart, who wanted to see the
chaplain at once about the letters.
"Oh, no," groaned the chaplain, sinking down dumbfounded on his cot. His warm canteen was empty, and
he was too distraught to remember the lister bag hanging outside in the shade between the two tents. "I can't
believe it. I just can't believe that anyone would seriously believe that I've been forging Washington Irving's
name."
"Not those letters," Corporal Whitcomb corrected, plainly enjoying the chaplain's chagrin. "He wants to see
you about the letters home to the families of casualties."
"Those letters?" asked the chaplain with surprise.
"That's right," Corporal Whitcomb gloated. "He's really going to chew you out for refusing to let me send
them. You should have seen him go for the idea once I reminded him the letters could carry his signature.
That's why he promoted me. He's absolutely sure they'll get him into The Saturday Evening Post."
The chaplain's befuddlement increased. "But how did he know we were even considering the idea?"
"I went to his office and told him."
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"You did what?" the chaplain demanded shrilly, and charged to his feet in an unfamiliar rage. "Do you
mean to say that you actually went over my head to the colonel without asking my permission?"
Corporal Whitcomb grinned brazenly with scornful satisfaction. "That's right, Chaplain," he answered.
"And you better not try to do anything about it if you know what's good for you." He laughed quietly in
malicious defiance. "Colonel Cathcart isn't going to like it if he finds out you're getting even with me for
bringing him my idea. You know something, Chaplain?" Corporal Whitcomb continued, biting the chaplain's
black thread apart contemptuously with a loud snap and buttoning on his shirt. "That dumb bastard really
thinks it's one of the greatest ideas he's ever heard."
"It might even get me into The Saturday Evening Post," Colonel Cathcart boasted in his office with a smile,
swaggering back and forth convivially as he reproached the chaplain. "And you didn't have brains enough to
appreciate it. You've got a good man in Corporal Whitcomb, Chaplain. I hope you have brains enough to
appreciate that."
"Sergeant Whitcomb," the chaplain corrected, before he could control himself.
Colonel Cathcart Oared. "I said Sergeant Whitcomb," he replied. "I wish you'd try listening once in a while
instead of always finding fault. You don't want to be a captain all your life, do you?"
"Sir?"
"Well, I certainly don't see how you're ever going to amount to anything else if you keep on this way.
Corporal Whitcomb feels that you fellows haven't had a fresh idea in nineteen hundred and forty-four years,
and I'm inclined to agree with him. A bright boy, that Corporal Whitcomb. Well, it's all going to change."
Colonel Cathcart sat down at his desk with a determined air and cleared a large neat space in his blotter. When
he had finished, he tapped his finger inside it. "Starting tomorrow," he said, "I want you and Corporal
Whitcomb to write a letter of condolence for me to the next of kin of every man in the group who's killed,
wounded or taken prisoner. I want those letters to be sincere letters. I want them filled up with lots of personal
details so there'll be no doubt I mean every word you say. Is that clear?"
The chaplain stepped forward impulsively to remonstrate. "But, sir, that's impossible!" he blurted out. "We
don't even know all the men that well."
"What difference does that make?" Colonel Cathcart demanded, and then smiled amicably. "Corporal
Whitcomb brought me this basic form letter that takes care of just about every situation. Listen: 'Dear Mrs.,
Mr., Miss, or Mr. and Mrs.: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband,
son, father or brother was killed, wounded or reported missing in action.' And so on. I think that opening
sentence sums up my sentiments exactly. Listen, maybe you'd better let Corporal Whitcomb take charge of the
whole thing if you don't feel up to it." Colonel Cathcart whipped out his cigarette holder and flexed it between
both hands like an onyx and ivory riding crop. "That's one of the things that's wrong with you, Chaplain.
Corporal Whitcomb tells me you don't know how to delegate responsibility. He says you've got no initiative
either. You're not going to disagree with me, are you?"
"No, sir." The chaplain shook his head, feeling despicably remiss because he did not know how to delegate
responsibility and had no initiative, and because he really had been tempted to disagree with the colonel. His
mind was a shambles. They were shooting skeet outside, and every time a gun was fired his senses were
jarred. He could not adjust to the sound of the shots. He was surrounded by bushels of plum tomatoes and was
almost convinced that he had stood in Colonel Cathcart's office on some similar occasion deep in the past and
had been surrounded by those same bushels of those same plum tomatoes. Déjà vu again. The setting
seemed so familiar; yet it also seemed so distant. His clothes felt grimy and old, and he was deathly afraid he
smelled.
"You take things too seriously, Chaplain," Colonel Cathcart told him bluntly with an air of adult
objectivity. "That's another one of the things that's wrong with you. That long face of yours gets everybody
depressed. Let me see you laugh once in a while. Come on, Chaplain. You give me a belly laugh now and I'll
give you a whole bushel of plum tomatoes." He waited a second or two, watching, and then chortled
victoriously. "You see, Chaplain, I'm right. You can't give me a belly laugh, can you?"
"No, sir," admitted the chaplain meekly, swallowing slowly with a visible effort. "Not right now. I'm very
thirsty."
"Then get yourself a drink. Colonel Korn keeps some bourbon in his desk. You ought to try dropping
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around the officers' club with us some evening just to have yourself a little fun. Try getting lit once in a while.
I hope you don't feel you're better than the rest of us just because you're a professional man."
"Oh, no, sir," the chaplain assured him with embarrassment. "As a matter of fact, I have been going to the
officers' club the past few evenings."
"You're only a captain, you know," Colonel Cathcart continued, paying no attention to the chaplain's
remark. "You may be a professional man, but you're still only a captain."
"Yes, sir. I know."
"That's fine, then. It's just as well you didn't laugh before. I wouldn't have given you the plum tomatoes
anyway. Corporal Whitcomb tells me you took a plum tomato when you were in here this morning."
"This morning? But, sir! You gave it to me."
Colonel Cathcart cocked his head with suspicion. "I didn't say I didn't give it to you, did I? I merely said
you took it. I don't see why you've got such a guilty conscience if you really didn't steal it. Did I give it to
you?"
"Yes, sir. I swear you did."
"Then I'll just have to take your word for it. Although I can't imagine why I'd want to give you a plum
tomato." Colonel Cathcart transferred a round glass paperweight competently from the right edge of his desk
to the left edge and picked up a sharpened pencil. "Okay. Chaplain, I've got a lot of important work to do now
if you're through. You let me know when Corporal Whitcomb has sent out about a dozen of those letters and
we'll get in touch with the editors of The Saturday Evening Post." A sudden inspiration made his face
brighten. "Say! I think I'll volunteer the group for Avignon again. That should speed things up!"
"For Avignon?" The chaplain's heart missed a beat, and all his flesh began to prickle and creep.
"That's right," the colonel explained exuberantly. "The sooner we get some casualties, the sooner we can
make some progress on this. I'd like to get in the Christmas issue if we can. I imagine the circulation is higher
then."
And to the chaplain's horror, the colonel lifted the phone to volunteer the group for Avignon and tried to
kick him out of the officers' club again that very same night a moment before Yossarian rose up drunkenly,
knocking over his chair, to start an avenging punch that made Nately call out his name and made Colonel
Cathcart blanch and retreat prudently smack into General Dreedle, who shoved him off his bruised foot
disgustedly and order him forward to kick the chaplain right back into the officers' club. It was all very
upsetting to Colonel Cathcart, first the dreaded name Yossarian! tolling out again clearly like a warning of
doom and then General Dreedle's bruised foot, and that was another fault Colonel Cathcart found in the
chaplain, the fact that it was impossible to predict how General Dreedle would react each time he saw him.
Colonel Cathcart would never forget the first evening General Dreedle took notice of the chaplain in the
officers' club, lifting his ruddy, sweltering, intoxicated face to stare ponderously through the yellow pall of
cigarette smoke at the chaplain lurking near the wall by himself.
"Well, I'll be damned," General Dreedle had exclaimed hoarsely, his shaggy gray menacing eyebrows
beetling in recognition. "Is that a chaplain I see over there? That's really a fine thing when a man of God
begins hanging around a place like this with a bunch of dirty drunks and gamblers."
Colonel Cathcart compressed his lips primly and started to rise. "I couldn't agree with you more, sir," he
assented briskly in a tone of ostentatious disapproval. "I just don't know what's happening to the clergy these
days."
"They're getting better, that's what's happening to them," General Dreedle growled emphatically.
Colonel Cathcart gulped awkwardly and made a nimble recovery. "Yes, sir. They are getting better. That's
exactly what I had in mind, sir."
"This is just the place for a chaplain to be, mingling with the men while they're out drinking and gambling
so he can get to understand them and win their confidence. How the hell else is he ever going to get them to
believe in God?"
"That's exactly what I had in mind, sir, when I ordered him to come here," Colonel Cathcart said carefully,
and threw his arm familiarly around the chaplain's shoulders as he walked him off into a corner to order him in
a cold undertone to start reporting for duty at the officers' club every evening to mingle with the men while
they were drinking and gambling so that he could get to understand them and win their confidence.
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The chaplain agreed and did report for duty to the officers' club every night to mingle with men who
wanted to avoid him, until the evening the vicious fist fight broke out at the ping-pong table and Chief White
Halfoat whirled without provocation and punched Colonel Moodus squarely in the nose, knocking Colonel
Moodus down on the seat of his pants and making General Dreedle roar with lusty, unexpected laughter until
he spied the chaplain standing close by gawking at him grotesquely in tortured wonder. General Dreedle froze
at the sight of him. He glowered at the chaplain with swollen fury for a moment, his good humor gone, and
turned back toward the bar disgruntedly, rolling from side to side like a sailor on his short bandy legs. Colonel
Cathcart cantered fearfully along behind, glancing anxiously about in vain for some sign of help from Colonel
Korn.
"That's a fine thing," General Dreedle growled at the bar, gripping his empty shot glass in his burly hand.
"That's really a fine thing, when a man of God begins hanging around a place like this with a bunch of dirty
drunks and gamblers."
Colonel Cathcart sighed with relief. "Yes, sir," he exclaimed proudly. "It certainly is a fine thing."
"Then why the hell don't you do something about it?"
"Sir?" Colonel Cathcart inquired, blinking.
"Do you think it does you credit to have your chaplain hanging around here every night? He's in here every
goddam time I come."
"You're right, sir, absolutely right," Colonel Cathcart responded. "It does me no credit at all. And I am
going to do something about it, this very minute."
"Aren't you the one who ordered him to come here?"
"No, sir, that was Colonel Korn. I intend to punish him severely, too."
"If he wasn't a chaplain," General Dreedle muttered, "I'd have him taken outside and shot."
"He's not a chaplain, sir." Colonel Cathcart advised helpfully.
"Isn't he? Then why the hell does he wear that cross on his collar if he's not a chaplain?"
"He doesn't wear a cross on his collar, sir. He wears a silver leaf. He's a lieutenant colonel."
"You've got a chaplain who's a lieutenant colonel?" inquired General Dreedle with amazement.
"Oh, no, sir. My chaplain is only a captain."
"Then why the hell does he wear a silver leaf on his collar if he's only a captain?"
"He doesn't wear a silver leaf on his collar, sir. He wears a cross."
"Go away from me now, you son of a bitch," said General Dreedle. "Or I'll have you taken outside and
shot!"
"Yes, sir."
Colonel Cathcart went away from General Dreedle with a gulp and kicked the chaplain out of the officers'
club, and it was exactly the way it almost was two months later after the chaplain had tried to persuade
Colonel Cathcart to rescind his order increasing the number of missions to sixty and had failed abysmally in
that endeavor too, and the chaplain was ready now to capitulate to despair entirely but was restrained by the
memory of his wife, whom he loved and missed so pathetically with such sensual and exalted ardor, and by
the lifelong trust he had placed in the wisdom and justice of an immortal, omnipotent, omniscient, humane,
universal, anthropomorphic, English-speaking, Anglo-Saxon, pro-American God, which had begun to waver.
So many things were testing his faith. There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were
Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it then seem probable, as he
had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to the riddles of creation would be supplied by people too
ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been
afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven? Where the devil was
heaven? Was it up? Down? There was no up or down in a finite but expanding universe in which even the
vast, burning, dazzling, majestic sun was in a state of progressive decay that would eventually destroy the
earth too. There were no miracles; prayers went unanswered, and misfortune tramped with equal brutality on
the virtuous and the corrupt; and the chaplain, who had conscience and character, would have yielded to
reason and relinquished his belief in the God of his fathers-would truly have resigned both his calling and his
commission and taken his chances as a private in the infantry or field artillery, or even, perhaps, as a corporal
in the paratroopers-had it not been for such successive mystic phenomena as the naked man in the tree at that
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poor sergeant's funeral weeks before and the cryptic, haunting, encouraging promise of the prophet Flume in
the forest only that afternoon: "Tell them I'll be back when winter comes."
26 AARFY
In a way it was all Yossarian's fault, for if he had not moved the bomb line during the Big Siege of
Bologna, Major --- de Coverley might still be around to save him, and if he had not stocked the enlisted men's
apartment with girls who had no other place to live, Nately might never have fallen in love with his whore as
she sat naked from the waist down in the room full of grumpy blackjack players who ignored her. Nately
stared at her covertly from his over-stuffed yellow armchair, marveling at the bored, phlegmatic strength with
which she accepted the mass rejection. She yawned, and he was deeply moved. He had never witnessed such
heroic poise before.
The girl had climbed five steep flights of stairs to sell herself to the group of satiated enlisted men, who had
girls living there all around them; none wanted her at any price, not even after she had stripped without real
enthusiasm to tempt them with a tall body that was firm and full and truly voluptuous. She seemed more
fatigued than disappointed. Now she sat resting in vacuous indolence, watching the card game with dull
curiosity as she gathered her recalcitrant energies for the tedious chore of donning the rest of her clothing and
going back to work. In a little while she stirred. A little while later she rose with an unconscious sigh and
stepped lethargically into her tight cotton panties and dark skirt, then buckled on her shoes and left. Nately
slipped out behind her; and when Yossarian and Aarfy entered the officers' apartment almost two hours later,
there she was again, stepping into her panties and skirt, and it was almost like the chaplain's recurring
sensation of having been through a situation before, except for Nately, who was moping inconsolably with his
hands in his pockets.
"She wants to go now," he said in a faint, strange voice. "She doesn't want to stay."
"Why don't you just pay her some money to let you spend the rest of the day with her?" Yossarian advised.
"She gave me my money back," Nately admitted. "She's tired of me now and wants to go looking for
someone else."
The girl paused when her shoes were on to glance in surly invitation at Yossarian and Aarfy. Her breasts
were pointy and large in the thin white sleeveless sweater she wore that squeezed each contour and flowed
outward smoothly with the tops of her enticing hips. Yossarian returned her gaze and was strongly attracted.
He shook his head.
"Good riddance to bad rubbish," was Aarfy's unperturbed response.
"Don't say that about her!" Nately protested with passion that was both a plea and a rebuke. "I want her to
stay with me."
"What's so special about her?" Aarfy sneered with mock surprise. "She's only a whore."
"And don't call her a whore!"
The girl shrugged impassively after a few more seconds and ambled toward the door. Nately bounded
forward wretchedly to hold it open. He wandered back in a heartbroken daze, his sensitive face eloquent with
grief.
"Don't worry about it," Yossarian counseled him as kindly as he could. "You'll probably be able to find her
again. We know where all the whores hang out."
"Please don't call her that," Nately begged, looking as though he might cry.
"I'm sorry," murmured Yossarian.
Aarfy thundered jovially, "There are hundreds of whores just as good crawling all over the streets. That one
wasn't even pretty." He chuckled mellifluously with resonant disdain and authority. "Why, you rushed forward
to open that door as though you were in love with her."
"I think I am in love with her," Nately confessed in a shamed, far-off voice.
Aarfy wrinkled his chubby round rosy forehead in comic disbelief. "Ho, ho, ho, ho!" he laughed, patting
the expansive forest-green sides of his officer's tunic prosperously. "That's rich. You in love with her? That's
really rich." Aarfy had a date that same afternoon with a Red Cross girl from Smith whose father owned an
important milk-of-magnesia plant. "Now, that's the kind of girl you ought to be associating with, and not with
common sluts like that one. Why, she didn't even look clean."
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"I don't care!" Nately shouted desperately. "And I wish you'd shut up, I don't even want to talk about it with
you."
"Aarfy, shut up," said Yossarian.
"Ho, ho, ho, ho!" Aarfy continued. "I just can't imagine what your father and mother would say if they
knew you were running around with filthy trollops like that one. Your father is a very distinguished man, you
know."
"I'm not going to tell him," Nately declared with determination. "I'm not going to say a word about her to
him or Mother until after we're married."
"Married?" Aarfy's indulgent merriment swelled tremendously. "Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho! Now you're really
talking stupid. Why, you're not even old enough to know what true love is."
Aarfy was an authority on the subject of true love because he had already fallen truly in love with Nately's
father and with the prospect of working for him after the war in some executive capacity as a reward for
befriending Nately. Aarfy was a lead navigator who had never been able to find himself since leaving college.
He was a genial, magnanimous lead navigator who could always forgive the other man in the squadron for
denouncing him furiously each time he got lost on a combat mission and led them over concentrations of
antiaircraft fire. He got lost on the streets of Rome that same afternoon and never did find the eligible Red
Cross girl from Smith with the important milk-of-magnesia plant. He got lost on the mission to Ferrara the day
Kraft was shot down and killed, and he got lost again on the weekly milk run to Parma and tried to lead the
planes out to sea over the city of Leghorn after Yossarian had dropped his bombs on the undefended inland
target and settled back against his thick wall of armor plate with his eyes closed and a fragrant cigarette in his
fingertips. Suddenly there was flak, and all at once McWatt was shrieking over the intercom, "Flak! Flak!
Where the hell are we? What the hell's going on?"
Yossarian flipped his eyes open in alarm and saw the totally unexpected bulging black puffs of flak
crashing down in toward them from high up and Aarfy's complacent melon-round tiny-eyed face gazing out at
the approaching cannon bursts with affable bemusement. Yossarian was flabbergasted. His leg went abruptly
to sleep. McWatt had started to climb and was yelping over the intercom for instructions. Yossarian sprang
forward to see where they were and remained in the same place. He was unable to move. Then he realized he
was sopping wet. He looked down at his crotch with a sinking, sick sensation. A wild crimson blot was
crawling upward rapidly along his shirt front like an enormous sea monster rising to devour him. He was hit!
Separate trickles of blood spilled to a puddle on the floor through one saturated trouser leg like countless
unstoppable swarms of wriggling red worms. His heart stopped. A second solid jolt struck the plane.
Yossarian shuddered with revulsion at the queer sight of his wound and screamed at Aarfy for help.
"I lost my balls! Aarfy, I lost my balls!" Aarfy didn't hear, and Yossarian bent forward and tugged at his
arm. "Aarfy, help me," he pleaded, almost weeping, "I'm hit! I'm hit!"
Aarfy turned slowly with a bland, quizzical grin. "What?"
"I'm hit, Aarfy! Help me!"
Aarfy grinned again and shrugged amiably. "I can't hear you," he said.
"Can't you see me?" Yossarian cried incredulously, and he pointed to the deepening pool of blood he felt
splashing down all around him and spreading out underneath. "I'm wounded! Help me, for God's sake! Aarfy,
help me!"
"I still can't hear you," Aarfy complained tolerantly, cupping his podgy hand behind the blanched corolla of
his ear. "What did you say?"
Yossarian answered in a collapsing voice, weary suddenly of shouting so much, of the whole frustrating,
exasperating, ridiculous situation. He was dying, and no one took notice. "Never mind."
"What?" Aarfy shouted.
"I said I lost my balls! Can't you hear me? I'm wounded in the groin!"
"I still can't hear you," Aarfy chided.
"I said never mind!" Yossarian screamed with a trapped feeling of terror and began to shiver, feeling very
cold suddenly and very weak.
Aarfy shook his head regretfully again and lowered his obscene, lactescent ear almost directly into
Yossarian's face. "You'll just have to speak up, my friend. You'll just have to speak up."
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"Leave me alone, you bastard! You dumb, insensitive bastard, leave me alone!" Yossarian sobbed. He
wanted to pummel Aarfy, but lacked the strength to lift his arms. He decided to sleep instead and keeled over
sideways into a dead faint.
He was wounded in the thigh, and when he recovered consciousness he found McWatt on both knees
taking care of him. He was relieved, even though he still saw Aarfy's bloated cherub's face hanging down over
McWatt's shoulder with placid interest. Yossarian smiled feebly at McWatt, feeling ill, and asked, "Who's
minding the store?" McWatt gave no sign that he heard. With growing horror, Yossarian gathered in breath
and repeated the words as loudly as he could.
McWatt looked up. "Christ, I'm glad you're still alive!" he exclaimed, heaving an enormous sigh. The
good-humored, friendly crinkles about his eyes were white with tension and oily with grime as he kept
unrolling an interminable bandage around the bulky cotton compress Yossarian felt strapped burdensomely to
the inside of one thigh. "Nately's at the controls. The poor kid almost started bawling when he heard you were
hit. He still thinks you're dead. They knocked open an artery for you, but I think I've got it stopped. I gave you
some morphine."
"Give me some more."
"It might be too soon. I'll give you some more when it starts to hurt."
"It hurts now."
"Oh, well, what the hell," said McWatt and injected another syrette of morphine into Yossarian's arm.
"When you tell Nately I'm all right..." said Yossarian to McWatt, and lost consciousness again as
everything went fuzzy behind a film of strawberry-strained gelatin and a great baritone buzz swallowed him in
sound. He came to in the ambulance and smiled encouragement at Doc Daneeka's weevil-like, glum and
overshadowed countenance for the dizzy second or two he had before everything went rose-petal pink again
and then turned really black and unfathomably still.
Yossarian woke up in the hospital and went to sleep. When he woke up in the hospital again, the smell of
ether was gone and Dunbar was lying in pajamas in the bed across the aisle maintaining that he was not
Dunbar but a fortiori. Yossarian thought he was cracked. He curled his lip skeptically at Dunbar's bit of news
and slept on it fitfully for a day or two, then woke up while the nurses were elsewhere and eased himself out of
bed to see for himself. The floor swayed like the floating raft at the beach and the stitches on the inside of his
thigh bit into his flesh like fine sets of fish teeth as he limped across the aisle to peruse the name on the
temperature card on the foot of Dunbar's bed, but sure enough, Dunbar was right: he was not Dunbar any more
but Second Lieutenant Anthony F. Fortiori.
"What the hell's going on?"
A. Fortiori got out of bed and motioned to Yossarian to follow. Grasping for support at anything he could
reach, Yossarian limped along after him into the corridor and down the adjacent ward to a bed containing a
harried young man with pimples and a receding chin. The harried young man rose on one elbow with alacrity
as they approached. A. Fortiori jerked his thumb over his shoulder and said, "Screw." The harried young man
jumped out of bed and ran away. A. Fortiori climbed into the bed and became Dunbar again.
"That was A. Fortiori," Dunbar explained. "They didn't have an empty bed in your ward, so I pulled my
rank and chased him back here into mine. It's a pretty satisfying experience pulling rank. You ought to try it
sometime. You ought to try it right now, in fact, because you look like you're going to fall down."
Yossarian felt like he was going to fall down. He turned to the lantern jawed, leather-faced middle-aged
man lying in the bed next to Dunbar's, jerked his thumb over his shoulder and said "Screw." The middle-aged
man stiffened fiercely and glared.
"He's a major," Dunbar explained. "Why don't you aim a little lower and try becoming Warrant Officer
Homer Lumley for a while? Then you can have a father in the state legislature and a sister who's engaged to a
champion skier. Just tell him you're a captain."
Yossarian turned to the startled patient Dunbar had indicated. "I'm a captain," he said, jerking his thumb
over his shoulder. "Screw."
The startled patient jumped down to the floor at Yossarian's command and ran away. Yossarian climbed up
into his bed and became Warrant Officer Homer Lumley, who felt like vomiting and was covered suddenly
with a clammy sweat. He slept for an hour and wanted to be Yossarian again. It did not mean so much to have
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a father in the state legislature and a sister who was engaged to a champion skier. Dunbar led the way back to
Yossarian's ward, where he thumbed A. Fortiori out of bed to become Dunbar again for a while. There was no
sign of Warrant Officer Homer Lumley. Nurse Cramer was there, though, and sizzled with sanctimonious
anger like a damp firecracker. She ordered Yossarian to get right back into his bed and blocked his path so he
couldn't comply. Her pretty face was more repulsive than ever. Nurse Cramer was a good-hearted, sentimental
creature who rejoiced unselfishly at news of weddings, engagements, births and anniversaries even though she
was unacquainted with any of the people involved.
"Are you crazy?" she scolded virtuously, shaking an indignant finger in front of his eyes. "I suppose you
just don't care if you kill yourself, do you?"
"It's my self," he reminded her.
"I suppose you just don't care if you lose your leg, do you?"
"It's my leg."
"It certainly is not your leg!" Nurse Cramer retorted. "That leg belongs to the U. S. government. It's no
different than a gear or a bedpan. The Army has invested a lot of money to make you an airplane pilot, and
you've no right to disobey the doctor's orders."
Yossarian was not sure he liked being invested in. Nurse Cramer was still standing directly in front of him
so that he could not pass. His head was aching. Nurse Cramer shouted at him some question he could not
understand. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder and said, "Screw."
Nurse Cramer cracked him in the face so hard she almost knocked him down. Yossarian drew back his fist
to punch her in the jaw just as his leg buckled and he began to fall. Nurse Duckett strode up in time to catch
him. She addressed them both firmly.
"Just what's going on here?"
"He won't get back into his bed," Nurse Cramer reported zealously in an injured tone. "Sue Ann, he said
something absolutely horrible to me. Oh, I can't even make myself repeat it!"
"She called me a gear," Yossarian muttered.
Nurse Duckett was not sympathetic. "Will you get back into bed," she said, "or must I take you by your ear
and put you there?"
"Take me by my ear and put me there," Yossarian dared her.
Nurse Duckett took him by his ear and put him back in bed.
27 NURSE DUCKETT
Nurse Sue Ann Duckett was a tall, spare, mature, straight-backed woman with a prominent, well-rounded
ass, small breasts and angular ascetic New England features that came equally close to being very lovely and
very plain. Her skin was white and pink, her eyes small, her nose and chin slender and sharp. She was able,
prompt, strict and intelligent. She welcomed responsibility and kept her head in every crisis. She was adult and
self-reliant, and there was nothing she needed from anyone. Yossarian took pity and decided to help her.
Next morning while she was standing bent over smoothing the sheets at the foot of his bed, he slipped his
hand stealthily into the narrow space between her knees and, all at once, brought it up swiftly under her dress
as far as it would go. Nurse Duckett shrieked and jumped into the air a mile, but it wasn't high enough, and she
squirmed and vaulted and seesawed back and forth on her divine fulcrum for almost a full fifteen seconds
before she wiggled free finally and retreated frantically into the aisle with an ashen, trembling face. She
backed away too far, and Dunbar, who had watched from the beginning, sprang forward on his bed without
warning and flung both arms around her bosom from behind. Nurse Duckett let out another scream and
twisted away, fleeing far enough from Dunbar for Yossarian to lunge forward and grab her by the snatch
again. Nurse Duckett bounced out across the aisle once more like a ping-pong ball with legs. Dunbar was
waiting vigilantly, ready to pounce. She remembered him just in time and leaped aside. Dunbar missed
completely and sailed by her over the bed to the floor, landing on his skull with a soggy, crunching thud that
knocked him cold.
He woke up on the floor with a bleeding nose and exactly the same distressful head symptoms he had been
feigning all along. The ward was in a chaotic uproar. Nurse Duckett was in tears, and Yossarian was consoling
her apologetically as he sat beside her on the edge of a bed. The commanding colonel was wroth and shouting
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at Yossarian that he would not permit his patients to take indecent liberties with his nurses.
"What do you want from him?" Dunbar asked plaintively from the floor, wincing at the vibrating pains in
his temples that his voice set up. "He didn't do anything."
"I'm talking about you!" the thin, dignified colonel bellowed as loudly as he could. "You're going to be
punished for what you did."
"What do you want from him?" Yossarian called out. "All he did was fall on his head."
"And I'm talking about you too!" the colonel declared, whirling to rage at Yossarian. "You're going to be
good and sorry you grabbed Nurse Duckett by the bosom."
"I didn't grab Nurse Duckett by the bosom," said Yossarian.
"I grabbed her by the bosom," said Dunbar.
"Are you both crazy?" the doctor cried shrilly, backing away in paling confusion.
"Yes, he really is crazy, Doc," Dunbar assured him. "Every night he dreams he's holding a live fish in his
hands."
The doctor stopped in his tracks with a look of elegant amazement and distaste, and the ward grew still.
"He does what?" he demanded.
"He dreams he's holding a live fish in his hand."
"What kind of fish?" the doctor inquired sternly of Yossarian.
"I don't know," Yossarian answered. "I can't tell one kind of fish from another."
"In which hand do you hold them?"
"It varies," answered Yossarian.
"It varies with the fish," Dunbar added helpfully.
The colonel turned and stared down at Dunbar suspiciously with a narrow squint. "Yes? And how come
you seem to know so much about it?"
"I'm in the dream," Dunbar answered without cracking a smile.
The colonel's face flushed with embarrassment. He glared at them both with cold, unforgiving resentment.
"Get up off the floor and into your bed," he directed Dunbar through thin lips. "And I don't want to hear
another word about this dream from either one of you. I've got a man on my staff to listen to disgusting bilge
like this."
"Just why do you think," carefully inquired Major Sanderson, the soft and thickset smiling staff psychiatrist
to whom the colonel had ordered Yossarian sent, "that Colonel Ferredge finds your dream disgusting?"
Yossarian replied respectfully. "I suppose it's either some quality in the dream or some quality in Colonel
Ferredge."
"That's very well put," applauded Major Sanderson, who wore squeaking GI shoes and had charcoal-black
hair that stood up almost straight. "For some reason," he confided, "Colonel Ferredge has always reminded me
of a sea gull. He doesn't put much faith in psychiatry, you know."
"You don't like sea gulls, do you?" inquired Yossarian.
"No, not very much," admitted Major Sanderson with a sharp, nervous laugh and pulled at his pendulous
second chin lovingly as though it were a long goatee. "I think your dream is charming, and I hope it recurs
frequently so that we can continue discussing it. Would you like a cigarette?" He smiled when Yossarian
declined. "Just why do you think," he asked knowingly, "that you have such a strong aversion to accepting a
cigarette from me?"
"I put one out a second ago. It's still smoldering in your ash tray."
Major Sanderson chuckled. "That's a very ingenious explanation. But I suppose we'll soon discover the true
reason." He tied a sloppy double bow in his opened shoelace and then transferred a lined yellow pad from his
desk to his lap. "This fish you dream about. Let's talk about that. It's always the same fish, isn't it?"
"I don't know," Yossarian replied. "I have trouble recognizing fish."
"What does the fish remind you of?"
"Other fish."
"And what do other fish remind you of?"
"Other fish."
Major Sanderson sat back disappointedly. "Do you like fish?"
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"Not especially."
"Just why do you think you have such a morbid aversion to fish?" asked Major Sanderson triumphantly.
"They're too bland," Yossarian answered. "And too bony."
Major Sanderson nodded understandingly, with a smile that was agreeable and insincere. "That's a very
interesting explanation. But we'll soon discover the true reason, I suppose. Do you like this particular fish?
The one you're holding in your hand?"
"I have no feelings about it either way."
"Do you dislike the fish? Do you have any hostile or aggressive emotions toward it?"
"No, not at all. In fact, I rather like the fish."
"Then you do like the fish."
"Oh, no. I have no feelings toward it either way."
"But you just said you liked it. And now you say you have no feelings toward it either way. I've just caught
you in a contradiction. Don't you see?"
"Yes, sir. I suppose you have caught me in a contradiction."
Major Sanderson proudly lettered "Contradiction" on his pad with his thick black pencil. "Just why do you
think," he resumed when he had finished, looking up, "that you made those two statements expressing
contradictory emotional responses to the fish?"
"I suppose I have an ambivalent attitude toward it."
Major Sanderson sprang up with joy when he heard the words "ambivalent attitude". "You do understand!"
he exclaimed, wringing his hands together ecstatically. "Oh, you can't imagine how lonely it's been for me,
talking day after day to patients who haven't the slightest knowledge of psychiatry, trying to cure people who
have no real interest in me or my work! It's given me such a terrible feeling of inadequacy." A shadow of
anxiety crossed his face. "I can't seem to shake it."
"Really?" asked Yossarian, wondering what else to say. "Why do you blame yourself for gaps in the
education of others?"
"It's silly, I know," Major Sanderson replied uneasily with a giddy, involuntary laugh. "But I've always
depended very heavily on the good opinion of others. I reached puberty a bit later than all the other boys my
age, you see, and it's given me sort of-well, all sorts of problems. I just know I'm going to enjoy discussing
them with you. I'm so eager to begin that I'm almost reluctant to digress now to your problem, but I'm afraid I
must. Colonel Ferredge would be cross if he knew we were spending all our time on me. I'd like to show you
some ink blots now to find out what certain shapes and colors remind you of."
"You can save yourself the trouble, Doctor. Everything reminds me of sex."
"Does it?" cried Major Sanderson with delight, as though unable to believe his ears. "Now we're really
getting somewhere! Do you ever have any good sex dreams?"
"My fish dream is a sex dream."
"No, I mean real sex dreams-the kind where you grab some naked bitch by the neck and pinch her and
punch her in the face until she's all bloody and then throw yourself down to ravish her and burst into tears
because you love her and hate her so much you don't know what else to do. That's the kind of sex dreams I like
to talk about. Don't you ever have sex dreams like that?"
Yossarian reflected a moment with a wise look. "That's a fish dream," he decided.
Major Sanderson recoiled as though he had been slapped. "Yes, of course," he conceded frigidly, his
manner changing to one of edgy and defensive antagonism. "But I'd like you to dream one like that anyway
just to see how you react. That will be all for today. In the meantime, I'd also like you to dream up the answers
to some of those questions I asked you. These sessions are no more pleasant for me than they are for you, you
know."
"I'll mention it to Dunbar," Yossarian replied.
"Dunbar?"
"He's the one who started it all. It's his dream."
"Oh, Dunbar." Major Sanderson sneered, his confidence returning. "I'll bet Dunbar is that evil fellow who
really does all those nasty things you're always being blamed for, isn't he?"
"He's not so evil."
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And yet you'll defend him to the very death, won't you?"
"Not that far."
Major Sanderson smiled tauntingly and wrote "Dunbar" on his pad. "Why are you limping?" he asked
sharply, as Yossarian moved to the door. "And what the devil is that bandage doing on your leg? Are you mad
or something?"
"I was wounded in the leg. That's what I'm in the hospital for."
"Oh, no, you're not," gloated Major Sanderson maliciously. "You're in the hospital for a stone in your
salivary gland. So you're not so smart after all, are you? You don't even know what you're in the hospital for."
"I'm in the hospital for a wounded leg," Yossarian insisted.
Major Sanderson ignored his argument with a sarcastic laugh. "Well, give my regards to your friend
Dunbar. And you will tell him to dream that dream for me, won't you?"
But Dunbar had nausea and dizziness with his constant headache and was not inclined to co-operate with
Major Sanderson. Hungry Joe had nightmares because he had finished sixty missions and was waiting again to
go home, but he was unwilling to share any when he came to the hospital to visit.
"Hasn't anyone got any dreams for Major Sanderson?" Yossarian asked. "I hate to disappoint him. He feels
so rejected already."
"I've been having a very peculiar dream ever since I learned you were wounded," confessed the chaplain. "I
used to dream every night that my wife was dying or being murdered or that my children were choking to
death on morsels of nutritious food. Now I dream that I'm out swimming in water over my head and a shark is
eating my left leg in exactly the same place where you have your bandage."
"That's a wonderful dream," Dunbar declared. "I bet Major Sanderson will love it."
"That's a horrible dream!" Major Sanderson cried. "It's filled with pain and mutilation and death. I'm sure
you had it just to spite me. You know, I'm not even sure you belong in the Army, with a disgusting dream like
that."
Yossarian thought he spied a ray of hope. "Perhaps you're right, sir," he suggested slyly. "Perhaps I ought
to be grounded and returned to the States."
"Hasn't it ever occurred to you that in your promiscuous pursuit of women you are merely trying to assuage
your subconscious fears of sexual impotence?"
"Yes, sir, it has."
"Then why do you do it?"
"To assuage my fears of sexual impotence."
"Why don't you get yourself a good hobby instead?" Major Sanderson inquired with friendly interest. "Like
fishing. Do you really find Nurse Duckett so attractive? I should think she was rather bony. Rather bland and
bony, you know. Like a fish."
"I hardly know Nurse Duckett."
"Then why did you grab her by the bosom? Merely because she has one?"
"Dunbar did that."
"Oh, don't start that again," Major Sanderson exclaimed with vitriolic scorn, and hurled down his pencil
disgustedly. "Do you really think that you can absolve yourself of guilt by pretending to be someone else? I
don't like you, Fortiori. Do you know that? I don't like you at all."
Yossarian felt a cold, damp wind of apprehension blow over him. "I'm not Fortiori, sir," he said timidly.
"I'm Yossarian."
"You're who?"
"My name is Yossarian, sir. And I'm in the hospital with a wounded leg."
"Your name is Fortiori," Major Sanderson contradicted him belligerently. "And you're in the hospital for a
stone in your salivary gland."
"Oh, come on, Major!" Yossarian exploded. "I ought to know who I am."
"And I've got an official Army record here to prove it," Major Sanderson retorted. "You'd better get a grip
on yourself before it's too late. First you're Dunbar. Now you're Yossarian. The next thing you know you'll be
claiming you're Washington Irving. Do you know what's wrong with you? You've got a split personality, that's
what's wrong with you."
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"Perhaps you're right, sir." Yossarian agreed diplomatically.
"I know I'm right. You've got a bad persecution complex. You think people are trying to harm you."
"People are trying to harm me."
"You see? You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and
depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!"
"Are you serious?"
"You're an enemy of the people!"
"Are you nuts?" Yossarian shouted.
"No, I'm not nuts," Dobbs roared furiously back in the ward, in what he imagined was a furtive whisper.
"Hungry Joe saw them, I tell you. He saw them yesterday when he flew to Naples to pick up some
black-market air conditioners for Colonel Cathcart's farm. They've got a big replacement center there and it's
filled with hundreds of pilots, bombardiers and gunners on the way home. They've got forty-five missions,
that's all. A few with Purple Hearts have even less. Replacement crews are pouring in from the States into the
other bomber groups. They want everyone to serve overseas at least once, even administrative personnel.
Don't you read the papers? We've got to kill him now!"
"You've got only two more missions to fly," Yossarian reasoned with him in a low voice. "Why take a
chance?"
"I can get killed flying them, too," Dobbs answered pugnaciously in his rough, quavering, overwrought
voice. "We can kill him the first thing tomorrow morning when he drives back from his farm. I've got the gun
right here."
Yossarian goggled with amazement as Dobbs pulled a gun out of his pocket and displayed it high in the air.
"Are you crazy?" he hissed frantically. "Put it away. And keep your idiot voice down."
"What are you worried about?" Dobbs asked with offended innocence. "No one can hear us."
"Hey, knock it off down there," a voice rang out from the far end of the ward. "Can't you see we're trying to
nap?"
"What the hell are you, a wise guy?" Dobbs yelled back and spun around with clenched fists, ready to fight.
He whirled back to Yossarian and, before he could speak, sneezed thunderously six times, staggering sideways
on rubbery legs in the intervals and raising his elbows ineffectively to fend each seizure off. The lids of his
watery eyes were puffy and inflamed.
"Who does he think," he demanded, sniffing spasmodically and wiping his nose with the back of his sturdy
wrist, "he is, a cop or something?"
"He's a C.I.D. man," Yossarian notified him tranquilly. "We've got three here now and more on the way.
Oh, don't be scared. They're after a forger named Washington Irving. They're not interested in murderers."
"Murderers?" Dobbs was affronted. "Why do you call us murderers? Just because we're going to murder
Colonel Cathcart?"
"Be quiet, damn you!" directed Yossarian. "Can't you whisper?"
"I am whispering. I-"
"You're still shouting."
"No, I'm not. I-"
"Hey, shut up down there, will you?" patients all over the ward began hollering at Dobbs.
"I'll fight you all!" Dobbs screamed back at them, and stood up on a rickety wooden chair, waving the gun
wildly. Yossarian caught his arm and yanked him down. Dobbs began sneezing again. "I have an allergy," he
apologized when he had finished, his nostrils running and his eyes streaming with tears.
"That's too bad. You'd make a great leader of men without it."
"Colonel Cathcart's the murderer," Dobbs complained hoarsely when he had shoved away a soiled,
crumpled khaki handkerchief. "Colonel Cathcart's the one who's going to murder us all if we don't do
something to stop him."
"Maybe he won't raise the missions any more. Maybe sixty is as high as he'll go."
"He always raises the missions. You know that better than I do." Dobbs swallowed and bent his intense
face very close to Yossarian's, the muscles in his bronze, rocklike jaw bunching up into quivering knots. "Just
say it's okay and I'll do the whole thing tomorrow morning. Do you understand what I'm telling you? I'm
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whispering now, ain't I?"
Yossarian tore his eyes away from the gaze of burning entreaty Dobbs had fastened on him. "Why the
goddam hell don't you just go out and do it?" he protested. "Why don't you stop talking to me about it and do it
alone?"
"I'm afraid to do it alone. I'm afraid to do anything alone."
"Then leave me out of it. I'd have to be crazy to get mixed up in something like this now. I've got a
million-dollar leg wound here. They're going to send me home."
"Are you crazy?" Dobbs exclaimed in disbelief. "All you've got there is a scratch. He'll have you back
flying combat missions the day you come out, Purple Heart and all."
"Then I really will kill him," Yossarian vowed. "I'll come looking for you and we'll do it together."
"Then let's do it tomorrow while we've still got the chance," Dobbs pleaded. "The chaplain says he's
volunteered the group for Avignon again. I may be killed before you get out. Look how these hands of mine
shake. I can't fly a plane. I'm not good enough."
Yossarian was afraid to say yes. "I want to wait and see what happens first."
"The trouble with you is that you just won't do anything," Dobbs complained in a thick infuriated voice.
"I'm doing everything I possibly can," the chaplain explained softly to Yossarian after Dobbs had departed.
"I even went to the medical tent to speak to Doc Daneeka about helping you."
"Yes, I can see." Yossarian suppressed a smile. "What happened?"
"They painted my gums purple," the chaplain replied sheepishly.
"They painted his toes purple, too," Nately added in outrage. "And then they gave him a laxative."
"But I went back again this morning to see him."
"And they painted his gums purple again," said Nately.
"But I did get to speak to him," the chaplain argued in a plaintive tone of self-justification. "Doctor
Daneeka seems like such an unhappy man. He suspects that someone is plotting to transfer him to the Pacific
Ocean. All this time he's been thinking of coming to me for help. When I told him I needed his help, he
wondered if there wasn't a chaplain I couldn't go see." The chaplain waited in patient dejection when
Yossarian and Dunbar both broke into laughter. "I used to think it was immoral to be unhappy," he continued,
as though keening aloud in solitude. "Now I don't know what to think any more. I'd like to make the subject of
immorality the basis of my sermon this Sunday, but I'm not sure I ought to give any sermon at all with these
purple gums. Colonel Korn was very displeased with them."
"Chaplain, why don't you come into the hospital with us for a while and take it easy?" Yossarian invited.
"You could be very comfortable here."
The brash iniquity of the proposal tempted and amused the chaplain for a second or two. "No, I don't think
so," he decided reluctantly. "I want to arrange for a trip to the mainland to see a mail clerk named
Wintergreen. Doctor Daneeka told me he could help."
"Wintergreen is probably the most influential man in the whole theater of operations. He's not only a mail
clerk, but he has access to a mimeograph machine. But he won't help anybody. That's one of the reasons he'll
go far."
"I'd like to speak to him anyway. There must be somebody who will help you."
"Do it for Dunbar, Chaplain," Yossarian corrected with a superior air. "I've got this million-dollar leg
wound that will take me out of combat. If that doesn't do it, there's a psychiatrist who thinks I'm not good
enough to be in the Army."
"I'm the one who isn't good enough to be in the Army," Dunbar whined jealously. "It was my dream."
"It's not the dream, Dunbar," Yossarian explained. "He likes your dream. It's my personality. He thinks it's
split."
"It's split right down the middle," said Major Sanderson, who had laced his lumpy GI shoes for the
occasion and had slicked his charcoal-dull hair down with some stiffening and redolent tonic. He smiled
ostentatiously to show himself reasonable and nice. "I'm not saying that to be cruel and insulting," he
continued with cruel and insulting delight. "I'm not saying it because I hate you and want revenge. I'm not
saying it because you rejected me and hurt my feelings terribly. No, I'm a man of medicine and I'm being
coldly objective. I have very bad news for you. Are you man enough to take it?"
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"God, no!" screamed Yossarian. "I'll go right to pieces."
Major Sanderson flew instantly into a rage. "Can't you even do one thing right?" he pleaded, turning
beet-red with vexation and crashing the sides of both fists down upon his desk together. "The trouble with you
is that you think you're too good for all the conventions of society. You probably think you're too good for me
too, just because I arrived at puberty late. Well, do you know what you are? You're a frustrated, unhappy,
disillusioned, undisciplined, maladjusted young man!" Major Sanderson's disposition seemed to mellow as he
reeled off the uncomplimentary adjectives.
"Yes, sir," Yossarian agreed carefully. "I guess you're right."
"Of course I'm right. You're immature. You've been unable to adjust to the idea of war."
"Yes, sir."
"You have a morbid aversion to dying. You probably resent the fact that you're at war and might get your
head blown off any second."
"I more than resent it, sir. I'm absolutely incensed."
"You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don't like bigots, bullies, snobs or hypocrites.
Subconsciously there are many people you hate."
"Consciously, sir, consciously," Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. "I hate them consciously."
"You're antagonistic to the idea of being robbed, exploited, degraded, humiliated or deceived. Misery
depresses you. Ignorance depresses you. Persecution depresses you. Violence depresses you. Slums depress
you. Greed depresses you. Crime depresses you. Corruption depresses you. You know, it wouldn't surprise me
if you're a manic-depressive!"
"Yes, sir. Perhaps I am."
"Don't try to deny it."
"I'm not denying it, sir," said Yossarian, pleased with the miraculous rapport that finally existed between
them. "I agree with all you've said."
"Then you admit you're crazy, do you?"
"Crazy?" Yossarian was shocked. "What are you talking about? Why am I crazy? You're the one who's
crazy!"
Major Sanderson turned red with indignation again and crashed both fists down upon his thighs. "Calling
me crazy," he shouted in a sputtering rage, "is a typically sadistic and vindictive paranoiac reaction! You
really are crazy!"
"Then why don't you send me home?"
"And I'm going to send you home!"
"They're going to send me home!" Yossarian announced jubilantly, as he hobbled back into the ward.
"Me too!" A. Fortiori rejoiced. "They just came to my ward and told me."
"What about me?" Dunbar demanded petulantly of the doctors.
"You?" they replied with asperity. "You're going with Yossarian. Right back into combat!"
And back into combat they both went. Yossarian was enraged when the ambulance returned him to the
squadron, and he went limping for justice to Doc Daneeka, who glared at him glumly with misery and disdain.
"You!" Doc Daneeka exclaimed mournfully with accusing disgust, the egg-shaped pouches under both eyes
firm and censorious. "All you ever think of is yourself. Go take a look at the bomb line if you want to see
what's been happening since you went to the hospital."
Yossarian was startled. "Are we losing?"
"Losing?" Doc Daneeka cried. "The whole military situation has been going to hell ever since we captured
Paris. I knew it would happen." He paused, his sulking ire turning to melancholy, and frowned irritably as
though it were all Yossarian's fault. "American troops are pushing into German soil. The Russians have
captured back all of Romania. Only yesterday the Greeks in the Eighth Army captured Rimini. The Germans
are on the defensive everywhere!" Doc Daneeka paused again and fortified himself with a huge breath for a
piercing ejaculation of grief. "There's no more Luftwaffe left!" he wailed. He seemed ready to burst into tears.
"The whole Gothic line is in danger of collapsing!"
"So?" asked Yossarian. "What's wrong?"
"What's wrong?" Doc Daneeka cried. "If something doesn't happen soon, Germany may surrender. And
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then we'll all be sent to the Pacific!"
Yossarian gawked at Doc Daneeka in grotesque dismay. "Are you crazy? Do you know what you're
saying?"
"Yeah, it's easy for you to laugh," Doc Daneeka sneered.
"Who the hell is laughing?"
"At least you've got a chance. You're in combat and might get killed. But what about me? I've got nothing
to hope for."
"You're out of your goddam head!" Yossarian shouted at him emphatically, seizing him by the shirt front.
"Do you know that? Now keep your stupid mouth shut and listen to me."
Doc Daneeka wrenched himself away. "Don't you dare talk to me like that. I'm a licensed physician."
"Then keep your stupid licensed physician's mouth shut and listen to what they told me up at the hospital.
I'm crazy. Did you know that?"
"So?"
"Really crazy."
"So?"
"I'm nuts. Cuckoo. Don't you understand? I'm off my rocker. They sent someone else home in my place by
mistake. They've got a licensed psychiatrist up at the hospital who examined me, and that was his verdict. I'm
really insane."
"So?"
"So?" Yossarian was puzzled by Doc Daneeka's inability to comprehend. "Don't you see what that means?
Now you can take me off combat duty and send me home. They're not going to send a crazy man out to be
killed, are they?"
"Who else will go?"
28 DOBBS
McWatt went, and McWatt was not crazy. And so did Yossarian, still walking with a limp, and when
Yossarian had gone two more times and then found himself menaced by the rumor of another mission to
Bologna, he limped determinedly into Dobbs's tent early one warm afternoon, put a finger to his mouth and
said, "Shush!"
"What are you shushing him for?" asked Kid Sampson, peeling a tangerine with his front teeth as he
perused the dog-eared pages of a comic book. "He isn't even saying anything."
"Screw," said Yossarian to Kid Sampson, jerking his thumb back over his shoulder toward the entrance of
the tent.
Kid Sampson cocked his blond eyebrows discerningly and rose to co-operate. He whistled upward four
times into his drooping yellow mustache and spurted away into the hills on the dented old green motorcycle he
had purchased secondhand months before. Yossarian waited until the last faint bark of the motor had died
away in the distance. Things inside the tent did not seem quite normal. The place was too neat. Dobbs was
watching him curiously, smoking a fat cigar. Now that Yossarian had made up his mind to be brave, he was
deathly afraid.
"All right," he said. "Let's kill Colonel Cathcart. We'll do it together."
Dobbs sprang forward off his cot with a look of wildest terror. "Shush!" he roared. "Kill Colonel Cathcart?
What are you talking about?"
"Be quiet, damn it," Yossarian snarled. "The whole island will hear. Have you still got that gun?"
"Are you crazy or something?" shouted Dobbs. "Why should I want to kill Colonel Cathcart?"
"Why?" Yossarian stared at Dobbs with an incredulous scowl. "Why? It was your idea, wasn't it? Didn't
you come to the hospital and ask me to do it?"
Dobbs smiled slowly. "But that was when I had only fifty-eight missions," he explained, puffing on his
cigar luxuriously. "I'm all packed now and I'm waiting to go home. I've finished my sixty missions."
"So what?" Yossarian replied. "He's only going to raise them again."
"Maybe this time he won't."
"He always raises them. What the hell's the matter with you, Dobbs? Ask Hungry Joe how many time he's
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packed his bags."
"I've got to wait and see what happens," Dobbs maintained stubbornly. "I'd have to be crazy to get mixed
up in something like this now that I'm out of combat." He flicked the ash from his cigar. "No, my advice to
you," he remarked, "is that you fly your sixty missions like the rest of us and then see what happens."
Yossarian resisted the impulse to spit squarely in his eye. "I may not live through sixty," he wheedled in a
flat, pessimistic voice. "There's a rumor around that he volunteered the group for Bologna again."
"It's only a rumor," Dobbs pointed out with a self-important air. "You mustn't believe every rumor you
hear."
"Will you stop giving me advice?"
"Why don't you speak to Orr?" Dobbs advised. "Orr got knocked down into the water again last week on
that second mission to Avignon. Maybe he's unhappy enough to kill him."
"Orr hasn't got brains enough to be unhappy."
Orr had been knocked down into the water again while Yossarian was still in the hospital and had eased his
crippled airplane down gently into the glassy blue swells off Marseilles with such flawless skill that not one
member of the six-man crew suffered the slightest bruise. The escape hatches in the front and rear sections
flew open while the sea was still foaming white and green around the plane, and the men scrambled out as
speedily as they could in their flaccid orange Mae West life jackets that failed to inflate and dangled limp and
useless around their necks and waists. The life jackets failed to inflate because Milo had removed the twin
carbon-dioxide cylinders from the inflating chambers to make the strawberry and crushed-pineapple ice-cream
sodas he served in the officers' mess hall and had replaced them with mimeographed notes that read: "What's
good for M & M Enterprises is good for the country." Orr popped out of the sinking airplane last.
"You should have seen him!" Sergeant Knight roared with laughter as he related the episode to Yossarian.
"It was the funniest goddam thing you ever saw. None of the Mae Wests would work because Milo had stolen
the carbon dioxide to make those ice-cream sodas you bastards have been getting in the officers' mess. But
that wasn't too bad, as it turned out. Only one of us couldn't swim, and we lifted that guy up into the raft after
Orr had worked it over by its rope right up against the fuselage while we were all still standing on the plane.
That little crackpot sure has a knack for things like that. Then the other raft came loose and drifted away, so
that all six of us wound up sitting in one with our elbows and legs pressed so close against each other you
almost couldn't move without knocking the guy next to you out of the raft into the water. The plane went
down about three seconds after we left it and we were out there all alone, and right after that we began
unscrewing the caps on our Mae Wests to see what the hell had gone wrong and found those goddam notes
from Milo telling us that what was good for him was good enough for the rest of us. That bastard! Jesus, did
we curse him, all except that buddy of yours, Orr, who just kept grinning as though for all he cared what was
good for Milo might be good enough for the rest of us.
"I swear, you should have seen him sitting up there on the rim of the raft like the captain of a ship while the
rest of us just watched him and waited for him to tell us what to do. He kept slapping his hands on his legs
every few seconds as though he had the shakes and saying, 'All right now, all right,' and giggling like a crazy
little freak, then saying, 'All right now, all right,' again, and giggling like a crazy little freak some more. It was
like watching some kind of a moron. Watching him was all that kept us from going to pieces altogether during
the first few minutes, what with each wave washing over us into the raft or dumping a few of us back into the
water so that we had to climb back in again before the next wave came along and washed us right back out. It
was sure funny. We just kept falling out and climbing back in. We had the guy who couldn't swim stretched
out in the middle of the raft on the floor, but even there he almost drowned, because the water inside the raft
was deep enough to keep splashing in his face. Oh, boy!
"Then Orr began opening up compartments in the raft, and the fun really began. First he found a box of
chocolate bars and he passed those around so we sat there eating salty chocolate bars while the waves kept
knocking us out of the raft into the water. Next he found some bouillon cubes and aluminum cups and made us
some soup. Then he found some tea. Sure, he made it! Can't you see him serving us tea as we sat there soaking
wet in water up to our ass? Now I was falling out of the raft because I was laughing so much. We were all
laughing. And he was dead serious, except for that goofy giggle of his and that crazy grin. What a jerk!
Whatever he found he used. He found some shark repellent and he sprinkled it right out into the water. He
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found some marker dye and he threw it into the water. The next thing he finds is a fishing line and dried bait,
and his face lights up as though the Air-Sea Rescue launch had just sped up to save us before we died of
exposure or before the Germans sent a boat out from Spezia to take us prisoner or machine-gun us. In no time
at all, Orr had that fishing line out into the water, trolling away as happy as a lark. 'Lieutenant, what do you
expect to catch?' I asked him. 'Cod,' he told me. And he meant it. And it's a good thing he didn't catch any,
because he would have eaten that codfish raw if he had caught any, and would have made us eat it, too,
because he had found this little book that said it was all right to eat codfish raw.
"The next thing he found was this little blue oar about the size of a Dixie-cup spoon, and, sure enough, he
began rowing with it, trying to move all nine hundred pounds of us with that little stick. Can you imagine?
After that he found a small magnetic compass and a big waterproof map, and he spread the map open on his
knees and set the compass on top of it. And that's how he spent the time until the launch picked us up about
thirty minutes later, sitting there with that baited fishing line out behind him, with the compass in his lap and
the map spread out on his knees, and paddling away as hard as he could with that dinky blue oar as though he
was speeding to Majorca. Jesus!"
Sergeant Knight knew all about Majorca, and so did Orr, because Yossarian had told them often of such
sanctuaries as Spain, Switzerland and Sweden where American fliers could be interned for the duration of the
war under conditions of utmost ease and luxury merely by flying there. Yossarian was the squadron's leading
authority on internment and had already begun plotting an emergency heading into Switzerland on every
mission he flew into northernmost Italy. He would certainly have preferred Sweden, where the level of
intelligence was high and where he could swim nude with beautiful girls with low, demurring voices and sire
whole happy, undisciplined tribes of illegitimate Yossarians that the state would assist through parturition and
launch into life without stigma; but Sweden was out of reach, too far away, and Yossarian waited for the piece
of flak that would knock out one engine over the Italian Alps and provide him with the excuse for heading for
Switzerland. He would not even tell his pilot he was guiding him there. Yossarian often thought of scheming
with some pilot he trusted to fake a crippled engine and then destroy the evidence of deception with a belly
landing, but the only pilot he really trusted was McWatt, who was happiest where he was and still got a big
boot out of buzzing his plane over Yossarian's tent or roaring in so low over the bathers at the beach that the
fierce wind from his propellers slashed dark furrows in the water and whipped sheets of spray flapping back
for seconds afterward.
Dobbs and Hungry Joe were out of the question, and so was Orr, who was tinkering with the valve of the
stove again when Yossarian limped despondently back into the tent after Dobbs had turned him down. The
stove Orr was manufacturing out of an inverted metal drum stood in the middle of the smooth cement floor he
had constructed. He was working sedulously on both knees. Yossarian tried paying no attention to him and
limped wearily to his cot and sat down with a labored, drawn-out grunt. Prickles of perspiration were turning
chilly on his forehead. Dobbs had depressed him. Doc Daneeka depressed him. An ominous vision of doom
depressed him when he looked at Orr. He began ticking with a variety of internal tremors. Nerves twitched,
and the vein in one wrist began palpitating.
Orr studied Yossarian over his shoulder, his moist lips drawn back around convex rows of large buck teeth.
Reaching sideways, he dug a bottle of warm beer out of his foot locker, and he handed it to Yossarian after
prying off the cap. Neither said a word. Yossarian sipped the bubbles off the top and tilted his head back. Orr
watched him cunningly with a noiseless grin. Yossarian eyed Orr guardedly. Orr snickered with a slight,
mucid sibilance and turned back to his work, squatting. Yossarian grew tense.
"Don't start," he begged in a threatening voice, both hands tightening around his beer bottle. "Don't start
working on your stove."
Orr cackled quietly. "I'm almost finished."
"No, you're not. You're about to begin."
"Here's the valve. See? It's almost all together."
"And you're about to take it apart. I know what you're doing, you bastard. I've seen you do it three hundred
times."
Orr shivered with glee. "I want to get the leak in this gasoline line out," he explained. "I've got it down now
to where it's only an ooze."
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"I can't watch you," Yossarian confessed tonelessly. "If you want to work with something big, that's okay.
But that valve is filled with tiny parts, and I just haven't got the patience right now to watch you working so
hard over things that are so goddam small and unimportant."
"Just because they're small doesn't mean they're unimportant."
"I don't care."
"Once more?"
"When I'm not around. You're a happy imbecile and you don't know what it means to feel the way I do.
Things happen to me when you work over small things that I can't even begin to explain. I find out that I can't
stand you. I start to hate you, and I'm soon thinking seriously about busting this bottle down on your head or
stabbing you in the neck with that hunting knife there. Do you understand?"
Orr nodded very intelligently. "I won't take the valve apart now," he said, and began taking it apart,
working with slow, tireless, interminable precision, his rustic, ungainly face bent very close to the floor,
picking painstakingly at the minute mechanism in his fingers with such limitless, plodding concentration that
he seemed scarcely to be thinking of it at all.
Yossarian cursed him silently and made up his mind to ignore him. "What the hell's your hurry with that
stove, anyway?" he barked out a moment later in spite of himself. "It's still hot out. We're probably going
swimming later. What are you worried about the cold for."
"The days are getting shorter," Orr observed philosophically. "I'd like to get this all finished for you while
there's still time. You'll have the best stove in the squadron when I'm through. It will burn all night with this
feed control I'm fixing, and these metal plates will radiate the heat all over the tent. If you leave a helmet full
of water on this thing when you go to sleep, you'll have warm water to wash with all ready for you when you
wake up. Won't that be nice? If you want to cook eggs or soup, all you'll have to do is set the pot down here
and turn the fire up."
"What do you mean, me?" Yossarian wanted to know. "Where are you going to be?"
Orr's stunted torso shook suddenly with a muffled spasm of amusement. "I don't know," he exclaimed, and
a weird, wavering giggle gushed out suddenly through his chattering buck teeth like an exploding jet of
emotion. He was still laughing when he continued, and his voice was clogged with saliva. "If they keep on
shooting me down this way, I don't know where I'm going to be."
Yossarian was moved. "Why don't you try to stop flying, Orr? You've got an excuse."
"I've only got eighteen missions."
"But you've been shot down on almost every one. You're either ditching or crash-landing every time you go
up."
"Oh, I don't mind flying missions. I guess they're lots of fun. You ought to try flying a few with me when
you're not flying lead. Just for laughs. Tee-hee." Orr gazed up at Yossarian through the corners of his eyes
with a look of pointed mirth.
Yossarian avoided his stare. "They've got me flying lead again."
"When you're not flying lead. If you had any brains, do you know what you'd do? You'd go right to
Piltchard and Wren and tell them you want to fly with me."
"And get shot down with you every time you go up? What's the fun in that?"
"That's just why you ought to do it," Orr insisted. "I guess I'm just about the best pilot around now when it
comes to ditching or making crash landings. It would be good practice for you."
"Good practice for what?"
"Good practice in case you ever have to ditch or make a crash landing. Tee-hee-hee."
"Have you got another bottle of beer for me?" Yossarian asked morosely.
"Do you want to bust it down on my head?"
This time Yossarian did laugh. "Like that whore in that apartment in Rome?"
Orr sniggered lewdly, his bulging crab apple cheeks blowing outward with pleasure. "Do you really want to
know why she was hitting me over the head with her shoe?" he teased.
"I do know," Yossarian teased back. "Nately's whore told me."
Orr grinned like a gargoyle. "No she didn't."
Yossarian felt sorry for Orr. Orr was so small and ugly. Who would protect him if he lived? Who would
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protect a warm-hearted, simple-minded gnome like Orr from rowdies and cliques and from expert athletes like
Appleby who had flies in their eyes and would walk right over him with swaggering conceit and
self-assurance every chance they got? Yossarian worried frequently about Orr. Who would shield him against
animosity and deceit, against people with ambition and the embittered snobbery of the big shot's wife, against
the squalid, corrupting indignities of the profit motive and the friendly neighborhood butcher with inferior
meat? Orr was a happy and unsuspecting simpleton with a thick mass of wavy polychromatic hair parted down
the center. He would be mere child's play for them. They would take his money, screw his wife and show no
kindness to his children. Yossarian felt a flood of compassion sweep over him.
Orr was an eccentric midget, a freakish, likable dwarf with a smutty mind and a thousand valuable skills
that would keep him in a low income group all his life. He could use a soldering iron and hammer two boards
together so that the wood did not split and the nails did not bend. He could drill holes. He had built a good
deal more in the tent while Yossarian was away in the hospital. He had filed or chiseled a perfect channel in
the cement so that the slender gasoline line was flush with the floor as it ran to the stove from the tank he had
built outside on an elevated platform. He had constructed andirons for the fireplace out of excess bomb parts
and had filled them with stout silver logs, and he had framed with stained wood the photographs of girls with
big breasts he had torn out of cheesecake magazines and hung over the mantelpiece. Orr could open a can of
paint. He could mix paint, thin paint, remove paint. He could chop wood and measure things with a ruler. He
knew how to build fires. He could dig holes, and he had a real gift for bringing water for them both in cans and
canteens from the tanks near the mess hall. He could engross himself in an inconsequential task for hours
without growing restless or bored, as oblivious to fatigue as the stump of a tree, and almost as taciturn. He had
an uncanny knowledge of wildlife and was not afraid of dogs or cats or beetles or moths, or of foods like scrod
or tripe.
Yossarian sighed drearily and began brooding about the rumored mission to Bologna. The valve Orr was
dismantling was about the size of a thumb and contained thirty-seven separate parts, excluding the casing,
many of them so minute that Orr was required to pinch them tightly between the tips of his fingernails as he
placed them carefully on the floor in orderly, catalogued rows, never quickening his movements or slowing
them down, never tiring, never pausing in his relentless, methodical, monotonous procedure unless it was to
leer at Yossarian with maniacal mischief. Yossarian tried not to watch him. He counted the parts and thought
he would go clear out of his mind. He turned away, shutting his eyes, but that was even worse, for now he had
only the sounds, the tiny maddening, indefatigable, distinct clicks and rustles of hands and weightless parts.
Orr was breathing rhythmically with a noise that was stertorous and repulsive. Yossarian clenched his fists and
looked at the long bone-handled hunting knife hanging in a holster over the cot of the dead man in the tent. As
soon as he thought of stabbing Orr, his tension eased. The idea of murdering Orr was so ridiculous that he
began to consider it seriously with queer whimsy and fascination. He searched the nape of Orr's neck for the
probable site of the medulla oblongata. Just the daintiest stick there would kill him and solve so many serious,
agonizing problems for them both.
"Does it hurt?" Orr asked at precisely that moment, as though by protective instinct.
Yossarian eyed him closely. "Does what hurt?"
"Your leg," said Orr with a strange, mysterious laugh. "You still limp a little."
"It's just a habit, I guess," said Yossarian, breathing again with relief. "I'll probably get over it soon."
Orr rolled over sideways to the floor and came up on one knee, facing toward Yossarian. "Do you
remember," he drawled reflectively, with an air of labored recollection, "that girl who was hitting me on the
head that day in Rome?" He chuckled at Yossarian's involuntary exclamation of tricked annoyance. "I'll make
a deal with you about that girl. I'll tell you why that girl was hitting me on the head with her shoe that day if
you answer one question."
"What's the question?"
"Did you ever screw Nately's girl?"
Yossarian laughed with surprise. "Me? No. Now tell me why that girl hit you with her shoe."
"That wasn't the question," Orr informed him with victorious delight. "That was just conversation. She acts
like you screwed her."
"Well, I didn't. How does she act?"
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"She acts like she don't like you."
"She doesn't like anyone."
"She likes Captain Black," Orr reminded.
"That's because he treats her like dirt. Anyone can get a girl that way."
"She wears a slave bracelet on her leg with his name on it."
"He makes her wear it to needle Nately."
"She even gives him some of the money she gets from Nately."
"Listen, what do you want from me?"
"Did you ever screw my girl?"
"Your girl? Who the hell is your girl?"
"The one who hit me over the head with her shoe."
"I've been with her a couple of times," Yossarian admitted. "Since when is she your girl? What are you
getting at?"
"She don't like you, either."
"What the hell do I care if she likes me or not? She likes me as much as she likes you."
"Did she ever hit you over the head with her shoe?"
"Orr, I'm tired. Why don't you leave me alone?"
"Tee-hee-hee. How about that skinny countess in Rome and her skinny daughter-in-law?" Orr persisted
impishly with increasing zest. "Did you ever screw them?"
"Oh, how I wish I could," sighed Yossarian honestly, imagining, at the mere question, the prurient, used,
decaying feel in his petting hands of their teeny, pulpy buttocks and breasts.
"They don't like you either," commented Orr. "They like Aarfy, and they like Nately, but they don't like
you. Women just don't seem to like you. I think they think you're a bad influence."
"Women are crazy," Yossarian answered, and waited grimly for what he knew was coming next.
"How about that other girl of yours?" Orr asked with a pretense of pensive curiosity. "The fat one? The
bald one? You know, that fat bald one in Sicily with the turban who kept sweating all over us all night long? Is
she crazy too?"
"Didn't she like me either?"
"How could you do it to a girl with no hair?"
"How was I supposed to know she had no hair?"
"I knew it," Orr bragged. "I knew it all the time."
"You knew she was bald?" Yossarian exclaimed in wonder.
"No, I knew this valve wouldn't work if I left a part out," Orr answered, glowing with cranberry-red elation
because he had just duped Yossarian again. "Will you please hand me that small composition gasket that
rolled over there? It's right near your foot."
"No it isn't."
"Right here," said Orr, and took hold of something invisible with the tips of his fingernails and held it up
for Yossarian to see. "Now I'll have to start all over again."
"I'll kill you if you do. I'll murder you right on the spot."
"Why don't you ever fly with me?" Orr asked suddenly, and looked straight into Yossarian's face for the
first time. "There, that's the question I want you to answer. Why don't you ever fly with me?"
Yossarian turned away with intense shame and embarrassment. "I told you why. They've got me flying lead
bombardier most of the time."
"That's not why," Orr said, shaking his head. "You went to Piltchard and Wren after the first Avignon
mission and told them you didn't ever want to fly with me. That's why, isn't it?"
Yossarian felt his skin turn hot. "No I didn't," he lied.
"Yes you did," Orr insisted equably. "You asked them not to assign you to any plane piloted by me, Dobbs
or Huple because you didn't have confidence in us at the controls. And Piltchard and Wren said they couldn't
make an exception of you because it wouldn't be fair to the men who did have to fly with us."
"So?" said Yossarian. "It didn't make any difference then, did it?"
"But they've never made you fly with me." Orr, working on both knees again, was addressing Yossarian
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without bitterness or reproach, but with injured humility, which was infinitely more painful to observe,
although he was still grinning and snickering, as though the situation were comic. "You really ought to fly
with me, you know. I'm a pretty good pilot, and I'd take care of you. I may get knocked down a lot, but that's
not my fault, and nobody's ever been hurt in my plane. Yes, sir-if you had any brains, you know what you'd
do? You'd go right to Piltchard and Wren and tell them you want to fly all your missions with me."
Yossarian leaned forward and peered closely into Orr's inscrutable mask of contradictory emotions. "Are
you trying to tell me something?"
"Tee-hee-hee-hee," Orr responded. "I'm trying to tell you why that big girl with the shoe was hitting me on
the head that day. But you just won't let me."
"Tell me."
"Will you fly with me?"
Yossarian laughed and shook his head. "You'll only get knocked down into the water again."
Orr did get knocked down into the water again when the rumored mission to Bologna was flown, and he
landed his single-engine plane with a smashing jar on the choppy, windswept waves tossing and falling below
the warlike black thunderclouds mobilizing overhead. He was late getting out of the plane and ended up alone
in a raft that began drifting away from the men in the other raft and was out of sight by the time the Air-Sea
Rescue launch came plowing up through the wind and splattering raindrops to take them aboard. Night was
already falling by the time they were returned to the squadron. There was no word of Orr.
"Don't worry," reassured Kid Sampson, still wrapped in the heavy blankets and raincoat in which he had
been swaddled on the boat by his rescuers. "He's probably been picked up already if he didn't drown in that
storm. It didn't last long. I bet he'll show up any minute."
Yossarian walked back to his tent to wait for Orr to show up any minute and lit a fire to make things warm
for him. The stove worked perfectly, with a strong, robust blaze that could be raised or lowered by turning the
tap Orr had finally finished repairing. A light rain was falling, drumming softly on the tent, the trees, the
ground. Yossarian cooked a can of hot soup to have ready for Orr and ate it all himself as the time passed. He
hard-boiled some eggs for Orr and ate those too. Then he ate a whole tin of Cheddar cheese from a package of
K rations.
Each time he caught himself worrying he made himself remember that Orr could do everything and broke
into silent laughter at the picture of Orr in the raft as Sergeant Knight had described him, bent forward with a
busy, preoccupied smile over the map and compass in his lap, stuffing one soaking-wet chocolate bar after
another into his grinning, tittering mouth as he paddled away dutifully through the lightning, thunder and rain
with the bright-blue useless toy oar, the fishing line with dried bait trailing out behind him. Yossarian really
had no doubt about Orr's ability to survive. If fish could be caught with that silly fishing line, Orr would catch
them, and if it was codfish he was after, then Orr would catch a codfish, even though no codfish had ever been
caught in those waters before. Yossarian put another can of soup up to cook and ate that too when it was hot.
Every time a car door slammed, he broke into a hopeful smile and turned expectantly toward the entrance,
listening for footsteps. He knew that any moment Orr would come walking into the tent with big, glistening,
rain-soaked eyes, cheeks and buck teeth, looking ludicrously like a jolly New England oysterman in a yellow
oilskin rain hat and slicker numerous sizes too large for him and holding up proudly for Yossarian's
amusement a great dead codfish he had caught. But he didn't.
29 PECKEM
There was no word about Orr the next day, and Sergeant Whitcomb, with commendable dispatch and
considerable hope, dropped a reminder in his tickler file to send a form letter over Colonel Cathcart's signature
to Orr's next of kin when nine more days had elapsed. There was word from General Peckem's headquarters,
though, and Yossarian was drawn to the crowd of officers and enlisted men in shorts and bathing trunks
buzzing in grumpy confusion around the bulletin board just outside the orderly room.
"What's so different about this Sunday, I want to know?" Hungry Joe was demanding vociferously of Chief
White Halfoat. "Why won't we have a parade this Sunday when we don't have a parade every Sunday? Huh?"
Yossarian worked his way through to the front and let out a long, agonized groan when he read the terse
announcement there:
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Due to circumstances beyond my control, there will be no big parade this Sunday afternoon.
Colonel Scheisskopf
Dobbs was right. They were indeed sending everyone overseas, even Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who had
resisted the move with all the vigor and wisdom at his command and who reported for duty at General
Peckem's office in a mood of grave discontent.
General Peckem welcomed Colonel Scheisskopf with effusive charm and said he was delighted to have
him. An additional colonel on his staff meant that he could now begin agitating for two additional majors, four
additional captains, sixteen additional lieutenants and untold quantities of additional enlisted men, typewriters,
desks, filing cabinets, automobiles and other substantial equipment and supplies that would contribute to the
prestige of his position and increase his striking power in the war he had declared against General Dreedle. He
now had two full colonels; General Dreedle had only five, and four of those were combat commanders. With
almost no intriguing at all, General Peckem had executed a maneuver that would eventually double his
strength. And General Dreedle was getting drunk more often. The future looked wonderful, and General
Peckem contemplated his bright new colonel enchantedly with an effulgent smile.
In all matters of consequence, General P. P. Peckem was, as he always remarked when he was about to
criticize the work of some close associate publicly, a realist. He was a handsome, pink-skinned man of
fifty-three. His manner was always casual and relaxed, and his uniforms were custom-made. He had
silver-gray hair, slightly myopic eyes and thin, overhanging, sensual lips. He was a perceptive, graceful,
sophisticated man who was sensitive to everyone's weaknesses but his own and found everyone absurd but
himself. General Peckem laid great, fastidious stress on small matters of taste and style. He was always
augmenting things. Approaching events were never coming, but always upcoming. It was not true that he
wrote memorandums praising himself and recommending that his authority be enhanced to include all combat
operations; he wrote memoranda. And the prose in the memoranda of other officers was always turgid, stilted,
or ambiguous. The errors of others were inevitably deplorable. Regulations were stringent, and his data never
was obtained from a reliable source, but always were obtained. General Peckem was frequently constrained.
Things were often incumbent upon him, and he frequently acted with greatest reluctance. It never escaped his
memory that neither black nor white was a color, and he never used verbal when he meant oral. He could
quote glibly from Plato, Nietzsche, Montaigne, Theodore Roosevelt, the Marquis de Sade and Warren G.
Harding. A virgin audience like Colonel Scheisskopf was grist for General Peckem's mill, a stimulating
opportunity to throw open his whole dazzling erudite treasure house of puns, wisecracks, slanders, homilies,
anecdotes, proverbs, epigrams, apophthegms, bon mots and other pungent sayings. He beamed urbanely as he
began orienting Colonel Scheisskopf to his new surroundings.
"My only fault," he observed with practiced good humor, watching for the effect of his words, "is that I
have no faults."
Colonel Scheisskopf didn't laugh, and General Peckem was stunned. A heavy doubt crushed his
enthusiasm. He had just opened with one of his most trusted paradoxes, and he was positively alarmed that not
the slightest flicker of acknowledgment had moved across that impervious face, which began to remind him
suddenly, in hue and texture, of an unused soap eraser. Perhaps Colonel Scheisskopf was tired, General
Peckem granted to himself charitably; he had come a long way, and everything was unfamiliar. General
Peckem's attitude toward all the personnel in his command, officers and enlisted men, was marked by the
same easy spirit of tolerance and permissiveness. He mentioned often that if the people who worked for him
met him halfway, he would meet them more than halfway, with the result, as he always added with an astute
chuckle, that there was never any meeting of the minds at all. General Peckem thought of himself as aesthetic
and intellectual. When people disagreed with him, he urged them to be objective.
And it was indeed an objective Peckem who gazed at Colonel Scheisskopf encouragingly and resumed his
indoctrination with an attitude of magnanimous forgiveness. "You've come to us just in time, Scheisskopf. The
summer offensive has petered out, thanks to the incompetent leadership with which we supply our troops, and
I have a crying need for a tough, experienced, competent officer like you to help produce the memoranda upon
which we rely so heavily to let people know how good we are and how much work we're turning out. I hope
you are a prolific writer."
"I don't know anything about writing," Colonel Scheisskopf retorted sullenly.
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"Well, don't let that trouble you," General Peckem continued with a careless flick of his wrist. "Just pass
the work I assign you along to somebody else and trust to luck. We call that delegation of responsibility.
Somewhere down near the lowest level of this co-ordinated organization I run are people who do get the work
done when it reaches them, and everything manages to run along smoothly without too much effort on my
part. I suppose that's because I am a good executive. Nothing we do in this large department of ours is really
very important, and there's never any rush. On the other hand, it is important that we let people know we do a
great deal of it. Let me know if you find yourself shorthanded. I've already put in a requisition for two majors,
four captains and sixteen lieutenants to give you a hand. While none of the work we do is very important, it is
important that we do a great deal of it. Don't you agree?"
"What about the parades?" Colonel Scheisskopf broke in.
"What parades?" inquired General Peckem with a feeling that his polish just wasn't getting across.
"Won't I be able to conduct parades every Sunday afternoon?" Colonel Scheisskopf demanded petulantly.
"No. Of course not. What ever gave you that idea?"
"But they said I could."
"Who said you could?"
"The officers who sent me overseas. They told me I'd be able to march the men around in parades all I
wanted to."
"They lied to you."
"That wasn't fair, sir."
"I'm sorry, Scheisskopf. I'm willing to do everything I can to make you happy here, but parades are out of
the question. We don't have enough men in our own organization to make up much of a parade, and the
combat units would rise up in open rebellion if we tried to make them march. I'm afraid you'll just have to
hold back awhile until we get control. Then you can do what you want with the men."
"What about my wife?" Colonel Scheisskopf demanded with disgruntled suspicion. "I'll still be able to send
for her, won't I?"
"Your wife? Why in the world should you want to?"
"A husband and wife should be together."
"That's out of the question also."
"But they said I could send for her!"
"They lied to you again."
"They had no right to lie to me!" Colonel Scheisskopf protested, his eyes wetting with indignation.
"Of course they had a right," General Peckem snapped with cold and calculated severity, resolving right
then and there to test the mettle of his new colonel under fire. "Don't be such an ass, Scheisskopf. People have
a right to do anything that's not forbidden by law, and there's no law against lying to you. Now, don't ever
waste my time with such sentimental platitudes again. Do you hear?"
"Yes, sir," murmured Colonel Scheisskopf
Colonel Scheisskopf wilted pathetically, and General Peckem blessed the fates that had sent him a
weakling for a subordinate. A man of spunk would have been unthinkable. Having won, General Peckem
relented. He did not enjoy humiliating his men. "If your wife were a Wac, I could probably have her
transferred here. But that's the most I can do."
"She has a friend who's a Wac," Colonel Scheisskopf offered hopefully.
"I'm afraid that isn't good enough. Have Mrs. Scheisskopf join the Wacs if she wants to, and I'll bring her
over here. But in the meantime, my dear Colonel, let's get back to our little war, if we may. Here, briefly, is
the military situation that confronts us." General Peckem rose and moved toward a rotary rack of enormous
colored maps.
Colonel Scheisskopf blanched. "We're not going into combat, are we?" he blurted out in horror.
"Oh, no, of course not," General Peckem assured him indulgently, with a companionable laugh. "Please
give me some credit, won't you? That's why we're still down here in Rome. Certainly, I'd like to be up in
Florence, too, where I could keep in closer touch with ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen. But Florence is still a bit too
near the actual fighting to suit me." General Peckem lifted a wooden pointer and swept the rubber tip
cheerfully across Italy from one coast to the other. "These, Scheisskopf, are the Germans. They're dug into
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these mountains very solidly in the Gothic Line and won't be pushed out till late next spring, although that isn't
going to stop those clods we have in charge from trying. That gives us in Special Services almost nine months
to achieve our objective. And that objective is to capture every bomber group in the U.S. Air Force. After all,"
said General Peckem with his low, well-modulated chuckle, "if dropping bombs on the enemy isn't a special
service, I wonder what in the world is. Don't you agree?" Colonel Scheisskopf gave no indication that he did
agree, but General Peckem was already too entranced with his own loquacity to notice. "Our position right
now is excellent. Reinforcements like yourself keep arriving, and we have more than enough time to plan our
entire strategy carefully. Our immediate goal," he said, "is right here." And General Peckem swung his pointer
south to the island of Pianosa and tapped it significantly upon a large word that had been lettered on there with
black grease pencil. The word was DREEDLE.
Colonel Scheisskopf, squinting, moved very close to the map, and for the first time since he entered the
room a light of comprehension shed a dim glow over his stolid face. "I think I understand," he exclaimed.
"Yes, I know I understand. Our first job is to capture Dreedle away from the enemy. Right?"
General Peckem laughed benignly. "No, Scheisskopf. Dreedle's on our side, and Dreedle is the enemy.
General Dreedle commands four bomb groups that we simply must capture in order to continue our offensive.
Conquering General Dreedle will give us the aircraft and vital bases we need to carry our operations into other
areas. And that battle, by the way, is just about won." General Peckem drifted toward the window, laughing
quietly again, and settled back against the sill with his arms folded, greatly satisfied by his own wit and by his
knowledgeable, blase impudence. The skilled choice of words he was exercising was exquisitely titillating.
General Peckem liked listening to himself talk, like most of all listening to himself talk about himself.
"General Dreedle simply doesn't know how to cope with me," he gloated. "I keep invading his jurisdiction
with comments and criticisms that are really none of my business, and he doesn't know what to do about it.
When he accuses me of seeking to undermine him, I merely answer that my only purpose in calling attention
to his errors is to strengthen our war effort by eliminating inefficiency. Then I ask him innocently if he's
opposed to improving our war effort. Oh, he grumbles and he bristles and he bellows, but he's really quite
helpless. He's simply out of style. He's turning into quite a souse, you know. The poor blockhead shouldn't
even be a general. He has no tone, no tone at all. Thank God he isn't going to last." General Peckem chuckled
with jaunty relish and sailed smoothly along toward a favorite learned allusion. "I sometimes think of myself
as Fortinbras-ha, ha-in the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, who just keeps circling and circling around
the action until everything else falls apart, and then strolls in at the end to pick up all the pieces for himself.
Shakespeare is-"
"I don't know anything about plays," Colonel Scheisskopf broke in bluntly.
General Peckem looked at him with amazement. Never before had a reference of his to Shakespeare's
hallowed Hamlet been ignored and trampled upon with such rude indifference. He began to wonder with
genuine concern just what sort of shithead the Pentagon had foisted on him. "What do you know about?" he
asked acidly.
"Parades," answered Colonel Scheisskopf eagerly. "Will I be able to send out memos about parades?"
"As long as you don't schedule any." General Peckem returned to his chair still wearing a frown. "And as
long as they don't interfere with your main assignment of recommending that the authority of Special Services
be expanded to include combat activities."
"Can I schedule parades and then call them off?"
General Peckem brightened instantly. "Why, that's a wonderful idea! But just send out weekly
announcements postponing the parades. Don't even bother to schedule them. That would be infinitely more
disconcerting." General Peckem was blossoming spryly with cordiality again. "Yes, Scheisskopf," he said, "I
think you've really hit on something. After all, what combat commander could possibly quarrel with us for
notifying his men that there won't be a parade that coming Sunday? We'd be merely stating a widely known
fact. But the implication is beautiful. Yes, positively beautiful. We're implying that we could schedule a
parade if we chose to. I'm going to like you, Scheisskopf. Stop in and introduce yourself to Colonel Cargill
and tell him what you're up to. I know you two will like each other."
Colonel Cargill came storming into General Peckem's office a minute later in a furor of timid resentment.
"I've been here longer than Scheisskopf," he complained. "Why can't I be the one to call off the parades?"
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"Because Scheisskopf has experience with parades, and you haven't. You can call off U.S.O. shows if you
want to. In fact why don't you? Just think of all the places that won't be getting a U.S.O. show on any given
day. Think of all the places each big-name entertainer won't be visiting. Yes, Cargill, I think you've hit on
something. I think you've just thrown open a whole new area of operation for us. Tell Colonel Scheisskopf I
want him to work along under your supervision on this. And send him in to see me when you're through
giving him instructions."
"Colonel Cargill says you told him you want me to work along under his supervision on the U.S.O.
project," Colonel Scheisskopf complained.
"I told him no such thing," answered General Peckem. "Confidentially, Scheisskopf, I'm not too happy with
Colonel Cargill. He's bossy and he's slow. I'd like you to keep a close eye on what he's doing and see if you
can't get a little more work out of him."
"He keeps butting in," Colonel Cargill protested. "He won't let me get any work done."
"There's something very funny about Scheisskopf," General Peckem agreed reflectively. "Keep a very close
eye on him and see if you can't find out what he's up to."
"Now he's butting into my business!" Colonel Scheisskopf cried.
"Don't let it worry you, Scheisskopf," said General Peckem, congratulating himself on how adeptly he had
fit Colonel Scheisskopf into his standard method of operation. Already his two colonels were barely on
speaking terms. "Colonel Cargill envies you because of the splendid job you're doing on parades. He's afraid
I'm going to put you in charge of bomb patterns."
Colonel Scheisskopf was all ears. "What are bomb patterns?"
"Bomb patterns?" General Peckem repeated, twinkling with self-satisfied good humor. "A bomb pattern is
a term I dreamed up just several weeks ago. It means nothing, but you'd be surprised at how rapidly it's caught
on. Why, I've got all sorts of people convinced I think it's important for the bombs to explode close together
and make a neat aerial photograph. There's one colonel in Pianosa who's hardly concerned any more with
whether he hits the target or not. Let's fly over and have some fun with him today. It will make Colonel Cargill
jealous, and I learned from Wintergreen this morning that General Dreedle will be off in Sardinia. It drives
General Dreedle insane to find out I've been inspecting one of his installations while he's been off inspecting
another. We may even get there in time for the briefing. They'll be bombing a tiny undefended village,
reducing the whole community to rubble. I have it from Wintergreen-Wintergreen's an ex-sergeant now, by
the way-that the mission is entirely unnecessary. Its only purpose is to delay German reinforcements at a time
when we aren't even planning an offensive. But that's the way things go when you elevate mediocre people to
positions of authority." He gestured languidly toward his gigantic map of Italy. "Why, this tiny mountain
village is so insignificant that it isn't even there."
They arrived at Colonel Cathcart's group too late to attend the preliminary briefing and hear Major Danby
insist, "But it is there, I tell you. It's there, it's there."
"It's where?" Dunbar demanded defiantly, pretending not to see.
"It's right there on the map where this road makes this slight turn. Can't you see this slight turn on your
map?"
"No, I can't see it."
"I can see it," volunteered Havermeyer, and marked the spot on Dunbar's map. "And here's a good picture
of the village right on these photographs. I understand the whole thing. The purpose of the mission is to knock
the whole village sliding down the side of the mountain and create a roadblock that the Germans will have to
clear. Is that right?"
"That's right," said Major Danby, mopping his perspiring forehead with his handkerchief. "I'm glad
somebody here is beginning to understand. These two armored divisions will be coming down from Austria
into Italy along this road. The village is built on such a steep incline that all the rubble from the houses and
other buildings you destroy will certainly tumble right down and pile upon the road."
"What the hell difference will it make?" Dunbar wanted to know, as Yossarian watched him excitedly with
a mixture of awe and adulation. "It will only take them a couple of days to clear it."
Major Danby was trying to avoid an argument. "Well, it apparently makes some difference to
Headquarters," he answered in a conciliatory tone. "I suppose that's why they ordered the mission."
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"Have the people in the village been warned?" asked McWatt.
Major Danby was dismayed that McWatt too was registering opposition. "No, I don't think so."
"Haven't we dropped any leaflets telling them that this time we'll be flying over to hit them?" asked
Yossarian. "Can't we even tip them off so they'll get out of the way?"
"No, I don't think so." Major Danby was swearing some more and still shifting his eyes about uneasily.
"The Germans might find out and choose another road. I'm not sure about any of this. I'm just making
assumptions."
"They won't even take shelter," Dunbar argued bitterly. "They'll pour out into the streets to wave when they
see our planes coming, all the children and dogs and old people. Jesus Christ! Why can't we leave them
alone?"
"Why can't we create the roadblock somewhere else?" asked McWatt. "Why must it be there?"
"I don't know," Major Danby answered unhappily. "I don't know. Look, fellows, we've got to have some
confidence in the people above us who issue our orders. They know what they're doing."
"The hell they do," said Dunbar.
"What's the trouble?" inquired Colonel Korn, moving leisurely across the briefing room with his hands in
his pockets and his tan shirt baggy.
"Oh, no trouble, Colonel," said Major Danby, trying nervously to cover up. "We're just discussing the
mission."
"They don't want to bomb the village," Havermeyer snickered, giving Major Danby away.
"You prick!" Yossarian said to Havermeyer.
"You leave Havermeyer alone," Colonel Korn ordered Yossarian curtly. He recognized Yossarian as the
drunk who had accosted him roughly at the officers' club one night before the first mission to Bologna, and he
swung his displeasure prudently to Dunbar. "Why don't you want to bomb the village?"
"It's cruel, that's why."
"Cruel?" asked Colonel Korn with cold good humor, frightened only momentarily by the uninhibited
vehemence of Dunbar's hostility. "Would it be any less cruel to let those two German divisions down to fight
with our troops? American lives are at stake, too, you know. Would you rather see American blood spilled?"
"American blood is being spilled. But those people are living up there in peace. Why can't we leave them
the hell alone?"
"Yes, it's easy for you to talk," Colonel Korn jeered. "You're safe here in Pianosa. It won't make any
difference to you when these German reinforcements arrive, will it?"
Dunbar turned crimson with embarrassment and replied in a voice that was suddenly defensive. "Why can't
we create the roadblock somewhere else? Couldn't we bomb the slope of a mountain or the road itself?"
"Would you rather go back to Bologna?" The question, asked quietly, rang out like a shot and created a
silence in the room that was awkward and menacing. Yossarian prayed intensely, with shame, that Dunbar
would keep his mouth shut. Dunbar dropped his gaze, and Colonel Korn knew he had won. "No, I thought
not," he continued with undisguised scorn. "You know, Colonel Cathcart and I have to go to a lot of trouble to
get you a milk run like this. If you'd sooner fly missions to Bologna, Spezia and Ferrara, we can get those
targets with no trouble at all." His eyes gleamed dangerously behind his rimless glasses, and his muddy jowls
were square and hard. "Just let me know."
"I would," responded Havermeyer eagerly with another boastful snicker. "I like to fly into Bologna straight
and level with my head in the bombsight and listen to all that flak pumping away all around me. I get a big
kick out of the way the men come charging over to me after the mission and call me dirty names. Even the
enlisted men get sore enough to curse me and want to take socks at me."
Colonel Korn chucked Havermeyer under the chin jovially, ignoring him, and then addressed himself to
Dunbar and Yossarian in a dry monotone. "You've got my sacred word for it. Nobody is more distressed about
those lousy wops up in the hills than Colonel Cathcart and myself. Mais c"est la guerre. Try to remember that
we didn't start the war and Italy did. That we weren't the aggressors and Italy was. And that we couldn't
possibly inflict as much cruelty on the Italians, Germans, Russians and Chinese as they're already inflicting on
themselves." Colonel Korn gave Major Danby's shoulder a friendly squeeze without changing his unfriendly
expression. "Carry on with the briefing, Danby. And make sure they understand the importance of a tight
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bomb pattern."
"Oh, no, Colonel," Major Danby blurted out, blinking upward. "Not for this target. I've told them to space
their bombs sixty feet apart so that we'll have a roadblock the full length of the village instead of in just one
spot. It will be a much more effective roadblock with a loose bomb pattern."
"We don't care about the roadblock," Colonel Korn informed him. "Colonel Cathcart wants to come out of
this mission with a good clean aerial photograph he won't be ashamed to send through channels. Don't forget
that General Peckem will be here for the full briefing, and you know how he feels about bomb patterns.
Incidentally, Major, you'd better hurry up with these details and clear out before he gets here. General Peckem
can't stand you."
"Oh, no, Colonel," Major Danby corrected obligingly. "It's General Dreedle who can't stand me."
"General Peckem can't stand you either. In fact, no one can stand you. Finish what you're doing, Danby,
and disappear. I'll conduct the briefing."
"Where's Major Danby?" Colonel Cathcart inquired, after he had driven up for the full briefing with
General Peckem and Colonel Scheisskopf.
"He asked permission to leave as soon as he saw you driving up," answered Colonel Korn. "He's afraid
General Peckem doesn't like him. I was going to conduct the briefing anyway. I do a much better job."
"Splendid!" said Colonel Cathcart. "No!" Colonel Cathcart countermanded himself an instant later when he
remembered how good a job Colonel Korn had done before General Dreedle at the first Avignon briefing. "I'll
do it myself."
Colonel Cathcart braced himself with the knowledge that he was one of General Peckem's favorites and
took charge of the meeting, snapping his words out crisply to the attentive audience of subordinate officers
with the bluff and dispassionate toughness he had picked up from General Dreedle. He knew he cut a fine
figure there on the platform with his open shirt collar, his cigarette holder, and his close-cropped, gray-tipped
curly black hair. He breezed along beautifully, even emulating certain characteristic mispronunciations of
General Dreedle's, and he was not the least bit intimidated by General Peckem's new colonel until he suddenly
recalled that General Peckem detested General Dreedle. Then his voice cracked, and all confidence left him.
He stumbled ahead through instinct in burning humiliation. He was suddenly in terror of Colonel Scheisskopf.
Another colonel in the area meant another rival, another enemy, another person who hated him. And this one
was tough! A horrifying thought occurred to Colonel Cathcart: Suppose Colonel Scheisskopf had already
bribed all the men in the room to begin moaning, as they had done at the first Avignon mission. How could he
silence them? What a terrible black eye that would be! Colonel Cathcart was seized with such fright that he
almost beckoned to Colonel Korn. Somehow he held himself together and synchronized the watches. When he
had done that, he knew he had won, for he could end now at any time. He had come through in a crisis. He
wanted to laugh in Colonel Scheisskopf's face with triumph and spite. He had proved himself brilliantly under
pressure, and he concluded the briefing with an inspiring peroration that every instinct told him was a
masterful exhibition of eloquent tact and subtlety.
"Now, men," he exhorted. "We have with us today a very distinguished guest, General Peckem from
Special Services, the man who gives us all our softball bats, comic books and U.S.O. shows. I want to dedicate
this mission to him. Go on out there and bomb-for me, for your country, for God, and for that great American,
General P. P. Peckem. And let's see you put all those bombs on a dime!"
30 DUNBAR
Yossarian no longer gave a damn where his bombs fell, although he did not go as far as Dunbar, who
dropped his bombs hundreds of yards past the village and would face a court-martial if it could ever be shown
he had done it deliberately. Without a word even to Yossarian, Dunbar had washed his hands of the mission.
The fall in the hospital had either shown him the light or scrambled his brains; it was impossible to say which.
Dunbar seldom laughed any more and seemed to be wasting away. He snarled belligerently at superior
officers, even at Major Danby, and was crude and surly and profane even in front of the chaplain, who was
afraid of Dunbar now and seemed to be wasting away also. The chaplain's pilgrimage to Wintergreen had
proved abortive; another shrine was empty. Wintergreen was too busy to see the chaplain himself. A brash
assistant brought the chaplain a stolen Zippo cigarette lighter as a gift and informed him condescendingly that
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Wintergreen was too deeply involved with wartime activities to concern himself with matters so trivial as the
number of missions men had to fly. The chaplain worried about Dunbar and brooded more over Yossarian
now that Orr was gone. To the chaplain, who lived by himself in a spacious tent whose pointy top sealed him
in gloomy solitude each night like the cap of a tomb, it seemed incredible that Yossarian really preferred
living alone and wanted no roommates.
As a lead bombardier again, Yossarian had McWatt for a pilot, and that was one consolation, although he
was still so utterly undefended. There was no way to fight back. He could not even see McWatt and the
co-pilot from his post in the nose. All he could ever see was Aarfy, with whose fustian, moon-faced ineptitude
he had finally lost all patience, and there were minutes of agonizing fury and frustration in the sky when he
hungered to be demoted again to a wing plane with a loaded machine gun in the compartment instead of the
precision bombsight that he really had no need for, a powerful, heavy fifty-caliber machine gun he could seize
vengefully in both hands and turn loose savagely against all the demons tyrannizing him: at the smoky black
puffs of the flak itself; at the German antiaircraft gunners below whom he could not even see and could not
possibly harm with his machine gun even if he ever did take the time to open fire, at Havermeyer and Appleby
in the lead plane for their fearless straight and level bomb run on the second mission to Bologna where the flak
from two hundred and twenty-four cannons had knocked out one of Orr's engines for the very last time and
sent him down ditching into the sea between Genoa and La Spezia just before the brief thunderstorm broke.
Actually, there was not much he could do with that powerful machine gun except load it and test-fire a few
rounds. It was no more use to him than the bombsight. He could really cut loose with it against attacking
German fighters, but there were no German fighters any more, and he could not even swing it all the way
around into the helpless faces of pilots like Huple and Dobbs and order them back down carefully to the
ground, as he had once ordered Kid Sampson back down, which is exactly what he did want to do to Dobbs
and Huple on the hideous first mission to Avignon the moment he realized the fantastic pickle he was in, the
moment he found himself aloft in a wing plane with Dobbs and Huple in a flight headed by Havermeyer and
Appleby. Dobbs and Huple? Huple and Dobbs? Who were they? What preposterous madness to float in thin
air two miles high on an inch or two of metal, sustained from death by the meager skill and intelligence of two
vapid strangers, a beardless kid named Huple and a nervous nut like Dobbs, who really did go nuts right there
in the plane, running amuck over the target without leaving his copilot's seat and grabbing the controls from
Huple to plunge them all down into that chilling dive that tore Yossarian's headset loose and brought them
right back inside the dense flak from which they had almost escaped. The next thing he knew, another
stranger, a radio-gunner named Snowden, was dying in back. It was impossible to be positive that Dobbs had
killed him, for when Yossarian plugged his headset back in, Dobbs was already on the intercom pleading for
someone to go up front and help the bombardier. And almost immediately Snowden broke in, whimpering,
"Help me. Please help me. I'm cold. I'm cold." And Yossarian crawled slowly out of the nose and up on top of
the bomb bay and wriggled back into the rear section of the plane-passing the first-aid kit on the way that he
had to return for-to treat Snowden for the wrong wound, the yawning, raw, melon-shaped hole as big as a
football in the outside of his thigh, the unsevered, blood-soaked muscle fibers inside pulsating weirdly like
blind things with lives of their own, the oval, naked wound that was almost a foot long and made Yossarian
moan in shock and sympathy the instant he spied it and nearly made him vomit. And the small, slight
tail-gunner was lying on the floor beside Snowden in a dead faint, his face as white as a handkerchief, so that
Yossarian sprang forward with revulsion to help him first.
Yes, in the long run, he was much safer flying with McWatt, and he was not even safe with McWatt, who
loved flying too much and went buzzing boldly inches off the ground with Yossarian in the nose on the way
back from the training flight to break in the new bombardier in the whole replacement crew Colonel Cathcart
had obtained after Orr was lost. The practice bomb range was on the other side of Pianosa, and, flying back,
McWatt edged the belly of the lazing, slow-cruising plane just over the crest of mountains in the middle and
then, instead of maintaining altitude, jolted both engines open all the way, lurched up on one side and, to
Yossarian's astonishment, began following the falling land down as fast as the plane would go, wagging his
wings gaily and skimming with a massive, grinding, hammering roar over each rocky rise and dip of the
rolling terrain like a dizzy gull over wild brown waves. Yossarian was petrified. The new bombardier beside
him sat demurely with a bewitched grin and kept whistling "Whee!" and Yossarian wanted to reach out and
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crush his idiotic face with one hand as he flinched and flung himself away from the boulders and hillocks and
lashing branches of trees that loomed up above him out in front and rushed past just underneath in a sinking,
streaking blur. No one had a right to take such frightful risks with his life.
"Go up, go up, go up!" he shouted frantically at McWatt, hating him venomously, but McWatt was singing
buoyantly over the intercom and probably couldn't hear. Yossarian, blazing with rage and almost sobbing for
revenge, hurled himself down into the crawlway and fought his way through against the dragging weight of
gravity and inertia until he arrived at the main section and pulled himself up to the flight deck, to stand
trembling behind McWatt in the pilot's seat. He looked desperately about for a gun, a gray-black .45 automatic
that he could cock and ram right up against the base of McWatt's skull. There was no gun. There was no
hunting knife either, and no other weapon with which he could bludgeon or stab, and Yossarian grasped and
jerked the collar of McWatt's coveralls in tightening fists and shouted to him to go up, go up. The land was
still swimming by underneath and flashing by overhead on both sides. McWatt looked back at Yossarian and
laughed joyfully as though Yossarian were sharing his fun. Yossarian slid both hands around McWatt's bare
throat and squeezed. McWatt turned stiff:
"Go up," Yossarian ordered unmistakably through his teeth in a low, menacing voice. "Or I'll kill you."
Rigid with caution, McWatt cut the motors back and climbed gradually. Yossarian's hands weakened on
McWatt's neck and slid down off his shoulders to dangle inertly. He was not angry any more. He was
ashamed. When McWatt turned, he was sorry the hands were his and wished there were someplace where he
could bury them. They felt dead.
McWatt gazed at him deeply. There was no friendliness in his stare. "Boy," he said coldly, "you sure must
be in pretty bad shape. You ought to go home."
"They won't let me." Yossarian answered with averted eyes, and crept away.
Yossarian stepped down from the flight deck and seated himself on the floor, hanging his head with guilt
and remorse. He was covered with sweat.
McWatt set course directly back toward the field. Yossarian wondered whether McWatt would now go to
the operations tent to see Piltchard and Wren and request that Yossarian never be assigned to his plane again,
just as Yossarian had gone surreptitiously to speak to them about Dobbs and Huple and Orr and,
unsuccessfully, about Aarfy. He had never seen McWatt look displeased before, had never seen him in any but
the most lighthearted mood, and he wondered whether he had just lost another friend.
But McWatt winked at him reassuringly as he climbed down from the plane and joshed hospitably with the
credulous new pilot and bombardier during the jeep ride back to the squadron, although he did not address a
word to Yossarian until all four had returned their parachutes and separated and the two of them were walking
side by side toward their own row of tents. Then McWatt's sparsely freckled tan Scotch-Irish face broke
suddenly into a smile and he dug his knuckles playfully into Yossarian's ribs, as though throwing a punch.
"You louse," he laughed. "Were you really going to kill me up there?"
Yossarian grinned penitently and shook his head. "No. I don't think so."
"I didn't realize you got it so bad. Boy! Why don't you talk to somebody about it?"
"I talk to everybody about it. What the hell's the matter with you? Don't you ever hear me?"
"I guess I never really believed you."
"Aren't you ever afraid?"
"Maybe I ought to be."
"Not even on the missions?"
"I guess I just don't have brains enough." McWatt laughed sheepishly.
"There are so many ways for me to get killed," Yossarian commented, "and you had to find one more."
McWatt smiled again. "Say, I bet it must really scare you when I buzz your tent, huh?"
"It scares me to death. I've told you that."
"I thought it was just the noise you were complaining about." McWatt made a resigned shrug. "Oh, well,
what the hell," he sang. "I guess I'll just have to give it up."
But McWatt was incorrigible, and, while he never buzzed Yossarian's tent again, he never missed an
opportunity to buzz the beach and roar like a fierce and low-flying thunderbolt over the raft in the water and
the secluded hollow in the sand where Yossarian lay feeling up Nurse Duckett or playing hearts, poker or
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pinochle with Nately, Dunbar and Hungry Joe. Yossarian met Nurse Duckett almost every afternoon that both
were free and came with her to the beach on the other side of the narrow swell of shoulder-high dunes
separating them from the area in which the other officers and enlisted men went swimming nude. Nately,
Dunbar and Hungry Joe would come there, too. McWatt would occasionally join them, and often Aarfy, who
always arrived pudgily in full uniform and never removed any of his clothing but his shoes and his hat; Aarfy
never went swimming. The other men wore swimming trunks in deference to Nurse Duckett, and in deference
also to Nurse Cramer, who accompanied Nurse Duckett and Yossarian to the beach every time and sat
haughtily by herself ten yards away. No one but Aarfy ever made reference to the naked men sun-bathing in
full view farther down the beach or jumping and diving from the enormous white-washed raft that bobbed on
empty oil drums out beyond the silt sand. Nurse Cramer sat by herself because she was angry with Yossarian
and disappointed in Nurse Duckett.
Nurse Sue Ann Duckett despised Aarfy, and that was another one of the numerous fetching traits about
Nurse Duckett that Yossarian enjoyed. He enjoyed Nurse Sue Ann Duckett's long white legs and supple,
callipygous ass; he often neglected to remember that she was quite slim and fragile from the waist up and hurt
her unintentionally in moments of passion when he hugged her too roughly. He loved her manner of sleepy
acquiescence when they lay on the beach at dusk. He drew solace and sedation from her nearness. He had a
craving to touch her always, to remain always in physical communication. He liked to encircle her ankle
loosely with his fingers as he played cards with Nately, Dunbar and Hungry Joe, to lightly and lovingly caress
the downy skin of her fair, smooth thigh with the backs of his nails or, dreamily, sensuously, almost
unconsciously, slide his proprietary, respectful hand up the shell-like ridge of her spine beneath the elastic
strap of the top of the two-piece bathing suit she always wore to contain and cover her tiny, long-nippled
breasts. He loved Nurse Duckett's serene, flattered response, the sense of attachment to him she displayed
proudly. Hungry Joe had a craving to feel Nurse Duckett up, too, and was restrained more than once by
Yossarian's forbidding glower. Nurse Duckett flirted with Hungry Joe just to keep him in heat, and her round
light-brown eyes glimmered with mischief every time Yossarian rapped her sharply with his elbow or fist to
make her stop.
The men played cards on a towel, undershirt, or blanket, and Nurse Duckett mixed the extra deck of cards,
sitting with her back resting against a sand dune. When she was not shuffling the extra deck of cards, she sat
squinting into a tiny pocket mirror, brushing mascara on her curling reddish eyelashes in a birdbrained effort
to make them longer permanently. Occasionally she was able to stack the cards or spoil the deck in a way they
did not discover until they were well into the game, and she laughed and glowed with blissful gratification
when they all hurled their cards down disgustedly and began punching her sharply on the arms or legs as they
called her filthy names and warned her to stop fooling around. She would prattle nonsensically when they
were striving hardest to think, and a pink flush of elation crept into her cheeks when they gave her more sharp
raps on the arms and legs with their fists and told her to shut up. Nurse Duckett reveled in such attention and
ducked her short chestnut bangs with joy when Yossarian and the others focused upon her. It gave her a
peculiar feeling of warm and expectant well-being to know that so many naked boys and men were idling
close by on the other side of the sand dunes. She had only to stretch her neck or rise on some pretext to see
twenty or forty undressed males lounging or playing ball in the sunlight. Her own body was such a familiar
and unremarkable thing to her that she was puzzled by the convulsive ecstasy men could take from it, by the
intense and amusing need they had merely to touch it, to reach out urgently and press it, squeeze it, pinch it,
rub it. She did not understand Yossarian's lust; but she was willing to take his word for it.
Evenings when Yossarian felt horny he brought Nurse Duckett to the beach with two blankets and enjoyed
making love to her with most of their clothes on more than he sometimes enjoyed making love to all the
vigorous bare amoral girls in Rome. Frequently they went to the beach at night and did not make love, but just
lay shivering between the blankets against each other to ward off the brisk, damp chill. The ink-black nights
were turning cold, the stars frosty and fewer. The raft swayed in the ghostly trail of moonlight and seemed to
be sailing away. A marked hint of cold weather penetrated the air. Other men were just starting to build stoves
and came to Yossarian's tent during the day to marvel at Orr's workmanship. It thrilled Nurse Duckett
rapturously that Yossarian could not keep his hands off her when they were together, although she would not
let him slip them inside her bathing shorts during the day when anyone was near enough to see, not even when
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the only witness was Nurse Cramer, who sat on the other side of her sand dune with her reproving nose in the
air and pretended not to see anything.
Nurse Cramer had stopped speaking to Nurse Duckett, her best friend, because of her liaison with
Yossarian, but still went everywhere with Nurse Duckett since Nurse Duckett was her best friend. She did not
approve of Yossarian or his friends. When they stood up and went swimming with Nurse Duckett, Nurse
Cramer stood up and went swimming, too, maintaining the same ten-yard distance between them, and
maintaining her silence, snubbing them even in the water. When they laughed and splashed, she laughed and
splashed; when they dived, she dived; when they swam to the sand bar and rested, Nurse Cramer swam to the
sand bar and rested. When they came out, she came out, dried her shoulders with her own towel and seated
herself aloofly in her own spot, her back rigid and a ring of reflected sunlight burnishing her light-blond hair
like a halo. Nurse Cramer was prepared to begin talking to Nurse Duckett again if she repented and
apologized. Nurse Duckett preferred things the way they were. For a long time she had wanted to give Nurse
Cramer a rap to make her shut up.
Nurse Duckett found Yossarian wonderful and was already trying to change him. She loved to watch him
taking short naps with his face down and his arm thrown across her, or staring bleakly at the endless tame,
quiet waves breaking like pet puppy dogs against the shore, scampering lightly up the sand a foot or two and
then trotting away. She was calm in his silences. She knew she did not bore him, and she buffed or painted her
fingernails studiously while he dozed or brooded and the desultory warm afternoon breeze vibrated delicately
on the surface of the beach. She loved to look at his wide, long, sinewy back with its bronzed, unblemished
skin. She loved to bring him to flame instantly by taking his whole ear in her mouth suddenly and running her
hand down his front all the way. She loved to make him burn and suffer till dark, then satisfy him. Then kiss
him adoringly because she had brought him such bliss.
Yossarian was never lonely with Nurse Duckett, who really did know how to keep her mouth shut and was
just capricious enough. He was haunted and tormented by the vast, boundless ocean. He wondered mournfully,
as Nurse Duckett buffed her nails, about all the people who had died under water. There were surely more than
a million already. Where were they? What insects had eaten their flesh? He imagined the awful impotence of
breathing in helplessly quarts and quarts of water. Yossarian followed the small fishing boats and military
launches plying back and forth far out and found them unreal; it did not seem true that there were full-sized
men aboard, going somewhere every time. He looked toward stony Elba, and his eyes automatically searched
overhead for the fluffy, white, turnip-shaped cloud in which Clevinger had vanished. He peered at the
vaporous Italian skyline and thought of Orr. Clevinger and Orr. Where had they gone? Yossarian had once
stood on a jetty at dawn and watched a tufted round log that was drifting toward him on the tide turn
unexpectedly into the bloated face of a drowned man; it was the first dead person he had ever seen. He thirsted
for life and reached out ravenously to grasp and hold Nurse Duckett's flesh. He studied every floating object
fearfully for some gruesome sign of Clevinger and Orr, prepared for any morbid shock but the shock McWatt
gave him one day with the plane that came blasting suddenly into sight out of the distant stillness and hurtled
mercilessly along the shore line with a great growling, clattering roar over the bobbing raft on which blond,
pale Kid Sampson, his naked sides scrawny even from so far away, leaped clownishly up to touch it at the
exact moment some arbitrary gust of wind or minor miscalculation of McWatt's senses dropped the speeding
plane down just low enough for a propeller to slice him half away.
Even people who were not there remembered vividly exactly what happened next. There was the briefest,
softest tsst! filtering audibly through the shattering, overwhelming howl of the plane's engines, and then there
were just Kid Sampson's two pale, skinny legs, still joined by strings somehow at the bloody truncated hips,
standing stock-still on the raft for what seemed a full minute or two before they toppled over backward into
the water finally with a faint, echoing splash and turned completely upside down so that only the grotesque
toes and the plaster-white soles of Kid Sampson's feet remained in view.
On the beach, all hell broke loose. Nurse Cramer materialized out of thin air suddenly and was weeping
hysterically against Yossarian's chest while Yossarian hugged her shoulders and soothed her. His other arm
bolstered Nurse Duckett, who was trembling and sobbing against him, too, her long, angular face dead white.
Everyone at the beach was screaming and running, and the men sounded like women. They scampered for
their things in panic, stooping hurriedly and looking askance at each gentle, knee-high wave bubbling in as
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though some ugly, red, grisly organ like a liver or a lung might come washing right up against them. Those in
the water were struggling to get out, forgetting in their haste to swim, wailing, walking, held back in their
flight by the viscous, clinging sea as though by a biting wind.
Kid Sampson had rained all over. Those who spied drops of him on their limbs or torsos drew back with
terror and revulsion, as though trying to shrink away from their own odious skins. Everybody ran in a sluggish
stampede, shooting tortured, horrified glances back, filling the deep, shadowy, rustling woods with their frail
gasps and cries. Yossarian drove both stumbling, faltering women before him frantically, shoving them and
prodding them to make them hurry, and raced back with a curse to help when Hungry Joe tripped on the
blanket or the camera case he was carrying and fell forward on his face in the mud of the stream.
Back at the squadron everyone already knew. Men in uniform were screaming and running there too, or
standing motionless in one spot, rooted in awe, like Sergeant Knight and Doc Daneeka as they gravely craned
their heads upward and watched the guilty, banking, forlorn airplane with McWatt circle and circle slowly and
climb.
"Who is it?" Yossarian shouted anxiously at Doc Daneeka as he ran up, breathless and limp, his somber
eyes burning with a misty, hectic anguish. "Who's in the plane?"
"McWatt," said Sergeant Knight. "He's got the two new pilots with him on a training flight. Doc Daneeka's
up there, too."
"I'm right here," contended Doc Daneeka, in a strange and troubled voice, darting an anxious look at
Sergeant Knight.
"Why doesn't he come down?" Yossarian exclaimed in despair. "Why does he keep going up?"
"He's probably afraid to come down," Sergeant Knight answered, without moving his solemn gaze from
McWatt's solitary climbing airplane. "He knows what kind of trouble he's in."
And McWatt kept climbing higher and higher, nosing his droning airplane upward evenly in a slow, oval
spiral that carried him far out over the water as he headed south and far in over the russet foothills when he
had circled the landing field again and was flying north. He was soon up over five thousand feet. His engines
were soft as whispers. A white parachute popped open suddenly in a surprising puff. A second parachute
popped open a few minutes later and coasted down, like the first, directly in toward the clearing of the landing
strip. There was no motion on the ground. The plane continued south for thirty seconds more, following the
same pattern, familiar and predictable now, and McWatt lifted a wing and banked gracefully around into his
turn.
"Two more to go," said Sergeant Knight. "McWatt and Doc Daneeka."
"I'm right here, Sergeant Knight," Doc Daneeka told him plaintively. "I'm not in the plane."
"Why don't they jump?" Sergeant Knight asked, pleading aloud to himself. "Why don't they jump?"
"It doesn't make sense," grieved Doc Daneeka, biting his lip. "It just doesn't make sense."
But Yossarian understood suddenly why McWatt wouldn't jump, and went running uncontrollably down
the whole length of the squadron after McWatt's plane, waving his arms and shouting up at him imploringly to
come down, McWatt, come down; but no one seemed to hear, certainly not McWatt, and a great, choking
moan tore from Yossarian's throat as McWatt turned again, dipped his wings once in salute, decided oh, well,
what the hell, and flew into a mountain.
Colonel Cathcart was so upset by the deaths of Kid Sampson and McWatt that he raised the missions to
sixty-five.
31 MRS. DANEEKA
When Colonel Cathcart learned that Doc Daneeka too had been killed in McWatt's plane, he increased the
number of missions to seventy.
The first person in the squadron to find out that Doc Daneeka was dead was Sergeant Towser, who had
been informed earlier by the man in the control tower that Doc Daneeka's name was down as a passenger on
the pilot's manifest McWatt had filed before taking off. Sergeant Towser brushed away a tear and struck Doc
Daneeka's name from the roster of squadron personnel. With lips still quivering, he rose and trudged outside
reluctantly to break the bad news to Gus and Wes, discreetly avoiding any conversation with Doc Daneeka
himself as he moved by the flight surgeon's slight sepulchral figure roosting despondently on his stool in the
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late-afternoon sunlight between the orderly room and the medical tent. Sergeant Towser's heart was heavy;
now he had two dead men on his hands-Mudd, the dead man in Yossarian's tent who wasn't even there, and
Doc Daneeka, the new dead man in the squadron, who most certainly was there and gave every indication of
proving a still thornier administrative problem for him.
Gus and Wes listened to Sergeant Towser with looks of stoic surprise and said not a word about their
bereavement to anyone else until Doc Daneeka himself came in about an hour afterward to have his
temperature taken for the third time that day and his blood pressure checked. The thermometer registered a
half degree lower than his usual subnormal temperature of 96.8. Doc Daneeka was alarmed. The fixed, vacant,
wooden stares of his two enlisted men were even more irritating than always.
"Goddammit," he expostulated politely in an uncommon excess of exasperation, "what's the matter with
you two men anyway? It just isn't right for a person to have a low temperature all the time and walk around
with a stuffed nose." Doc Daneeka emitted a glum, self-pitying sniff and strolled disconsolately across the tent
to help himself to some aspirin and sulphur pills and paint his own throat with Argyrol. His downcast face was
fragile and forlorn as a swallow's, and he rubbed the back of his arms rhythmically. "Just look how cold I am
right now. You're sure you're not holding anything back?"
"You're dead, sir," one of his two enlisted men explained.
Doc Daneeka jerked his head up quickly with resentful distrust. "What's that?"
"You're dead, sir," repeated the other. "That's probably the reason you always feel so cold."
"That's right, sir. You've probably been dead all this time and we just didn't detect it."
"What the hell are you both talking about?" Doc Daneeka cried shrilly with a surging, petrifying sensation
of some onrushing unavoidable disaster.
"It's true, sir," said one of the enlisted men. "The records show that you went up in McWatt's plane to
collect some flight time. You didn't come down in a parachute, so you must have been killed in the crash."
"That's right, sir," said the other. "You ought to be glad you've got any temperature at all."
Doc Daneeka's mind was reeling in confusion. "Have you both gone crazy?" he demanded. "I'm going to
report this whole insubordinate incident to Sergeant Towser."
"Sergeant Towser's the one who told us about it," said either Gus or Wes. "The War Department's even
going to notify your wife."
Doc Daneeka yelped and ran out of the medical tent to remonstrate with Sergeant Towser, who edged away
from him with repugnance and advised Doc Daneeka to remain out of sight as much as possible until some
decision could be reached relating to the disposition of his remains.
"Gee, I guess he really is dead," grieved one of his enlisted men in a low, respectful voice. "I'm going to
miss him. He was a pretty wonderful guy, wasn't he?"
"Yeah, he sure was," mourned the other. "But I'm glad the little fuck is gone. I was getting sick and tired of
taking his blood pressure all the time."
Mrs. Daneeka, Doc Daneeka's wife, was not glad that Doc Daneeka was gone and split the peaceful Staten
Island night with woeful shrieks of lamentation when she learned by War Department telegram that her
husband had been killed in action. Women came to comfort her, and their husbands paid condolence calls and
hoped inwardly that she would soon move to another neighborhood and spare them the obligation of
continuous sympathy. The poor woman was totally distraught for almost a full week. Slowly, heroically, she
found the strength to contemplate a future filled with dire problems for herself and her children. Just as she
was growing resigned to her loss, the postman rang with a bolt from the blue-a letter from overseas that was
signed with her husband's signature and urged her frantically to disregard any bad news concerning him. Mrs.
Daneeka was dumbfounded. The date on the letter was illegible. The handwriting throughout was shaky and
hurried, but the style resembled her husband's and the melancholy, self-pitying tone was familiar, although
more dreary than usual. Mrs. Daneeka was overjoyed and wept irrepressibly with relief and kissed the
crinkled, grubby tissue of V-mail stationery a thousand times. She dashed a grateful note off to her husband
pressing him for details and sent a wire informing the War Department of its error. The War Department
replied touchily that there had been no error and that she was undoubtedly the victim of some sadistic and
psychotic forger in her husband's squadron. The letter to her husband was returned unopened, stamped
KILLED IN ACTION.
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Mrs. Daneeka had been widowed cruelly again, but this time her grief was mitigated somewhat by a
notification from Washington that she was sole beneficiary of her husband's $10,000 GI insurance policy,
which amount was obtainable by her on demand. The realization that she and the children were not faced
immediately with starvation brought a brave smile to her face and marked the turning point in her distress. The
Veterans Administration informed her by mail the very next day that she would be entitled to pension benefits
for the rest of her natural life because of her husband's demise, and to a burial allowance for him of $250. A
government check for $250 was enclosed. Gradually, inexorably, her prospects brightened. A letter arrived
that same week from the Social Security Administration stating that, under the provisions of the Old Age and
Survivors Insurance Act Of 1935, she would receive monthly support for herself and her dependent children
until they reached the age of eighteen, and a burial allowance of $250. With these government letters as proof
of death, she applied for payment on three life insurance policies Doc Daneeka had carried, with a value of
$50,000 each; her claim was honored and processed swiftly. Each day brought new unexpected treasures. A
key to a safe-deposit box led to a fourth life insurance policy with a face value of $50,000, and to $18,000 in
cash on which income tax had never been paid and need never be paid. A fraternal lodge to which he had
belonged gave her a cemetery plot. A second fraternal organization of which he had been a member sent her a
burial allowance of $250. His county medical association gave her a burial allowance of $250.
The husbands of her closest friends began to flirt with her. Mrs. Daneeka was simply delighted with the
way things were turning out and had her hair dyed. Her fantastic wealth just kept piling up, and she had to
remind herself daily that all the hundreds of thousands of dollars she was acquiring were not worth a single
penny without her husband to share this good fortune with her. It astonished her that so many separate
organizations were willing to do so much to bury Doc Daneeka, who, back in Pianosa, was having a terrible
time trying to keep his head above the ground and wondered with dismal apprehension why his wife did not
answer the letter he had written.
He found himself ostracized in the squadron by men who cursed his memory foully for having supplied
Colonel Cathcart with provocation to raise the number of combat missions. Records attesting to his death were
pullulating like insect eggs and verifying each other beyond all contention. He drew no pay or PX rations and
depended for life on the charity of Sergeant Towser and Milo, who both knew he was dead. Colonel Cathcart
refused to see him, and Colonel Korn sent word through Major Danby that he would have Doc Daneeka
cremated on the spot if he ever showed up at Group Headquarters. Major Danby confided that Group was
incensed with all flight surgeons because of Dr. Stubbs, the bushy-haired, baggy-chinned, slovenly flight
surgeon in Dunbar's squadron who was deliberately and defiantly brewing insidious dissension there by
grounding all men with sixty missions on proper forms that were rejected by Group indignantly with orders
restoring the confused pilots, navigators, bombardiers and gunners to combat duty. Morale there was ebbing
rapidly, and Dunbar was under surveillance. Group was glad Doc Daneeka had been killed and did not intend
to ask for a replacement.
Not even the chaplain could bring Doc Daneeka back to life under the circumstances. Alarm changed to
resignation, and more and more Doc Daneeka acquired the look of an ailing rodent. The sacks under his eyes
turned hollow and black, and he padded through the shadows fruitlessly like a ubiquitous spook. Even Captain
Flume recoiled when Doc Daneeka sought him out in the woods for help. Heartlessly, Gus and Wes turned
him away from their medical tent without even a thermometer for comfort, and then, only then, did he realize
that, to all intents and purposes, he really was dead, and that he had better do something damned fast if he ever
hoped to save himself.
There was nowhere else to turn but to his wife, and he scribbled an impassioned letter begging her to bring
his plight to the attention of the War Department and urging her to communicate at once with his group
commander, Colonel Cathcart, for assurances that-no matter what else she might have heard-it was indeed he,
her husband, Doc Daneeka, who was pleading with her, and not a corpse or some impostor. Mrs. Daneeka was
stunned by the depth of emotion in the almost illegible appeal. She was torn with compunction and tempted to
comply, but the very next letter she opened that day was from that same Colonel Cathcart, her husband's group
commander, and began:
Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. and Mrs. Daneeka: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I
experienced when your husband, son, father or brother was killed, wounded or reported missing in action.
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Mrs. Daneeka moved with her children to Lansing, Michigan, and left no forwarding address.
32 YO-YO's ROOMIES
Yossarian was warm when the cold weather came and whale-shaped clouds blew low through a dingy,
slate-gray sky, almost without end, like the droning, dark, iron flocks of B-17 and B-24 bombers from the
long-range air bases in Italy the day of the invasion of southern France two months earlier. Everyone in the
squadron knew that Kid Sampson's skinny legs had washed up on the wet sand to lie there and rot like a purple
twisted wishbone. No one would go to retrieve them, not Gus or Wes or even the men in the mortuary at the
hospital; everyone made believe that Kid Sampson's legs were not there, that they had bobbed away south
forever on the tide like all of Clevinger and Orr. Now that bad weather had come, almost no one ever sneaked
away alone any more to peek through bushes like a pervert at the moldering stumps.
There were no more beautiful days. There were no more easy missions. There was stinging rain and dull,
chilling fog, and the men flew at week-long intervals, whenever the weather cleared. At night the wind
moaned. The gnarled and stunted tree trunks creaked and groaned and forced Yossarian's thoughts each
morning, even before he was fully awake, back on Kid Sampson's skinny legs bloating and decaying, as
systematically as a ticking clock, in the icy rain and wet sand all through the blind, cold, gusty October nights.
After Kid Sampson's legs, he would think of pitiful, whimpering Snowden freezing to death in the rear section
of the plane, holding his eternal, immutable secret concealed inside his quilted, armor-plate flak suit until
Yossarian had finished sterilizing and bandaging the wrong wound on his leg, and then spilling it out suddenly
all over the floor. At night when he was trying to sleep, Yossarian would call the roll of all the men, women
and children he had ever known who were now dead. He tried to remember all the soldiers, and he resurrected
images of all the elderly people he had known when a child-all the aunts, uncles, neighbors, parents and
grandparents, his own and everyone else's, and all the pathetic, deluded shopkeepers who opened their small,
dusty stores at dawn and worked in them foolishly until midnight. They were all dead, too. The number of
dead people just seemed to increase. And the Germans were still fighting. Death was irreversible, he
suspected, and he began to think he was going to lose.
Yossarian was warm when the cold weather came because of Orr's marvelous stove, and he might have
existed in his warm tent quite comfortably if not for the memory of Orr, and if not for the gang of animated
roommates that came swarming inside rapaciously one day from the two full combat crews Colonel Cathcart
had requisitioned-and obtained in less than forty-eight hours-as replacements for Kid Sampson and McWatt.
Yossarian emitted a long, loud, croaking gasp of protest when he trudged in tiredly after a mission and found
them already there.
There were four of them, and they were having a whale of a good time as they helped each other set up
their cots. They were horsing around. The moment he saw them, Yossarian knew they were impossible. They
were frisky, eager and exuberant, and they had all been friends in the States. They were plainly unthinkable.
They were noisy, overconfident, empty-headed kids of twenty-one. They had gone to college and were
engaged to pretty, clean girls whose pictures were already standing on the rough cement mantelpiece of Orr's
fireplace. They had ridden in speedboats and played tennis. They had been horseback riding. One had once
been to bed with an older woman. They knew the same people in different parts of the country and had gone to
school with each other's cousins. They had listened to the World Series and really cared who won football
games. They were obtuse; their morale was good. They were glad that the war had lasted long enough for
them to find out what combat was really like. They were halfway through unpacking when Yossarian threw
them out.
They were plainly out of the question, Yossarian explained adamantly to Sergeant Towser, whose sallow
equine face was despondent as he informed Yossarian that the new officers would have to be admitted.
Sergeant Towser was not permitted to requisition another six-man tent from Group while Yossarian was living
in one alone.
"I'm not living in this one alone," Yossarian said with a sulk. "I've got a dead man in here with me. His
name is Mudd."
"Please, sir," begged Sergeant Towser, sighing wearily, with a sidelong glance at the four baffled new
officers listening in mystified silence just outside the entrance. "Mudd was killed on the mission to Orvieto.
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You know that. He was flying right beside you."
"Then why don't you move his things out?"
"Because he never even got here. Captain, please don't bring that up again. You can move in with
Lieutenant Nately if you like. I'll even send some men from the orderly room to transfer your belongings."
But to abandon Orr's tent would be to abandon Orr, who would have been spurned and humiliated
clannishly by these four simple-minded officers waiting to move in. It did not seem just that these boisterous,
immature young men should show up after all the work was done and be allowed to take possession of the
most desirable tent on the island. But that was the law, Sergeant Towser explained, and all Yossarian could do
was glare at them in baleful apology as he made room for them and volunteer helpful penitent hints as they
moved inside his privacy and made themselves at home.
They were the most depressing group of people Yossarian had ever been with. They were always in high
spirits. They laughed at everything. They called him "Yo-Yo" jocularly and came in tipsy late at night and
woke him up with their clumsy, bumping, giggling efforts to be quiet, then bombarded him with asinine shouts
of hilarious good-fellowship when he sat up cursing to complain. He wanted to massacre them each time they
did. They reminded him of Donald Duck's nephews. They were afraid of Yossarian and persecuted him
incessantly with nagging generosity and with their exasperating insistence on doing small favors for him. They
were reckless, puerile, congenial, naive, presumptuous, deferential and rambunctious. They were dumb; they
had no complaints. They admired Colonel Cathcart and they found Colonel Korn witty. They were afraid of
Yossarian, but they were not the least bit afraid of Colonel Cathcart's seventy missions. They were four
clean-cut kids who were having lots of fun, and they were driving Yossarian nuts. He could not make them
understand that he was a crotchety old fogey of twenty-eight, that he belonged to another generation, another
era, another world, that having a good time bored him and was not worth the effort, and that they bored him,
too. He could not make them shut up; they were worse than women. They had not brains enough to be
introverted and repressed.
Cronies of theirs in other squadrons began dropping in unashamedly and using the tent as a hangout. There
was often not room enough for him. Worst of all, he could no longer bring Nurse Duckett there to lie down
with her. And now that foul weather had come, he had no place else! This was a calamity he had not foreseen,
and he wanted to bust his roommates' heads open with his fists or pick them up, each in turn, by the seats of
their pants and the scruffs of their necks and pitch them out once and for all into the dank, rubbery perennial
weeds growing between his rusty soupcan urinal with nail holes in the bottom and the knotty-pine squadron
latrine that stood like a beach locker not far away.
Instead of busting their heads open, he tramped in his galoshes and black raincoat through the drizzling
darkness to invite Chief White Halfoat to move in with him, too, and drive the fastidious, clean-living bastards
out with his threats and swinish habits. But Chief White Halfoat felt cold and was already making plans to
move up into the hospital to die of pneumonia. Instinct told Chief White Halfoat it was almost time. His chest
ached and he coughed chronically. Whiskey no longer warmed him. Most damning of all, Captain Flume had
moved back into his trailer. Here was an omen of unmistakable meaning.
"He had to move back," Yossarian argued in a vain effort to cheer up the glum, barrel-chested Indian,
whose well-knit sorrel-red face had degenerated rapidly into a dilapidated, calcareous gray. "He'd die of
exposure if he tried to live in the woods in this weather."
"No, that wouldn't drive the yellowbelly back," Chief White Halfoat disagreed obstinately. He tapped his
forehead with cryptic insight. "No, sirree. He knows something. He knows it's time for me to die of
pneumonia, that's what he knows. And that's how I know it's time."
"What does Doc Daneeka say?"
"I'm not allowed to say anything," Doc Daneeka said sorrowfully from his seat on his stool in the shadows
of a corner, his smooth, tapered, diminutive face turtle-green in the flickering candlelight. Everything smelled
of mildew. The bulb in the tent had blown out several days before, and neither of the two men had been able to
muster the initiative to replace it. "I'm not allowed to practice medicine any more," Doc Daneeka added.
"He's dead," Chief White Halfoat gloated, with a horse laugh entangled in phlegm. "That's really funny."
"I don't even draw my pay any more."
"That's really funny," Chief White Halfoat repeated. "All this time he's been insulting my liver, and look
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what happened to him. He's dead. Killed by his own greed."
"That's not what killed me," Doc Daneeka observed in a voice that was calm and flat. "There's nothing
wrong with greed. It's all that lousy Dr. Stubbs' fault, getting Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn stirred up
against flight surgeons. He's going to give the medical profession a bad name by standing up for principle. If
he's not careful, he'll be black-balled by his state medical association and kept out of the hospitals."
Yossarian watched Chief White Halfoat pour whiskey carefully into three empty shampoo bottles and store
them away in the musette bag he was packing.
"Can't you stop by my tent on your way up to the hospital and punch one of them in the nose for me?" he
speculated aloud. "I've got four of them, and they're going to crowd me out of my tent altogether."
"You know, something like that once happened to my whole tribe," Chief White Halfoat remarked in jolly
appreciation, sitting back on his cot to chuckle. "Why don't you get Captain Black to kick those kids out?
Captain Black likes to kick people out."
Yossarian grimaced sourly at the mere mention of Captain Black, who was already bullying the new fliers
each time they stepped into his intelligence tent for maps or information. Yossarian's attitude toward his
roommates turned merciful and protective at the mere recollection of Captain Black. It was not their fault that
they were young and cheerful, he reminded himself as he carried the swinging beam of his flashlight back
through the darkness. He wished that he could be young and cheerful, too. And it wasn't their fault that they
were courageous, confident and carefree. He would just have to be patient with them until one or two were
killed and the rest wounded, and then they would all turn out okay. He vowed to be more tolerant and
benevolent, but when he ducked inside his tent with his friendlier attitude a great blaze was roaring in the
fireplace, and he gasped in horrified amazement. Orr's beautiful birch logs were going up in smoke! His
roommates had set fire to them! He gaped at the four insensitive overheated faces and wanted to shout curses
at them. He wanted to bang their heads together as they greeted him with loud convivial cries and invited him
generously to pull up a chair and eat their chestnuts and roasted potatoes. What could he do with them?
And the very next morning they got rid of the dead man in his tent! Just like that, they whisked him away!
They carried his cot and all his belongings right out into the bushes and simply dumped them there, and then
they strode back slapping their hands briskly at a job well done. Yossarian was stunned by their overbearing
vigor and zeal, by their practical, direct efficiency. In a matter of moments they had disposed energetically of a
problem with which Yossarian and Sergeant Towser had been grappling unsuccessfully for months. Yossarian
was alarmed-they might get rid of him just as quickly, he feared-and ran to Hungry Joe and fled with him to
Rome the day before Nately's whore finally got a good night's sleep and woke up in love.
33 NATELY's WHORE
He missed Nurse Duckett in Rome. There was not much else to do after Hungry Joe left on his mail run.
Yossarian missed Nurse Duckett so much that he went searching hungrily through the streets for Luciana,
whose laugh and invisible scar he had never forgotten, or the boozy, blowzy, bleary-eyed floozy in the
overloaded white brassière and unbuttoned orange satin blouse whose naughty salmon-colored cameo ring
Aarfy had thrown away so callously through the window of her car. How he yearned for both girls! He looked
for them in vain. He was so deeply in love with them, and he knew he would never see either again. Despair
gnawed at him. Visions beset him. He wanted Nurse Duckett with her dress up and her slim thighs bare to the
hips. He banged a thin streetwalker with a wet cough who picked him up from an alley between hotels, but
that was no fun at all and he hastened to the enlisted men's apartment for the fat, friendly maid in the
lime-colored panties, who was overjoyed to see him but couldn't arouse him. He went to bed there early and
slept alone. He woke up disappointed and banged a sassy, short, chubby girl he found in the apartment after
breakfast, but that was only a little better, and he chased her away when he'd finished and went back to sleep.
He napped till lunch and then went shopping for presents for Nurse Duckett and a scarf for the maid in the
lime-coloured panties, who hugged him with such gargantuan gratitude that he was soon hot for Nurse
Duckett and ran looking lecherously for Luciana again. Instead he found Aarfy, who had landed in Rome
when Hungry Joe returned with Dunbar, Nately and Dobbs, and who would not go along on the drunken foray
that night to rescue Nately's whore from the middle-aged military big shots holding her captive in a hotel
because she would not say uncle.
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"Why should I risk getting into trouble just to help her out?" Aarfy demanded haughtily. "But don't tell
Nately I said that. Tell him I had to keep an appointment with some very important fraternity brothers."
The middle-aged big shots would not let Nately's whore leave until they made her say uncle.
"Say uncle," they said to her.
"Uncle," she said.
"No, no. Say uncle."
"Uncle," she said.
"She still doesn't understand."
"You still don't understand, do you? We can't really make you say uncle unless you don't want to say uncle.
Don't you see? Don't say uncle when I tell you to say uncle. Okay? Say uncle."
"Uncle," she said.
"No, don't say uncle. Say uncle."
She didn't say uncle.
"That's good!"
"That's very good."
"It's a start. Now say uncle."
"Uncle," she said.
"It's no good."
"No, it's no good that way either. She just isn't impressed with us. There's just no fun making her say uncle
when she doesn't care whether we make her say uncle or not."
"No, she really doesn't care, does she? Say 'foot.'"
"Foot."
"You see? She doesn't care about anything we do. She doesn't care about us. We don't mean a thing to you,
do we?"
"Uncle," she said.
She didn't care about them a bit, and it upset them terribly. They shook her roughly each time she yawned.
She did not seem to care about anything, not even when they threatened to throw her out the window. They
were utterly demoralized men of distinction. She was bored and indifferent and wanted very much to sleep.
She had been on the job for twenty-two hours, and she was sorry that these men had not permitted her to leave
with the other two girls with whom the orgy had begun. She wondered vaguely why they wanted her to laugh
when they laughed, and why they wanted her to enjoy it when they made love to her. It was all very
mysterious to her, and very uninteresting.
She was not sure what they wanted from her. Each time she slumped over with her eyes closed they shook
her awake and made her say "uncle" again. Each time she said "uncle," they were disappointed. She wondered
what "uncle" meant. She sat on the sofa in a passive, phlegmatic stupor, her mouth open and all her clothing
crumpled in a corner on the floor, and wondered how much longer they would sit around naked with her and
make her say uncle in the elegant hotel suite to which Orr's old girl friend, giggling uncontrollably at
Yossarian's and Dunbar's drunken antics, guided Nately and the other members of the motley rescue party.
Dunbar squeezed Orr's old girl friend's fanny gratefully and passed her back to Yossarian, who propped her
against the door jamb with both hands on her hips and wormed himself against her lasciviously until Nately
seized him by the arm and pulled him away from her into the blue sitting room, where Dunbar was already
hurling everything in sight out the window into the court. Dobbs was smashing furniture with an ash stand. A
nude, ridiculous man with a blushing appendectomy scar appeared in the doorway suddenly and bellowed.
"What's going on here?"
"Your toes are dirty," Dunbar said.
The man covered his groin with both hands and shrank from view. Dunbar, Dobbs and Hungry Joe just
kept dumping everything they could lift out the window with great, howling whoops of happy abandon. They
soon finished with the clothing on the couches and the luggage on the floor, and they were ransacking a cedar
closet when the door to the inner room opened again and a man who was very distinguished-looking from the
neck up padded into view imperiously on bare feet.
"Here, you, stop that," he barked. "Just what do you men think you're doing?"
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"Your toes are dirty," Dunbar said to him.
The man covered his groin as the first one had done and disappeared. Nately charged after him, but was
blocked by the first officer, who plodded back in holding a pillow in front of him, like a bubble dancer.
"Hey, you men!" he roared angrily. "Stop it!"
"Stop it," Dunbar replied.
"That's what I said."
"That's what I said," Dunbar said.
The officer stamped his foot petulantly, turning weak with frustration. "Are you deliberately repeating
everything I say?"
"Are you deliberately repeating everything I say?"
"I'll thrash you." The man raised a fist.
"I'll thrash you," Dunbar warned him coldly. "You're a German spy, and I'm going to have you shot."
"German spy? I'm an American colonel."
"You don't look like an American colonel. You look like a fat man with a pillow in front of him. Where's
your uniform, if you're an American colonel?"
"You just threw it out the window."
"All right, men," Dunbar said. "Lock the silly bastard up. Take the silly bastard down to the station house
and throw away the key."
The colonel blanched with alarm. "Are you all crazy? Where's your badge? Hey, you! Come back in here!"
But he whirled too late to stop Nately, who had glimpsed his girl sitting on the sofa in the other room and
had darted through the doorway behind his back. The others poured through after him right into the midst of
the other naked big shots. Hungry Joe laughed hysterically when he saw them, pointing in disbelief at one
after the other and clasping his head and sides. Two with fleshy physiques advanced truculently until they
spied the look of mean dislike and hostility on Dobbs and Dunbar and noticed that Dobbs was still swinging
like a two-handed club the wrought-iron ash stand he had used to smash things in the sitting room. Nately was
already at his girl's side. She stared at him without recognition for a few seconds. Then she smiled faintly and
let her head sink to his shoulder with her eyes closed. Nately was in ecstasy; she had never smiled at him
before.
"Filpo," said a calm, slender, jaded-looking man who had not even stirred from his armchair. "You don't
obey orders. I told you to get them out, and you've gone and brought them in. Can't you see the difference?"
"They've thrown our things out the window, General."
"Good for them. Our uniforms too? That was clever. We'll never be able to convince anyone we're superior
without our uniforms."
"Let's get their names, Lou, and-"
"Oh, Ned, relax," said the slender man with practiced weariness. "You may be pretty good at moving
armored divisions into action, but you're almost useless in a social situation. Sooner or later we'll get our
uniforms back, and then we'll be their superiors again. Did they really throw our uniforms out? That was a
splendid tactic."
"They threw everything out."
"The ones in the closet, too?"
"They threw the closet out, General. That was that crash we heard when we thought they were coming in to
kill us."
"And I'll throw you out next," Dunbar threatened.
The general paled slightly. "What the devil is he so mad about?" he asked Yossarian.
"He means it, too," Yossarian said. "You'd better let the girl leave."
"Lord, take her," exclaimed the general with relief. "All she's done is make us feel insecure. At least she
might have disliked or resented us for the hundred dollars we paid her. But she wouldn't even do that. Your
handsome young friend there seems quite attached to her. Notice the way he lets his fingers linger on the
inside of her thighs as he pretends to roll up her stockings."
Nately, caught in the act, blushed guiltily and moved more quickly through the steps of dressing her. She
was sound asleep and breathed so regularly that she seemed to be snoring softly.
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"Let's charge her now, Lou!" urged another officer. "We've got more personnel, and we can encircle-"
"Oh, no, Bill," answered the general with a sigh. "You may be a wizard at directing a pincer movement in
good weather on level terrain against an enemy that has already committed his reserves, but you don't always
think so clearly anywhere else. Why should we want to keep her?"
"General, we're in a very bad strategic position. We haven't got a stitch of clothing, and it's going to be very
degrading and embarrassing for the person who has to go downstairs through the lobby to get some."
"Yes, Filpo, you're quite right," said the general. "And that's exactly why you're the one to do it. Get
going."
"Naked, sir?"
"Take your pillow with you if you want to. And get some cigarettes, too, while you're downstairs picking
up my underwear and pants, will you?"
"I'll send everything up for you," Yossarian offered.
"There, General," said Filpo with relief. "Now I won't have to go."
"Filpo, you nitwit. Can't you see he's lying?"
"Are you lying?"
Yossarian nodded, and Filpo's faith was shattered. Yossarian laughed and helped Nately walk his girl out
into the corridor and into the elevator. Her face was smiling as though with a lovely dream as she slept with
her head still resting on Nately's shoulder. Dobbs and Dunbar ran out into the street to stop a cab.
Nately's whore looked up when they left the car. She swallowed dryly several times during the arduous trek
up the stairs to her apartment, but she was sleeping soundly again by the time Nately undressed her and put
her to bed. She slept for eighteen hours, while Nately dashed about the apartment all the next morning
shushing everybody in sight, and when she woke up she was deeply in love with him. In the last analysis, that
was all it took to win her heart-a good night's sleep.
The girl smiled with contentment when she opened her eyes and saw him, and then, stretching her long legs
languorously beneath the rustling sheets, beckoned him into bed beside her with that look of simpering idiocy
of a woman in heat. Nately moved to her in a happy daze, so overcome with rapture that he hardly minded
when her kid sister interrupted him again by flying into the room and flinging herself down onto the bed
between them. Nately's whore slapped and cursed her, but this time with laughter and generous affection, and
Nately settled back smugly with an arm about each, feeling strong and protective. They made a wonderful
family group, he decided. The little girl would go to college when she was old enough, to Smith or Radcliffe
or Bryn Mawr-he would see to that. Nately bounded out of bed after a few minutes to announce his good
fortune to his friends at the top of his voice. He called to them jubilantly to come to the room and slammed the
door in their startled faces as soon as they arrived. He had remembered just in time that his girl had no clothes
on.
"Get dressed," he ordered her, congratulating himself on his alertness.
"Perchè?" she asked curiously.
"Perchè?" he repeated with an indulgent chuckle. "Because I don't want them to see you without any
clothes on."
"Perchè no?" she inquired.
"Perchè no?" He looked at her with astonishment. "Because it isn't right for other men to see you naked,
that's why."
"Perchè no?"
"Because I say no!" Nately exploded in frustration. "Now don't argue with me. I'm the man and you have to
do whatever I say. From now on, I forbid you ever to go out of this room unless you have all your clothes on.
Is that clear?"
Nately's whore looked at him as though he were insane. "Are you crazy? Che succede?"
"I mean every word I say."
"Tu sei pazzo!" she shouted at him with incredulous indignation, and sprang out of bed. Snarling
unintelligibly, she snapped on panties and strode toward the door.
Nately drew himself up with full manly authority. "I forbid you to leave this room that way," he informed
her.
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"Tu sei pazzo!" she shot back at him, after he had left, shaking her head in disbelief. "Idiota! Tu sei un
pazzo imbecille!"
"Tu sei pazzo," said her thin kid sister, starting out after her in the same haughty walk.
"You come back here," Nately ordered her. "I forbid you to go out that way, too!"
"Idiota!" the kid sister called back at him with dignity after she had flounced past. "Tu sei un pazzo
imbecille."
Nately fumed in circles of distracted helplessness for several seconds and then sprinted out into the sitting
room to forbid his friends to look at his girl friend while she complained about him in only her panties.
"Why not?" asked Dunbar.
"Why not?" exclaimed Nately. "Because she's my girl now, and it isn't right for you to see her unless she's
fully dressed."
"Why not?" asked Dunbar.
"You see?" said his girl with a shrug. "Lui è pazzo!"
"Si, è molto pazzo," echoed her kid sister.
"Then make her keep her clothes on if you don't want us to see her," argued Hungry Joe. "What the hell do
you want from us?"
"She won't listen to me," Nately confessed sheepishly. "So from now on you'll all have to shut your eyes or
look in the other direction when she comes in that way. Okay?"
"Madonn'!" cried his girl in exasperation, and stamped out of the room.
"Madonn'!" cried her kid sister, and stamped out behind her.
"Lui è pazzo," Yossarian observed good-naturedly. "I certainly have to admit it."
"Hey, you crazy or something?" Hungry Joe demanded of Nately. "The next thing you know you'll be
trying to make her give up hustling."
"From now on," Nately said to his girl, "I forbid you to go out hustling."
"Perchè?" she inquired curiously.
"Perchè?" he screamed with amazement. "Because it's not nice, that's why!"
"Perchè no?"
"Because it just isn't!" Nately insisted. "It just isn't right for a nice girl like you to go looking for other men
to sleep with. I'll give you all the money you need, so you won't have to do it any more."
"And what will I do all day instead?"
"Do?" said Nately. "You'll do what all your friends do."
"My friends go looking for men to sleep with."
"Then get new friends! I don't even want you to associate with girls like that, anyway. Prostitution is bad!
Everybody knows that, even him." He turned with confidence to the experienced old man. "Am I right?"
"You're wrong," answered the old man. "Prostitution gives her an opportunity to meet people. It provides
fresh air and wholesome exercise, and it keeps her out of trouble."
"From now on," Nately declared sternly to his girl friend, "I forbid you to have anything to do with that
wicked old man."
"Va fongul!" his girl replied, rolling her harassed eyes up toward the ceiling. "What does he want from
me?" she implored, shaking her fists. "Lasciami!" she told him in menacing entreaty. "Stupido! If you think
my friends are so bad, go tell your friends not to ficky-fick all the time with my friends!"
"From now on," Nately told his friends, "I think you fellows ought to stop running around with her friends
and settle down."
"Madonn'!" cried his friends, rolling their harassed eyes up toward the ceiling.
Nately had gone clear out of his mind. He wanted them all to fall in love right away and get married.
Dunbar could marry Orr's whore, and Yossarian could fall in love with Nurse Duckett or anyone else he liked.
After the war they could all work for Nately's father and bring up their children in the same suburb. Nately
saw it all very clearly. Love had transmogrified him into a romantic idiot, and they drove him away back into
the bedroom to wrangle with his girl over Captain Black. She agreed not to go to bed with Captain Black
again or give him any more of Nately's money, but she would not budge an inch on her friendship with the
ugly, ill-kempt, dissipated, filthy-minded old man, who witnessed Nately's flowering love affair with insulting
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derision and would not admit that Congress was the greatest deliberative body in the whole world.
"From now on," Nately ordered his girl firmly, "I absolutely forbid you even to speak to that disgusting old
man."
"Again the old man?" cried the girl in wailing confusion. "Perchè no?"
"He doesn't like the House of Representatives."
"Mamma mia! What's the matter with you?"
"È pazzo," observed her kid sister philosophically. "That's what's the matter with him."
"Si," the older girl agreed readily, tearing at her long brown hair with both hands. "Lui è pazzo."
But she missed Nately when he was away and was furious with Yossarian when he punched Nately in the
face with all his might and knocked him into the hospital with a broken nose.
34 THANKSGIVING
It was actually all Sergeant Knight's fault that Yossarian busted Nately in the nose on Thanksgiving Day,
after everyone in the squadron had given humble thanks to Milo for providing the fantastically opulent meal
on which the officers and enlisted men had gorged themselves insatiably all afternoon and for dispensing like
inexhaustible largess the unopened bottles of cheap whiskey he handed out unsparingly to every man who
asked. Even before dark, young soldiers with pasty white faces were throwing up everywhere and passing out
drunkenly on the ground. The air turned foul. Other men picked up steam as the hours passed, and the aimless,
riotous celebration continued. It was a raw, violent, guzzling saturnalia that spilled obstreperously through the
woods to the officers' club and spread up into the hills toward the hospital and the antiaircraft-gun
emplacements. There were fist fights in the squadron and one stabbing. Corporal Kolodny shot himself
through the leg in the intelligence tent while playing with a loaded gun and had his gums and toes painted
purple in the speeding ambulance as he lay on his back with the blood spurting from his wound. Men with cut
fingers, bleeding heads, stomach cramps and broken ankles came limping penitently up to the medical tent to
have their gums and toes painted purple by Gus and Wes and be given a laxative to throw into the bushes. The
joyous celebration lasted long into the night, and the stillness was fractured often by wild, exultant shouts and
by the cries of people who were merry or sick. There was the recurring sound of retching and moaning, of
laughter, greetings, threats and swearing, and of bottles shattering against rock. There were dirty songs in the
distance. It was worse than New Year's Eve.
Yossarian went to bed early for safety and soon dreamed that he was fleeing almost headlong down an
endless wooden staircase, making a loud, staccato clatter with his heels. Then he woke up a little and realized
someone was shooting at him with a machine gun. A tortured, terrified sob rose in his throat. His first thought
was that Milo was attacking the squadron again, and he rolled of his cot to the floor and lay underneath in a
trembling, praying ball, his heart thumping like a drop forge, his body bathed in a cold sweat. There was no
noise of planes. A drunken, happy laugh sounded from afar. "Happy New Year, Happy New Year!" a
triumphant familiar voice shouted hilariously from high above between the short, sharp bursts of machine gun
fire, and Yossarian understood that some men had gone as a prank to one of the sandbagged machine-gun
emplacements Milo had installed in the hills after his raid on the squadron and staffed with his own men.
Yossarian blazed with hatred and wrath when he saw he was the victim of an irresponsible joke that had
destroyed his sleep and reduced him to a whimpering hulk. He wanted to kill, he wanted to murder. He was
angrier than he had ever been before, angrier even than when he had slid his hands around McWatt's neck to
strangle him. The gun opened fire again. Voices cried "Happy New Year!" and gloating laughter rolled down
from the hills through the darkness like a witch's glee. In moccasins and coveralls, Yossarian charged out of
his tent for revenge with his .45, ramming a clip of cartridges up into the grip and slamming the bolt of the gun
back to load it. He snapped off the safety catch and was ready to shoot. He heard Nately running after him to
restrain him, calling his name. The machine gun opened fire once more from a black rise above the motor
pool, and orange tracer bullets skimmed like low-gliding dashes over the tops of the shadowy tents, almost
clipping the peaks. Roars of rough laughter rang out again between the short bursts. Yossarian felt resentment
boil like acid inside him; they were endangering his life, the bastards! With blind, ferocious rage and
determination, he raced across the squadron past the motor pool, running as fast as he could, and was already
pounding up into the hills along the narrow, winding path when Nately finally caught up, still calling "Yo-Yo!
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Yo-Yo!" with pleading concern and imploring him to stop. He grasped Yossarian's shoulders and tried to hold
him back. Yossarian twisted free, turning. Nately reached for him again, and Yossarian drove his fist squarely
into Nately's delicate young face as hard as he could, cursing him, then drew his arm back to hit him again, but
Nately had dropped out of sight with a groan and lay curled up on the ground with his head buried in both
hands and blood streaming between his fingers. Yossarian whirled and plunged ahead up the path without
looking back.
Soon he saw the machine gun. Two figures leaped up in silhouette when they heard him and fled into the
night with taunting laughter before he could get there. He was too late. Their footsteps receded, leaving the
circle of sandbags empty and silent in the crisp and windless moonlight. He looked about dejectedly. Jeering
laughter came to him again, from a distance. A twig snapped nearby. Yossarian dropped to his knees with a
cold thrill of elation and aimed. He heard a stealthy rustle of leaves on the other side of the sandbags and fired
two quick rounds. Someone fired back at him once, and he recognized the shot.
"Dunbar? he called.
"Yossarian?"
The two men left their hiding places and walked forward to meet in the clearing with weary
disappointment, their guns down. They were both shivering slightly from the frosty air and wheezing from the
labor of their uphill rush.
"The bastards," said Yossarian. "They got away."
"They took ten years off my life," Dunbar exclaimed. "I thought that son of a bitch Milo was bombing us
again. I've never been so scared. I wish I knew who the bastards were.
"One was Sergeant Knight."
"Let's go kill him." Dunbar's teeth were chattering. "He had no right to scare us that way."
Yossarian no longer wanted to kill anyone. "Let's help Nately first. I think I hurt him at the bottom of the
hill."
But there was no sign of Nately along the path, even though Yossarian located the right spot by the blood
on the stones. Nately was not in his tent either, and they did not catch up with him until the next morning
when they checked into the hospital as patients after learning he had checked in with a broken nose the night
before. Nately beamed in frightened surprise as they padded into the ward in their slippers and robes behind
Nurse Cramer and were assigned to their beds. Nately's nose was in a bulky cast, and he had two black eyes.
He kept blushing giddily in shy embarrassment and saying he was sorry when Yossarian came over to
apologize for hitting him. Yossarian felt terrible; he could hardly bear to look at Nately's battered countenance,
even though the sight was so comical he was tempted to guffaw. Dunbar was disgusted by their sentimentality,
and all three were relieved when Hungry Joe came barging in unexpectedly with his intricate black camera and
trumped-up symptoms of appendicitis to be near enough to Yossarian to take pictures of him feeling up Nurse
Duckett. Like Yossarian, he was soon disappointed. Nurse Duckett had decided to marry a doctor-any doctor,
because they all did so well in business-and would not take chances in the vicinity of the man who might
someday be her husband. Hungry Joe was irate and inconsolable until-of all people-the chaplain was led in
wearing a maroon corduroy bathrobe, shining like a skinny lighthouse with a radiant grin of self-satisfaction
too tremendous to be concealed. The chaplain had entered the hospital with a pain in his heart that the doctors
thought was gas in his stomach and with an advanced case of Wisconsin shingles.
"What in the world are Wisconsin shingles?" asked Yossarian.
"That's just what the doctors wanted to know!" blurted out the chaplain proudly, and burst into laughter. No
one had ever seen him so waggish, or so happy. "There's no such thing as Wisconsin shingles. Don't you
understand? I lied. I made a deal with the doctors. I promised that I would let them know when my Wisconsin
shingles went away if they would promise not to do anything to cure them. I never told a lie before. Isn't it
wonderful?"
The chaplain had sinned, and it was good. Common sense told him that telling lies and defecting from duty
were sins. On the other hand, everyone knew that sin was evil, and that no good could come from evil. But he
did feel good; he felt positively marvelous. Consequently, it followed logically that telling lies and defecting
from duty could not be sins. The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique
of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick
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at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into
humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and
sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character. With
effervescent agility the chaplain ran through the whole gamut of orthodox immoralities, while Nately sat up in
bed with flushed elation, astounded by the mad gang of companions of which he found himself the nucleus.
He was flattered and apprehensive, certain that some severe official would soon appear and throw the whole
lot of them out like a pack of bums. No one bothered them. In the evening they all trooped exuberantly out to
see a lousy Hollywood extravaganza in Technicolor, and when they trooped exuberantly back in after the
lousy Hollywood extravaganza, the soldier in white was there, and Dunbar screamed and went to pieces.
"He's back!" Dunbar screamed. "He's back! He's back!"
Yossarian froze in his tracks, paralyzed as much by the eerie shrillness in Dunbar's voice as by the familiar,
white, morbid sight of the soldier in white covered from head to toe in plaster and gauze. A strange, quavering,
involuntary noise came bubbling from Yossarian's throat.
"He's back!" Dunbar screamed again.
"He's back!" a patient delirious with fever echoed in automatic terror.
All at once the ward erupted into bedlam. Mobs of sick and injured men began ranting incoherently and
running and jumping in the aisle as though the building were on fire. A patient with one foot and one crutch
was hopping back and forth swiftly in panic crying, "What is it? What is it? Are we burning? Are we
burning?"
"He's back!" someone shouted at him. "Didn't you hear him? He's back! He's back!"
"Who's back?" shouted someone else. "Who is it?"
"What does it mean? What should we do?"
"Are we on fire?"
"Get up and run, damn it! Everybody get up and run!"
Everybody got out of bed and began running from one end of the ward to the other. One C.I.D. man was
looking for a gun to shoot one of the other C.I.D. men who had jabbed his elbow into his eye. The ward had
turned into chaos. The patient delirious with the high fever leaped into the aisle and almost knocked over the
patient with one foot, who accidentally brought the black rubber tip of his crutch down on the other's bare
foot, crushing some toes. The delirious man with the fever and the crushed toes sank to the floor and wept in
pain while other men tripped over him and hurt him more in their blind, milling, agonized stampede. "He's
back!" all the men kept mumbling and chanting and calling out hysterically as they rushed back and forth.
"He's back, he's back!" Nurse Cramer was there in the middle suddenly like a spinning policeman, trying
desperately to restore order, dissolving helplessly into tears when she failed. "Be still, please be still," she
urged uselessly through her massive sobs. The chaplain, pale as a ghost, had no idea what was going on.
Neither did Nately, who kept close to Yossarian's side, clinging to his elbow, or Hungry Joe, who followed
dubiously with his scrawny fists clenched and glanced from side to side with a face that was scared.
"Hey, what's going on?" Hungry Joe pleaded. "What the hell is going on?"
"It's the same one!" Dunbar shouted at him emphatically in a voice rising clearly above the raucous
commotion. "Don't you understand? It's the same one."
"The same one!" Yossarian heard himself echo, quivering with a deep and ominous excitement that he
could not control, and shoved his way after Dunbar toward the bed of the soldier in white.
"Take it easy, fellas," the short patriotic Texan counseled affably, with an uncertain grin. "There's no cause
to be upset. Why don't we all just take it easy?"
"The same one!" others began murmuring, chanting and shouting.
Suddenly Nurse Duckett was there, too. "What's going on?" she demanded.
"He's back!" Nurse Cramer screamed, sinking into her arms. "He's back, he's back!"
It was, indeed, the same man. He had lost a few inches and added some weight, but Yossarian remembered
him instantly by the two stiff anus and the two stiff, thick, useless legs all drawn upward into the air almost
perpendicularly by the taut ropes and the long lead weights suspended from pulleys over him and by the
frayed black hole in the bandages over his mouth. He had, in fact, hardly changed at all. There was the same
zinc pipe rising from the hard stone mass over his groin and leading to the clear glass jar on the floor. There
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was the same clear glass jar on a pole dripping fluid into him through the crook of his elbow. Yossarian would
recognize him anywhere. He wondered who he was.
"There's no one inside!" Dunbar yelled out at him unexpectedly.
Yossarian felt his heart skip a beat and his legs grow weak. "What are you talking about?" he shouted with
dread, stunned by the haggard, sparking anguish in Dunbar's eyes and by his crazed look of wild shock and
horror. "Are you nuts or something? What the hell do you mean, there's no one inside?"
"They've stolen him away!" Dunbar shouted back. "He's hollow inside, like a chocolate soldier. They just
took him away and left those bandages there."
"Why should they do that?"
"Why do they do anything?"
"They've stolen him away!" screamed someone else, and people all over the ward began screaming,
"They've stolen him away. They've stolen him away!"
"Go back to your beds," Nurse Duckett pleaded with Dunbar and Yossarian, pushing feebly against
Yossarian's chest. "Please go back to your beds."
"You're crazy!" Yossarian shouted angrily at Dunbar. "What the hell makes you say that?"
"Did anyone see him?" Dunbar demanded with sneering fervor.
"You saw him, didn't you?" Yossarian said to Nurse Duckett. "Tell Dunbar there's someone inside."
"Lieutenant Schmulker is inside," Nurse Duckett said. "He's burned all over."
"Did she see him?"
"You saw him, didn't you?"
"The doctor who bandaged him saw him."
"Go get him, will you? Which doctor was it?"
Nurse Duckett reacted to the question with a startled gasp. "The doctor isn't even here!" she exclaimed.
"The patient was brought to us that way from a field hospital."
"You see?" cried Nurse Cramer. "There's no one inside!"
"There's no one inside!" yelled Hungry Joe, and began stamping on the floor.
Dunbar broke through and leaped up furiously on the soldier in white's bed to see for himself, pressing his
gleaming eye down hungrily against the tattered black hole in the shell of white bandages. He was still bent
over staring with one eye into the lightless, unstirring void of the soldier in white's mouth when the doctors
and the M.P.s came running to help Yossarian pull him away. The doctors wore guns at the waist. The guards
carried carbines and rifles with which they shoved and jolted the crowd of muttering patients back. A stretcher
on wheels was there, and the solder in white was lifted out of bed skillfully and rolled out of sight in a matter
of seconds. The doctors and M.P.s moved through the ward assuring everyone that everything was all right.
Nurse Duckett plucked Yossarian's arm and whispered to him furtively to meet her in the broom closet
outside in the corridor. Yossarian rejoiced when he heard her. He thought Nurse Duckett finally wanted to get
laid and pulled her skirt up the second they were alone in the broom closet, but she pushed him away. She had
urgent news about Dunbar.
"They're going to disappear him," she said.
Yossarian squinted at her uncomprehendingly. "They're what?" he asked in surprise, and laughed uneasily.
"What does that mean?"
"I don't know. I heard them talking behind a door."
"Who?"
"I don't know. I couldn't see them. I just heard them say they were going to disappear Dunbar."
"Why are they going to disappear him?"
"I don't know."
"It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good grammar. What the hell does it mean when they disappear
somebody?"
"I don't know."
"Jesus, you're a great help!"
"Why are you picking on me?" Nurse Duckett protested with hurt feelings, and began sniffing back tears.
"I'm only trying to help. It isn't my fault they're going to disappear him, is it? I shouldn't even be telling you."
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Yossarian took her in his arms and hugged her with gentle, contrite affection. "I'm sorry," he apologized,
kissing her cheek respectfully, and hurried away to warn Dunbar, who was nowhere to be found.
35 MILO THE MILITANT
For the first time in his life, Yossarian prayed. He got down on his knees and prayed to Nately not to
volunteer to fly more than seventy missions after Chief White Halfoat did die of pneumonia in the hospital and
Nately had applied for his job. But Nately just wouldn't listen.
"I've got to fly more missions," Nately insisted lamely with a crooked smile. "Otherwise they'll send me
home."
"So?"
"I don't want to go home until I can take her back with me."
"She means that much to you?"
Nately nodded dejectedly. "I might never see her again."
"Then get yourself grounded," Yossarian urged. "You've finished your missions and you don't need the
flight pay. Why don't you ask for Chief White Halfoat's job, if you can stand working for Captain Black?"
Nately shook his head, his cheeks darkening with shy and regretful mortification. "They won't give it to
me. I spoke to Colonel Korn, and he told me I'd have to fly more missions or be sent home."
Yossarian cursed savagely. "That's just plain meanness."
"I don't mind, I guess. I've flown seventy missions without getting hurt. I guess I can fly a few more."
"Don't do anything at all about it until I talk to someone," Yossarian decided, and went looking for help
from Milo, who went immediately afterward to Colonel Cathcart for help in having himself assigned to more
combat missions.
Milo had been earning many distinctions for himself. He had flown fearlessly into danger and criticism by
selling petroleum and ball bearings to Germany at good prices in order to make a good profit and help
maintain a balance of power between the contending forces. His nerve under fire was graceful and infinite.
With a devotion to purpose above and beyond the line of duty, he had then raised the price of food in his mess
halls so high that all officers and enlisted men had to turn over all their pay to him in order to eat. Their
alternative-there was an alternative, of course, since Milo detested coercion and was a vocal champion of
freedom of choice-was to starve. When he encountered a wave of enemy resistance to this attack, he stuck to
his position without regard for his safety or reputation and gallantly invoked the law of supply and demand.
And when someone somewhere said no, Milo gave ground grudgingly, valiantly defending, even in retreat, the
historic right of free men to pay as much as they had to for the things they needed in order to survive.
Milo had been caught red-handed in the act of plundering his countrymen, and, as a result, his stock had
never been higher. He proved good as his word when a rawboned major from Minnesota curled his lip in
rebellious disavowal and demanded his share of the syndicate Milo kept saying everybody owned. Milo met
the challenge by writing the words "A Share" on the nearest scrap of paper and handing it away with a
virtuous disdain that won the envy and admiration of almost everyone who knew him. His glory was at a peak,
and Colonel Cathcart, who knew and admired his war record, was astonished by the deferential humility with
which Milo presented himself at Group Headquarters and made his fantastic appeal for more hazardous
assignments.
"You want to fly more combat missions?" Colonel Cathcart gasped. "What in the world for?"
Milo answered in a demure voice with his face lowered meekly. "I want to do my duty, sir. The country is
at war, and I want to fight to defend it like the rest of the fellows."
"But, Milo, you are doing your duty," Colonel Cathcart exclaimed with a laugh that thundered jovially. "I
can't think of a single person who's done more for the men than you have. Who gave them chocolate-covered
cotton?"
Milo shook his head slowly and sadly. "But being a good mess officer in wartime just isn't enough, Colonel
Cathcart."
"Certainly it is, Milo. I don't know what's come over you."
"Certainly it isn't, Colonel," Milo disagreed in a somewhat firm tone, raising his subservient eyes
significantly just far enough to arrest Colonel Cathcart's. "Some of the men are beginning to talk."
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"Oh, is that it? Give me their names, Milo. Give me their names and I'll see to it that they go on every
dangerous mission the group flies."
"No, Colonel, I'm afraid they're right," Milo said, with his head drooping again. "I was sent overseas as a
pilot, and I should be flying more combat missions and spending less time on my duties as a mess officer."
Colonel Cathcart was surprised but co-operative. "Well, Milo, if you really feel that way, I'm sure we can
make whatever arrangements you want. How long have you been overseas now?"
"Eleven months, sir."
"And how many missions have you flown?"
"Five."
"Five?" asked Colonel Cathcart.
"Five, sir."
"Five, eh?" Colonel Cathcart rubbed his cheek pensively. "That isn't very good, is it?"
"Isn't it?" asked Milo in a sharply edged voice, glancing up again.
Colonel Cathcart quailed. "On the contrary, that's very good, Milo," he corrected himself hastily. "It isn't
bad at all."
"No, Colonel," Milo said, with a long, languishing, wistful sigh, "it isn't very good. Although it's very
generous of you to say so."
"But it's really not bad, Milo. Not bad at all, when you consider all your other valuable contributions. Five
missions, you say? Just five?"
"Just five, sir."
"Just five." Colonel Cathcart grew awfully depressed for a moment as he wondered what Milo was really
thinking, and whether he had already got a black eye with him. "Five is very good, Milo," he observed with
enthusiasm, spying a ray of hope. "That averages out to almost one combat mission every two months. And I'll
bet your total doesn't include the time you bombed us."
"Yes, sir. It does."
"It does?" inquired Colonel Cathcart with mild wonder. "You didn't actually fly along on that mission, did
you? If I remember correctly, you were in the control tower with me, weren't you?"
"But it was my mission," Milo contended. "I organized it, and we used my planes and supplies. I planned
and supervised the whole thing."
"Oh, certainly, Milo, certainly. I'm not disputing you. I'm only checking the figures to make sure you're
claiming all you're entitled to. Did you also include the time we contracted with you to bomb the bridge at
Orvieto?"
"Oh, no, sir. I didn't think I should, since I was in Orvieto at the time directing the antiaircraft fire."
"I don't see what difference that makes, Milo. It was still your mission. And a damned good one, too, I
must say. We didn't get the bridge, but we did have a beautiful bomb pattern. I remember General Peckem
commenting on it. No, Milo, I insist you count Orvieto as a mission, too."
"If you insist, sir."
"I do insist, Milo. Now, let's see-you now have a grand total of six missions, which is damned good, Milo,
damned good, really. Six missions is an increase of twenty per cent in just a couple of minutes, which is not
bad at all, Milo, not bad at all."
"Many of the other men have seventy missions," Milo pointed out.
"But they never produced any chocolate-covered cotton, did they? Milo, you're doing more than your
share."
"But they're getting all the fame and opportunity," Milo persisted with a petulance that bordered on
sniveling. "Sir, I want to get in there and fight like the rest of the fellows. That's what I'm here for. I want to
win medals, too."
"Yes, Milo, of course. We all want to spend more time in combat. But people like you and me serve in
different ways. Look at my own record," Colonel Cathcart uttered a deprecatory laugh. "I'll bet it's not
generally known, Milo, that I myself have flown only four missions, is it?"
"No, sir," Milo replied. "It's generally known that you've flown only two missions. And that one of those
occurred when Aarfy accidentally flew you over enemy territory while navigating you to Naples for a
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black-market water cooler."
Colonel Cathcart, flushing with embarrassment, abandoned all further argument. "All right, Milo. I can't
praise you enough for what you want to do. If it really means so much to you, I'll have Major Major assign
you to the next sixty-four missions so that you can have seventy, too."
"Thank you, Colonel, thank you, sir. You don't know what this means."
"Don't mention it, Milo. I know exactly what it means."
"No, Colonel, I don't think you do know what it means," Milo disagreed pointedly. "Someone will have to
begin running the syndicate for me right away. It's very complicated, and I might get shot down at any time."
Colonel Cathcart brightened instantly at the thought and began rubbing his hands with avaricious zest.
"You know, Milo, I think Colonel Korn and I might be willing to take the syndicate off your hands," he
suggested in an offhand manner, almost licking his lips in savory anticipation. "Our experience in
black-market plum tomatoes should come in very useful. Where do we begin?"
Milo watched Colonel Cathcart steadily with a bland and guileless expression. "Thank you, sir, that's very
good of you. Begin with a salt-free diet for General Peckem and a fat-free diet for General Dreedle."
"Let me get a pencil. What's next?"
"The cedars."
"Cedars?"
"From Lebanon."
"Lebanon?"
"We've got cedars from Lebanon due at the sawmill in Oslo to be turned into shingles for the builder in
Cape Cod. C.O.D. And then there's the peas."
"Peas?"
"That are on the high seas. We've got boatloads of peas that are on the high seas from Atlanta to Holland to
pay for the tulips that were shipped to Geneva to pay for the cheeses that must go to Vienna M.I.F."
"M.I.F.?"
"Money in Front. The Hapsburgs are shaky."
"Milo."
"And don't forget the galvanized zinc in the warehouse at Flint. Four carloads of galvanized zinc from Flint
must be flown to the smelters in Damascus by noon of the eighteenth, terms F.O.B. Calcutta two per cent ten
days E.O.M. One Messerschmitt full of hemp is due in Belgrade for a C-47 and a half full of those semi-pitted
dates we stuck them with from Khartoum. Use the money from the Portuguese anchovies we're selling back to
Lisbon to pay for the Egyptian cotton we've got coming back to us from Mamaroneck and to pick up as many
oranges as you can in Spain. Always pay cash for naranjas."
"Naranjas?"
"That's what they call oranges in Spain, and these are Spanish oranges. And-oh, yes. Don't forget Piltdown
Man."
"Piltdown Man?"
"Yes, Piltdown Man. The Smithsonian Institution is not in a position at this time to meet our price for a
second Piltdown Man, but they are looking forward to the death of a wealthy and beloved donor and-"
"Milo."
"France wants all the parsley we can send them, and I think we might as well, because we'll need the francs
for the lire for the pfennigs for the dates when they get back. I've also ordered a tremendous shipment of
Peruvian balsa wood for distribution to each of the mess halls in the syndicate on a pro rata basis."
"Balsa wood? What are the mess halls going to do with balsa wood?"
"Good balsa wood isn't so easy to come by these days, Colonel. I just didn't think it was a good idea to pass
up the chance to buy it."
"No, I suppose not," Colonel Cathcart surmised vaguely with the look of somebody seasick. "And I assume
the price was right."
"The price," said Milo, "was outrageous-positively exorbitant! But since we bought it from one of our own
subsidiaries, we were happy to pay it. Look after the hides."
"The hives?"
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