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CATCH-22

8. Lieutenant Seheisskopf

Not even Clevinger understood how Milo could do that, and Clevinger
knew everything. Clevinger knew everything about the war
except why Yossarian had to die while Corporal Snark was allowed to
live, or why Corporal Snark had to die while Yossarian was allowed to
live. It was a vile and muddy war, and Yossarian could have lived without
it-lived forever, perhaps. Only a fraction of his countrymen
would give up their lives to win it, and it was not his ambition to be
among them. To die or not to die, that was the question, and Clevinger
grew limp trying to answer it. History did not demand Yossarian's premature
demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not
hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it. That men would die was a
matter of necessity; which men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance,
and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but
circumstance. But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor
was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence
of their parents.
Clevinger knew so much because Clevinger was a genius with a
pounding heart and blanching face. He was a gangling, gawky, feverish,
famish-eyed brain. As a Harvard undergraduate he had won prizes
in scholarship for just about everything, and the only reason he had not
won prizes in scholarship for everything else was that he was too busy
signing petitions, circulating petitions and challenging petitions, joining
discussion groups and resigning from discussion groups, attending
youth congresses, picketing other youth congresses and organizing
student committees in defense of dismissed faculty members. Everyone
agreed that Clevinger was certain to go far in the academic world.
In short, Clevinger was one of those people with lots of intelligence
and no brains, and everyone knew it except those who soon found
it out.
In short, he was a dope. He often looked to Yossarian like one of
those people hanging around modern museums with both eyes together
on one side of a face. It was an illusion, of course, generated by
Clevinger's predilection for staring fixedly at one side of a question and
never seeing the other side at all. Politically, he was a humanitarian
who did know right from left and was trapped uncomfortably between
the two. He was constantly defending his Communist friends to his
right-wing enemies and his right-wing friends to his Communist enemies,
and he was thoroughly detested by both groups, who never
defended him to anyone because they thought he was a dope.
He was a very serious, very earnest and very conscientious dope. It
was impossible to go to a movie with him without getting involved
afterward in a discussion on empathy, Aristotle, universals, messages
and the obligations of the cinema as an art form in a materialistic society.
Girls he took to the theater had to wait until the first intermission
to find out from him whether or not they were seeing a good or a bad
play, and then found out at once. He was a militant idealist who crusaded
against racial bigotry by growing faint in its presence. He knew
everything about literature except how to enjoy it.
Yossarian tried to help him. "Don't be a dope," he had counseled
Clevinger when they were both at cadet school in Santa Ana, California.
"I'm going to tell him," Clevinger insisted, as the two of them sat
high in the reviewing stands looking down on the auxiliary parade-ground
at Lieutenant Scheisskopf raging back and forth like a beardless
Lear.
"Why me?" Lieutenant Scheisskopf wailed.
"Keep still, idiot," Yossarian advised Clevinger avuncularly.
"You don't know what you're talking about," Clevinger objected.
"I know enough to keep still, idiot."
Lieutenant Scheisskopf tore his hair and gnashed his teeth. His rubbery
cheeks shook with gusts of anguish. His problem was a squadron
of aviation cadets with low morale who marched atrociously in the
parade competition that took place every Sunday afternoon. Their
morale was low because they did not want to march in parades every
Sunday afternoon and because Lieutenant Scheisskopf had appointed
cadet officers from their ranks instead of permitting them to elect their
own.
"I want someone to tell me," Lieutenant Scheisskopf beseeched
them all prayerfully. "If any of it is my fault, I want to be told."
"He wants someone to tell him," Clevinger said.
"He wants everyone to keep still, idiot," Yossarian answered.
"Didn't you hear him?" Clevinger argued.
"I heard him," Yossarian replied. "I heard him say very loudly and
very distinctly that he wants every one of us to keep our mouths shut
if we know what's good for us."
"I won't punish you," Lieutenant Scheisskopf swore.
"He says he won't punish me," said Clevinger.
"He'll castrate you," said Yossarian.
"I swear I won't punish you," said Lieutenant Scheisskopf. "I'll be
grateful to the man who tells me the truth."
"He'll hate you," said Yossarian. "To his dying day he'll hate you."
Lieutenant Scheisskopf was an R.O.TC. graduate who was rather
glad that war had broken out, since it gave him an opportunity to wear
an officer's uniform every day and say "Men" in a clipped, military voice
to the bunches of kids who fell into his clutches every eight weeks on
their way to the butcher's block. He was an ambitious and humorless
Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who confronted his responsibilities soberly and
smiled only when some rival officer at the Santa Ana Army Air Force
Base came down with a lingering disease. He had poor eyesight and
chronic sinus trouble, which made war especially exciting for him, since
he was in no danger of going overseas. The best thing about him was
his wife and the best thing about his wife was a girl friend named Dori
Duz who did whenever she could and had a Wac uniform that Lieutenant
Scheisskopfs wife put on every weekend and took off every
weekend for every cadet in her husband's squadron who wanted to
creep into her.
Dori Duz was a lively little tart of copper-green and gold who loved
doing it best in toolsheds, phone booths, field houses and bus kiosks.
There was little she hadn't tried and less she wouldn't. She was shameless,
slim, nineteen and aggressive. She destroyed egos by the score and
made men hate themselves in the morning for the way she found them,
used them and tossed them aside. Yossarian loved her. She was a marvelous
piece of ass who found him only fair. He loved the feel of
springy muscle beneath her skin everywhere he touched her the only
time she'd let him. Yossarian loved Dori Duz so much that he couldn't
help flinging himself down passionately on top of Lieutenant Scheisskopfs
wife every week to revenge himself upon Lieutenant Scheisskopf
for the way Lieutenant Scheisskopf was revenging himself upon Clevinger.
Lieutenant Scheisskopfs wife was revenging herself upon Lieutenant
Scheisskopf for some unforgettable crime of his she couldn't recall. She
was a plump, pink, sluggish girl who read good books and kept urging
Yossarian not to be so bourgeois without the r. She was never without a
good book close by, not even when she was lying in bed with nothing on
her but Yossanan and Don Duz's dog tags. She bored Yossarian, but he
was in love with her, too. She was a crazy mathematics major from the
Wharton School of Business who could not count to twenty-eight each
month without getting into trouble.
"Darling, we're going to have a baby again," she would say to
Yossarian every month.
"You're out of your goddam head," he would reply.
"I mean it, baby," she insisted.
"So do 1."
"Darling, we're going to have a baby again," she would say to her
husband.
"I haven't the time," Lieutenant Scheisskopf would grumble petulantly.
"Don't you know there's a parade going on?"
Lieutenant Scheisskopf cared very deeply about winning parades
and about bringing Clevinger up on charges before the Action Board
for conspiring to advocate the overthrow of the cadet officers Lieutenant
Scheisskopf had appointed. Clevinger was a troublemaker and a
wise guy. Lieutenant Scheisskopf knew that Clevinger might cause
even more trouble if he wasn't watched. Yesterday it was the cadet
officers; tomorrow it might be the world. Clevinger had a mind, and
Lieutenant Scheisskopf had noticed that people with minds tended
to get pretty smart at times. Such men were dangerous, and even the
new cadet officers whom Clevinger had helped into office were eager
to give damning testimony against him. The case against Clevinger
was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge
him with.
It could not be anything to do with parades, for Clevinger took the
parades almost as seriously as Lieutenant Scheisskopf himself. The
men fell out for the parades early each Sunday afternoon and groped
their way into ranks of twelve outside the barracks. Groaning with
hangovers, they limped in step to their station on the main parade-ground,
where they stood motionless in the heat for an hour or two
with the men from the sixty or seventy other cadet squadrons until
enough of them had collapsed to call it a day. On the edge of the field
stood a row of ambulances and teams of trained stretcher bearers with
walkie-talkies. On the roofs of the ambulances were spotters with
binoculars. A tally clerk kept score. Supervising this entire phase of the
operation was a medical officer with a flair for accounting who okayed
pulses and checked the figures of the tally clerk. As soon as enough
unconscious men had been collected in the ambulances, the medical
officer signaled the bandmaster to strike up the band and end the
parade. One behind the other, the squadrons marched up the field,
executed a cumbersome turn around the reviewing stand and marched
down the field and back to their barracks.
Each of the parading squadrons was graded as it marched past the
reviewing stand, where a bloated colonel with a big fat mustache sat
with the other officers. The best squadron in each wing won a yellow
pennant on a pole that was utterly worthless. The best squadron on the
base won a red pennant on a longer pole that was worth even less, since
the pole was heavier and was that much more of a nuisance to lug
around all week until some other squadron won it the following
Sunday. To Yossarian, the idea of pennants as prizes was absurd. No
money went with them, no class privileges. Like Olympic medals and
tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something
of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.
The parades themselves seemed equally absurd. Yossarian hated a
parade. Parades were so martial. He hated hearing them, hated seeing
them, hated being tied up in traffic by them. He hated being made to
take part in them. It was bad enough being an aviation cadet without
having to act like a soldier in the blistering heat every Sunday afternoon.
It was bad enough being an aviation cadet because it was obvious
now that the war would not be over before he had finished his training.
That was the only reason he had volunteered for cadet training in the
first place. As a soldier who had qualified for aviation cadet training, he
had weeks and weeks of waiting for assignment to a class, weeks and
weeks more to become a bombardier-navigator, weeks and weeks more
of operational training after that to prepare him for overseas duty. It
seemed inconceivable then that the war could last that long, for God
was on his side, he had been told, and God, he had also been told, could
do whatever He wanted to. But the war was not nearly over, and his
training was almost complete.
Lieutenant Scheisskopf longed desperately to· win parades and sat
up half the night working on it while his wife waited amorously for him
in bed thumbing through Krafft-Ebing to her favorite passages. He
read books on marching. He manipulated boxes of chocolate soldiers
until they melted in his hands and then maneuvered in ranks of twelve
a set of plastic cowboys he had bought from a mail-order house under
an assumed name and kept locked away from everyone's eyes during
the day. Leonardo's exercises in anatomy proved indispensable. One
evening he felt the need for a live model and directed his wife to march
around the room.
"Naked?" she asked hopefully.
Lieutenant Scheisskopf smacked his hands over his eyes in exasperation.
It was the despair of Lieutenant Scheisskopfs life to be chained to
a woman who was incapable of looking beyond her own dirty, sexual
desires to the titanic struggles for the unattainable in which noble man
could become heroically engaged.
"Why don't you ever whip me?" she pouted one night.
"Because I haven't the time," he snapped at her impatiently. "1
haven't the time. Don't you know there's a parade going on?"
And he really did not have the time. There it was Sunday already, with
only seven days left in the week to get ready for the next parade. He had
no idea where the hours went. Finishing last in three successive parades
had given Lieutenant Scheisskopf an unsavory reputation, and he considered
every means of improvement, even nailing the twelve men in
each rank to a long two-by-four beam of seasoned oak to keep them in
line. The plan was not feasible, for making a ninety-degree turn would
have been impossible without nickel-alloy swivels inserted in the small
of every man's back, and Lieutenant Scheisskopf was not sanguine at all
about obtaining that many nickel-alloy swivels from Quartermaster or
enlisting the co-operation of the surgeons at the hospital.
The week after Lieutenant Scheisskopf followed Clevinger's recommendation
and let the men elect their own cadet officers, the squadron
won the yellow pennant. Lieutenant Scheisskopf was so elated by this
unexpected achievement that he gave his wife a sharp. crack over the
head with the pole when she tried to drag him into bed to celebrate by
showing their contempt for the sexual mores of the lower middle
classes in Western civilization. The next week the squadron won the red
flag, and Lieutenant Scheisskopf was beside himself with rapture. And
the week after that his squadron made history by winning the red pennant
two weeks in a row! Now Lieutenant Scheisskopf had confidence
enough in his powers to spring his big surprise. Lieutenant Scheisskopf
had discovered in his extensive research that the hands of marchers,
instead of swinging freely, as was then the popular fashion, ought never
to be moved more than three inches from the center of the thigh, which
meant, in effect, that they were scarcely to be swung at all.
Lieutenant Scheisskopfs preparations were elaborate and clandestine.
All the cadets in his squadron were sworn to secrecy and rehearsed
in the dead of night on the auxiliary parade-ground. They marched in
darkness that was pitch and bumped into each other blindly, but they
did not panic, and they were learning to march without swinging their
hands. Lieutenant Scheisskopfs first thought had been to have a friend
of his in the sheet metal shop sink pegs of nickel alloy into each man's
thighbones and link them to the wrists by strands of copper wire with
exactly three inches of play, but there wasn't time-there was never
enough time-and good copper wire was hard to come by in wartime.
He remembered also that the men, so hampered, would be unable to
fall properly during the impressive fainting ceremony preceding the
marching and that an inability to faint properly might affect the unit's
rating as a whole.
And all week long he chortled with repressed delight at the officers'
club. Speculation grew rampant among his closest friends.
"I wonder what that Shithead is up to," Lieutenant Engle said.
Lieutenant Scheisskopf responded with a knowing smile to the
queries of his colleagues. "You'll find out Sunday," he promised.
"You'll find out."
Lieutenant Scheisskopf unveiled his epochal surprise that Sunday
with all the aplomb of an experienced impresario. He said nothing
while the other squadrons ambled past the reviewing stand crookedly
in their customary manner. He gave no sign even when the first ranks
of his own squadron hove into sight with their swingless marching and
the first stricken gasps of alarm were hissing from his startled fellow
officers. He held back even then until the bloated colonel with the big
fat mustache whirled upon him savagely with a purpling face, and then
he offered the explanation that made him immortal.
"Look, Colonel," he announced. "No hands."
And to an audience stilled with awe, he distributed certified photostatic
copies of the obscure regulation on which he had built his unforgettable
triumph. This was Lieutenant Scheisskopfs finest hour. He
won the parade, of course, hands down, obtaining permanent possession
of the red pennant and ending the Sunday parades altogether,
since good red pennants were as hard to come by in wartime as good
copper wire. Lieutenant Scheisskopf was made First Lieutenant
Scheisskopf on the spot and began his rapid rise through the ranks.
There were few who did not hail him as a true military genius for his
important discovery.
"That Lieutenant Scheisskopf," Lieutenant Travers remarked.
"He's a military genius."
"Yes, he really is," Lieutenant Engle agreed. "It's a pity the schmuck
won't whip his wife."
"I don't see what that has to do with it," Lieutenant Travers
answered coolly. "Lieutenant Bemis whips Mrs. Bemis beautifully
every time they have sexual intercourse, and he isn't worth a farthing
at parades."
"I'm talking about flagellation," Lieutenant Engle retorted. "Who
gives a damn about parades?"
Actually, no one but Lieutenant Scheisskopf really gave a damn
about the parades, least of all the bloated colonel with the big fat mustache,
who was chairman of the Action Board and began bellowing at
Clevinger the moment Clevinger stepped gingerly into the room to
plead innocent to the charges Lieutenant Scheisskopf had lodged
against him. The colonel beat his fist down upon the table and hurt his
hand and became so further enraged with Clevinger that he beat his
fist down upon the table even harder and hurt his hand some more.
Lieutenant Scheisskopf glared at Clevinger with tight lips, mortified
by the poor impression Clevinger was making.
"In sixty days you'll be fighting Billy Petrolle," the colonel with the
big fat mustache roared. "And you think it's a big fat joke."
"I don't think it's a joke, sir," Clevinger replied.
"Don't interrupt." .
"Yes, sir."
"And say 'sir' when you do," ordered Major Metcalf.
"Yes, sir."
"Weren't you Just ordered not to interrupt?" Major Metcalf inquired
coldly.
"But I didn't interrupt, sir," Clevinger protested.
"No. And you didn't say 'sir,' either. Add that to the charges against
him," Major Metcalf directed the corporal who could take shorthand.
"Failure to say 'sir' to superior officers when not interrupting them."
"Metcalf," said the colonel, "you're a goddam fool. Do you know
that?"
Major Metcalf swallowed with difficulty. "Yes, sir."
"Then keep your goddam mouth shut. You don't make sense."
There were three members of the Action Board, the bloated colonel
with the big fat mustache, Lieutenant Scheisskopf and Major Metcalf,
who was trying to develop a steely gaze. As a member of the Action
Board, Lieutenant Scheisskopf was one of the judges who would weigh
the merits of the case against Clevinger as presented by the prosecutor. Lieutenant Scheisskopf was also the prosecutor. Clevinger had an
officer defending him. The officer defending him was Lieutenant
Scheisskopf.
It was all very confusing to Clevinger, who began vibrating in terror
as the colonel surged to his feet like a gigantic belch and threatened to
rip his stinking, cowardly body apart limb from limb. One day he had
stumbled while marching to class; the next day he was formally
charged with "breaking ranks while in formation, felonious assault,
indiscriminate behavior, mopery, high treason, provoking, being a
smart guy, listening to classical music, and so on." In short, they threw
the book at him, and there he was, standing in dread before the bloated
colonel, who roared once more that in sixty days he would be fighting
Billy Petrolle and demanded to know how the hell he would like being
washed out and shipped to the Solomon Islands to bury bodies.
Clevinger replied with courtesy that he would not like it; he was a dope
who would rather be a corpse than bury one. The colonel sat down and
settled back, calm and cagey suddenly, and ingratiatingly polite.
"What did you mean," he inquired slowly, "when you said we
couldn't punish you?"
"When, sir?"
"I'm asking the questions. You're answering them."
"Yes, sir. I-"
"Did you think we brought you here to ask questions and for me to
answer them?"
"No, sir. I-"
"What did we bring you here for?"
"To answer questions."
"You're goddam right," roared the colonel. "Now suppose you start
answering some before I break your goddam head. Just what the hell
did you mean, you bastard, when you said we couldn't punish you?"
"I don't think I ever made that statement, sir."
"Will you speak up, please? I couldn't hear you."
"Yes, sir. I-"
"Will you speak up, please? He couldn't hear you."
"Yes, sir. I-"
"Metcalf."
"Sir?"
"Didn't I tell you to keep your stupid mouth shut?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then keep your stupid mouth shut when I tell you to keep your
stupid mouth shut. Do you understand? Will you speak up, please? I
couldn't hear you."
"Yes, sir. I-"
"Metcalf, is that your foot I'm stepping on?"
"No, sir. It must be Lieutenant Scheisskopfs foot."
"It isn't my foot," said Lieutenant Scheisskopf.
"Then maybe it is my foot after all," said Major Metcalf.
"Move it."
"Yes, sir. You'll have to move your foot first, Colonel. It's on top of
mine."
"Are you telling me to move my foot?" .
"No, sir. Oh, no, sir."
"Then move your foot and keep your stupid mouth shut. Will you
speak up, please? I still couldn't hear you."
"Yes, sir. I said that I didn't say that you couldn't punish me."
"Just what the hell are you talking about?"
"I'm answering your question, sir."
"What question?"
"'Just what the hell did you mean, you bastard, when you said we
couldn't punish you?'" said the corporal who could take shorthand,
reading from his steno pad.
"All right," said the colonel. "Just what the hell did you mean?"
"I didn't say you couldn't punish me, sir."
"When?" asked the colonel.
"When what, sir?"
"Now you're asking me questions again."
"I'm sorry, sir. I'm afraid I don't understand your question."
"When didn't you say we couldn't punish you? Don't you understand
my question?"
"No, sir. I don't understand."
"You've just told us that. Now suppose you answer my question."
"But how can I answer it?"
"That's another question you're asking me."
"I'm sorry, sir. But I don't know how to answer it. I never said you
couldn't punish me."
"Now you're telling us when you did say it. I'm asking you to tell us
when you didn't say it."
Clevinger took a deep breath. "I always didn't say you couldn't punish
me, sir."
"That's much better, Mr. Clevinger, even though it is a barefaced
lie. Last night in the latrine. Didn't you whisper that we couldn't punish
you to that other dirty son of a bitch we don't like? What's his
name?"
"Yossarian, sir," Lieutenant Scheisskopf said.
"Yes, Yossarian. That's right. Yossarian. Yossarian? Is that his name?
Yossarian? What the hell kind of a name is Yossarian?"
.Lieutenant Scheisskopf had the facts at his finger tips. "It's Yossarian's
name, sir," he explained.
"Yes, I suppose it is. Didn't you whisper to Yossarian that we
couldn't punish you?"
"Oh, no, sir. I whispered to him that you couldn't find me guilty-"
"I may be stupid," interrupted the colonel, "but the distinction escapes
me. I guess I am pretty stupid, because the distinction escapes me."
"W-"
"You're a windy son of a bitch, aren't you? Nobody asked you for clarification
and you're giving me clarification. 1 was making a statement,
not asking for clarification. You are a windy son of a bitch, aren't you?"
"No, sir."
"O, sir? Are you calling me a goddam liar?"
"Oh, no, sir."
"Then you're a windy son. of a bitch, aren't you?"
"No, sir."
"Are you trying to pick a fight with me?"
"No, sir."
"Are you a windy son of a bitch?"
"No, sir."
"Goddammit, you are trying to pick a fight with me. For two stinking
cents I'd jump over this big fat table and rip your stinking, cowardly
body apart limb from limb."
"Do it! Do it!" cried Major Metcalf.
"Metcalf, you stinking son of a bitch. Didn't I tell you to keep your
stinking, cowardly, stupid mouth shut?"
"Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir."
"Then suppose you do it."
"I was only trying to learn, sir. The only way a person can learn is
by trying."
"Who says so?"
"Everybody says so, sir. Even Lieutenant Scheisskopf says so."
"Do you say so?"
"Yes, sir," said Lieutenant Scheisskopf. "But everybody says so."
"Well, Metcalf, suppose you try keeping that stupid mouth of yours
shut, and maybe that's the way you'll learn how. Now, where were we?
Read me back the last line."
"'Read me back the last line,'" read back the corporal who could
take shorthand.
"Not my last line, stupid!" the colonel shouted. "Somebody else's."
"'Read me back the last line,'" read back the corporal.
"That's my last line again!" shrieked the colonel, turning purple with
anger.
"Oh, no, sir," corrected the corporal. "That's my last line. I read it
to you just a moment ago. Don't you remember, sir? It was only a
moment ago."
"Oh, my God! Read me back his last line, stupid. Say, what the hell's
your name, anyway?"
"Popinjay, sir."
"Well, you're next, Popinjay. As soon as this ,trial ends, your trial
begins. Get it?"
"Yes, sir. What will I be charged with?"
"What the hell difference does that make? Did you hear what he
asked me? You're going to learn, Popinjay -- the minute we finish with
Clevinger you're going to learn. Cadet Clevinger, what did -- You are
Cadet Clevinger, aren't you, and not Popinjay?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. What did-"
"I'm Popinjay, sir."
"Popinjay, is your father a millionaire, or a member of the Senate?"
"No, sir."
"Then you're up shit creek, Popinjay, without a paddle. He's not a
general or a high-ranking member of the Administration, is he?"
"No, sir."
"That's good. What does your father do?"
"He's dead, sir."
"That's very good. You really are up the creek, Popinjay. Is Popinjay
really your name? Just what the hell kind of a name is Popinjay, anyway?
I don't like it."
"It's Popinjay's name, sir," Lieutenant Scheisskopf explained.
"Well, I don't like it, Popinjay, and I just can't wait to rip your stinking,
cowardly body apart limb from limb. Cadet Clevinger, will you
please repeat what the hell it was you did or didn't whisper to Yossarian
late last night in the latrine?"
"Yes, sir. I said that you couldn't find me guilty-"
"We'll take it from there. Precisely what did you mean, Cadet
Clevinger, when you said we couldn't find you guilty?"
"I didn't say you couldn't find me guilty, sir."
"When?"
"When what, sir?"
"Goddammit, are you going to start pumping me again?"
"No, sir. I'm sorry, sir."
"Then answer the question. When didn't you say we couldn't find
you guilty?"
"Late last night in the latrine, sir."
"Is that the only time you didn't say it?"
"No, sir. I always didn't say you couldn't find me guilty, sir. What I
did say to Yossarian was-"
"Nobody asked you what you did say to Yossarian. We asked you
what you didn't say to him. We're not at all interested in what you did
say to Yossarian. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then we'll go on. What did you say to Yossarian?"
"I said to him, sir, that you couldn't find me guilty of the offense
with which I am charged and still be faithful to the cause of ... "
"Of what;! You're mumbling."
"Stop mumbling."
"Yes, sir."
"And mumble 'sir' when you do."
"Metcalf, you bastard!"
"Yes, sir," mumbled Clevinger. "Of justice, sir. That you couldn't
find-"
"Justice?" The colonel was astounded. "What is justice?"
"Justice, sir-"
"That's not what justice is," the colonel jeered, and began pounding
the table again with his big fat hand. "That's what Karl Marx is. I'll tell
you what justice is. Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the
chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of
a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of
warning. Garroting. That's what justice is when we've all got to be
tough enough and rough enough to fight Billy Petrolle. From the hip.
Get it?"
"No, sir."
"Don't sir me!"
"Yes, sir."
"And say 'sir' when you don't," ordered Major Metcalf.
Clevinger was guilty, of course, or he would not have been accused,
and since the only way to prove it was to find him guilty, it was their
patriotic duty to do so. He was sentenced to walk fifty-seven punishment
tours. Popinjay was locked up to be taught a lesson, and Major
Metcalf was shipped to the Solomon Islands to bury bodies. A punishment
tour for Clevinger was fifty minutes of a weekend hour spent
pacing back and forth before the provost marshal's building with a ~on
of an unloaded rifle on his shoulder.
It was all very confusing to Clevinger. There were many strange
things taking place, but the strangest of all, to Clevinger, was the hatred,
the brutal, uncloaked, inexorable hatred of the members of the Action
Board, glazing their unforgiving expressions with a hard, vindictive surface,
glowing in their narrowed eyes malignantly like inextinguishable
coals. Clevinger was stunned to discover it. They would have lynched
him if they could. They were three grown men and he was a boy, and
they hated him and wished him dead. They had hated him before he
came, hated him while he was there, hated him after he left, carried
their hatred for him away malignantly like some pampered treasure
after they separated from each other and went to their solitude.
Yossarian had done his best to warn him the night before. "You
haven't got a chance, kid," he had told him glumly. "They hate Jews."
"But I'm not Jewish," answered Clevinger.
"It will make no difference," Yossarian promised, and Yossarian was
right. "They're after everybody."
Clevinger recoiled from their hatred as though from a blinding
light. These three men who hated him spoke his language and wore his
uniform, but he saw their loveless faces set immutably into cramped,
mean lines of hostility and understood instantly that nowhere in the
world, not in all the fascist tanks or planes or submarines, not in the
bunkers behind the machine guns or mortars or behind the blowing
flame throwers, not even among all the expert gunners of the crack
Hermann Goering Antiaircraft Division or among the grisly connivers
in all the beer halls in Munich and everywhere else, were there men
who hated him more.

9. Major Major Major Major

Major Major Major Major had had a difficult time from the start.
Like Miniver Cheevy, he had been born too late-exactly thirty-six
hours too late for the physical well-being of his mother, a gentle, ailing
woman who, after a full day and a half's agony in the rigors of
childbirth, was depleted of all resolve to pursue further the argument
over the new child's name. In the hospital corridor, her husband moved
ahead with the unsmiling determination of someone who knew what
he was about. Major Major's father was a towering, gaunt man in heavy
shoes and a black woolen suit. He filled out the birth certificate without
faltering, betraying no emotion at all as he handed the completed
form to the floor nurse. The nurse took it from him without comment
and padded out of sight. He watched her go, wondering what she had
on underneath.
Back in the ward, he found his wife lying vanquished beneath the
blankets like a desiccated old vegetable, wrinkled, dry and white, her
enfeebled tissues absolutely still. Her bed was at the very end of the
ward, near a cracked window thickened with grime. Rain splashed
from a moiling sky and the day was dreary and cold. In other parts of
the hospital chalky people with aged, blue lips were dying on time. The
man stood erect beside the bed and gazed down at the woman a long
time.
"I have named the boy Caleb," he announced to her finally in a soft
voice. "In accordance with your wishes." The woman made no answer,
and slowly the man smiled. He had planned it all perfectly, for his wife
was asleep and would never know that he had lied to her as she lay on
her sickbed in the poor ward of the county hospital.
From this meager beginning had sprung the ineffectual squadron
commander who was now spending the better part of each working day
in Pianosa forging Washington Irving's name to official documents.
Major Major forged diligently with his left hand to elude identification,
insulated against intrusion by his own undesired authority and
camouflaged in his false mustache and dark glasses as an additional
safeguard against detection by anyone chancing to peer in through the
dowdy celluloid window from which some thief had carved out a slice.
In between these two low points of his birth and his success lay thirty-one
dismal years of loneliness and frustration.
Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men
are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have
mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three.
Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a
man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met
him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.
Major Major had three strikes on him from the beginning-his
mother, his father and Henry Fonda, to whom he bore a sickly resemblance
almost from the moment of his birth. Long before he even
suspected who Henry Fonda was, he found himself the subject of
unflattering comparisons everywhere he went. Total strangers saw fit
to deprecate him, with the result that he was stricken early with a guilty
fear of people and an obsequious impulse to 'apologize to society for
the fact that he was not Henry Fonda. It was not an easy task for him
to go through life looking something like Henry Fonda, but he never
once thought of quitting, having inherited his perseverance from his
father, a lanky man with a good sense of humor.
Major Major's father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a
good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a
God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who
held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He
advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who
turned. him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing
out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every
bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the
more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he
didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not
produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing
alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not
mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day
just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in
land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man
in the county. Neighbors sought him out for advice on all subjects, for
he had made much money and was therefore wise. "As ye sow, so shall
ye reap," he counseled one and all, and everyone said, "Amen."
Major Major's father was an outspoken champion of economy in
government, provided it did not interfere with the sacred duty of government
to pay farmers as much as they could get for all the alfalfa they
produced that no one else wanted or for not producing any alfalfa at
all. He was a proud and independent man who was opposed to unemployment
insurance and never hesitated to whine, whimper, wheedle,
and extort for as much as he could get from whomever he could. He
was a devout man whose pulpit was everywhere.
"The Lord gave us good farmers two strong hands so that we could
take as much as we could grab with both of them," he preached with
ardor on the courthouse steps or in the front of the A & P as he waited
for the bad-tempered gum-chewing young cashier he was after to step
outside and give him a nasty look. "If the Lord didn't want us to take as
much as we could get," he preached, "He wouldn't have given us two
good hands to take it with." And the others murmured, "Amen."
Major Major's father had a Calvinist's faith in predestination and
could perceive distinctly how everyone's misfortunes but his own were
expressions of God's will. He smoked cigarettes and drank whiskey,
and he thrived on good wit and stimulating intellectual conversation,
particularly his own when he was lying about his age or telling that
good one about God and his wife's difficulties in delivering Major
Major. The good one about God and his wife's difficulties had to do
with the fact that it had taken God only six days to produce the whole
world, whereas his wife had spent a full day and a half in labor just to
produce Major Major. A lesser man might have wavered that day in
the hospital corridor, a weaker man might have compromised on such
excellent substitutes as Drum Major, Minor Major, Sergeant Major, or
C Sharp Major, but Major Major's father had waited fourteen years
for just such an opportunity, and he was not a person to waste it.
Major Major's father had a good joke about opportunity. "Opportunity
only knocks once in this world," he would say. Major Major's father
repeated this good joke at every opportunity.
Being born with a sickly resemblance to Henry Fonda was the first
of a long series of practical jokes of which destiny was to make Major
Major the unhappy victim throughout his joyless life. Being born
Major Major Major was the second. The fact that he had been born
Major Major Major was a secret known only to his father. Not until
Major Major was enrolling in kindergarten was the discovery of his
real name made, and then the effects were disastrous. The news killed
his mother, who just lost her will to live and wasted away and died,
which was just fine with his father, who had decided to marry the bad-
tempered girl at the A & P if he had to and who had not been optimistic
about his chances of getting his wife off the land without paying
her some money or flogging her.
On Major Major himself the consequences were only slightly less
severe. It was a harsh and stunning realization that was forced upon him
at so tender an age, the realization that he was not, as he had always
been led to believe, Caleb Major, but instead was some total stranger
named Major Major Major about whom he knew absolutely nothing
and about whom nobody else had ever heard before. What playmates
he had withdrew from him and never returned, disposed, as they were,
to distrust all strangers, especially one who had already deceived them
by pretending to be someone they had known for years. Nobody would
have anything to do with him. He began to drop things and to trip. He
had a shy and hopeful manner in each new contact, and he was always
disappointed. Because he needed a friend so desperately, he never found
one. He grew awkwardly into a tall, strange, dreamy boy with fragile
eyes and a very delicate mouth whose tentative, groping smile collapsed
instantly into hurt disorder at every fresh rebuff.
He was polite to his elders, who disliked him. Whatever his elders
told him to do, he did. They told him to look before he leaped, and he
always looked before he leaped. They told him never to put off until
the next day what he could do the day before, and he never did. He was
told to honor his father and his mother, and he honored his father and
his mother. He was told that he should not kill, and he did not kill,
until he got into the Army. Then he was told to kill, and he killed. He
turned the other cheek on every occasion and always did unto others
exactly as he would have had others do unto him. When he gave to
charity, his left hand never knew what his right hand was doing. He
never once took the name of the Lord his God in vain, committed
adultery or coveted his neighbor's ass. In fact, he loved his neighbor
and never even bore false witness against him. Major Major's elders
disliked him because he was such a flagrant nonconformist.
Since he had nothing better to do well in, he did well in school. At
the state university he took his studies so seriously that he was suspected
by the homosexuals of being a Communist and suspected by the
Communists of being a homosexual. He majored in English history,
which was a mistake.
"English history!" roared the silver-maned senior Senator from his
state indignantly. "What's the matter with American history? American
history is as good as any history in the world!"
Major Major switched immediately to American literature, but not
before the F.B.I. had opened a file on him. There were six people and
a Scotch terrier inhabiting the remote farmhouse Major Major called
home, and five of them and the Scotch terrier turned out to be agents
for the F.B.I. Soon they had enough derogatory information on Major
Major to do whatever they wanted to with him. The only thing they
could find to do with him, however, was take him into the Army as a
private and make him a major four days later so that Congressmen
with nothing else on their minds could go trotting back and forth
through the streets of Washington, D.C., chanting, "Who promoted
Major Major? Who promoted Major Major?"
Actually, Major Major had been promoted by an I.B.M. machine
with a sense of humor almost as keen as his father's. When war broke
out, he was still docile and compliant. They told him to enlist, and he
enlisted. They told him to apply for aviation cadet training, and he
applied for aviation cadet training, and the very next night found himself
standing barefoot in icy mud at three o'clock in the morning
before a tough and belligerent sergeant from the Southwest who told
them he could beat hell out of any man in his outfit and was ready to
prove it. The recruits in his squadron had all been shaken roughly
awake only minutes before by the sergeant's corporals and told to
assemble in front of the administration tent. It was still raining on
Major Major. They fell into ranks in the civilian clothes they had
brought into the Army with them three days before. Those who had
lingered. to put shoes and socks on were sent back to their cold, wet,
dark tents to remove them, and they were all barefoot in the mud as
the sergeant ran his stony eyes over their faces and told them he could
beat hell out of any man in his outfit. No one was inclined to dispute
rum.
Major Major's unexpected promotion to major the next day plunged
the belligerent sergeant into a bottomless gloom, for he was no longer
able to boast that he could beat hell out of any man in his outfit. He
brooded for hours in his tent like Saul, receiving no visitors, while his
elite guard of corporals stood discouraged watch outside. At three
o'clock in the morning he found his solution, and Major Major and the
other recruits were again shaken roughly awake and ordered to assemble
barefoot in the drizzly glare at the administration tent, where the
sergeant was already waiting, his fists clenched on his hips cockily, so
eager to speak that he could hardly wait for them to arrive.
"Me and Major Major," he boasted, in the same tough, clipped
tones of the night before, "can beat hell out of any man in my outfit."
The officers on the base took action on the Major Major problem
later that same day. How could they cope with a major like Major
Major? To demean him personally would be to demean all other officers
of equal or lesser rank. To treat him with courtesy, on the other
hand, was unthinkable. Fortunately, Major Major had applied for aviation
cadet training. Orders transferring him away were sent to the
mimeograph room late in the afternoon, and at three o'clock in the
morning Major Major was again shaken roughly awake, bidden Godspeed
by the sergeant and placed aboard a plane heading west.
Lieutenant Scheisskopf turned white as a sheet when Major Major
reported to him in California with bare feet and mud-caked toes.
Major Major had taken it for granted that he was being shaken roughly
awake again to stand barefoot in the mud and had left his shoes and
socks in the tent. The civilian clothing in which he reported for duty
to Lieutenant Scheisskopf was rumpled and dirty. Lieutenant Scheisskopf,
who had not yet made his reputation as a parader, shuddered
violently at the picture Major Major would make marching barefoot in
his squadron that coming Sunday.
"Go to the hospital quickly," he mumbled, when he had recovered
sufficiently to speak, "and tell them you're sick. Stay there until your
allowance for uniforms catches up with you and you have some money
to buy some clothes. And some shoes. Buy some shoes."
"Yes, sir."
"I don't think you have to call me 'sir,' sir," Lieutenant Scheisskopf
pointed out. "You outrank me."
"Yes, sir. 1 may outrank you, sir, but you're still my commanding
officer."
"Yes, sir, that's right," Lieutenant Scheisskopf agreed. "You may
outrank me, sir, but I'm still your commanding officer. So you better
do what I tell you, sir, or you'll get into trouble. Go to the hospital and
tell them you're sick, sir. Stay there until your uniform allowance
catches up with you and you have some money to buy some uniforms."
"Yes, sir."
"And some shoes, sir. Buy some shoes the first chance you get, sir."
"Yes, sir. I will, sir."
"Thank you, sir."
Life in cadet school for Major Major was no different than life had
been for him all along. Whoever he was with always wanted him to be
with someone else. His instructors gave him preferred treatment at
every stage in order to push him along quickly and be rid of him. In
almost no time he had his pilot's wings and found himself overseas,
where things began suddenly to improve. All his life, Major Major had
longed for but one thing, to be absorbed, and in Pianosa, for a while,
he finally was. Rank meant little to the men on combat duty, and relations
between officers and enlisted men were relaxed and informal.
Men whose names he didn't even know said "Hi" and invited him to
go swimming or play basketball. His ripest hours were spent in the
day-long basketball games no one gave a damn about winning. Score
was never kept, and the number of players might vary from one to
thirty-five. Major Major had never played basketball or any other game
before, but his great, bobbing height and rapturous enthusiasm helped
make up for his innate clumsiness and lack of experience. Major Major
found true happiness there on the lopsided basketball court with the
officers and enlisted men who were almost his friends. If there were no
winners, there were no losers, and Major Major enjoyed every gamboling
moment right up till the day Colonel Cathcart roared up in his
jeep after Major Duluth was killed and made it impossible for him ever
to enjoy playing basketball there again.
"You're the new squadron commander," Colonel Cathcart -had
shouted rudely across the railroad ditch to him. "But don't think it
means anything, because it doesn't. All it means is that you're the new
squadron commander."
Colonel Cathcart had nursed an implacable grudge against Major
Major for a long time. A superfluous major on his rolls meant an
untidy table of organization and gave ammunition to the men at
Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters who Colonel Cathcart was
positive were his enemies and rivals. Colonel Cathcart had been praying
for just some stroke of good luck like Major Duluth's death. He had
been plagued by one extra major; he now had an opening for one
major. He appointed Major Major squadron commander and roared
away in his jeep as abruptly as he had come.
For Major Major, it meant the end of the game. His face flushed
with discomfort, and he was rooted to the spot in disbelief as the rain
clouds gathered above him again. When he turned to his teammates,
he encountered a reef of curious, reflective faces all gazing at him
woodenly with morose and inscrutable animosity. He shivered with
shame. When the game resumed, it was not good any longer. When he
dribbled, no one tried to stop him; when he called for a pass, whoever
had the ball passed it; and when he missed a basket, no one raced him
for the rebound. The only voice was his own. The next day was the
same, and the day after that he did not come back.
Almost on cue, everyone in the squadron stopped talking to him and
started staring at him. He walked through life self-consciously with
downcast eyes and burning cheeks, the object of contempt, envy, suspicion,
resentment and malicious innuendo everywhere he went.
People who had hardly noticed his resemblance to Henry Fonda
before now never ceased discussing it, and there were even those who
hinted sinisterly that Major Major had been elevated to squadron commander
because he resembled Henry Fonda. Captain Black, who had
aspired to the position himself, maintained that Major Major really was
Henry Fonda but was too chickenshit to admit it.
Major Major floundered bewilderedly from one embarrassing catastrophe
to another. Without consulting him, Sergeant Towser had his
belongings moved into the roomy trailer Major Duluth had occupied
alone, and when Major Major came rushing breathlessly into the
orderly room to report the theft of his things, the young corporal there
scared him half out of his wits by leaping to his feet and shouting
"Attention!" the moment he appeared. Major Major snapped to attention
with all the rest in the orderly room, wondering what important
personage had entered behind him. Minutes passed in rigid silence,
and the whole lot of them might have stood there at attention till
doomsday if Major Danby had not dropped by from Group to congratulate
Major Major twenty minutes later and put them all at ease.
Major Major fared even more lamentably at the mess hall, where
Milo, his face fluttery with smiles, was waiting to usher him proudly to
a small-table he had set up in front and decorated with an embroided
tablecloth and a nosegay of posies in a pink cut-glass vase. Major Major
hung back with horror, but he was not bold enough to resist with all
the others watching. Even Havermeyer had lifted his head from his
plate to gape at him with his heavy, pendulous jaw. Major Major submitted
meekly to Milo's tugging and cowered in disgrace at his private
table throughout the whole meal. The food was ashes in his mouth, but
he swallowed every mouthful rather than risk offending any of the men
connected with its preparation. Alone with Milo later, Major Major felt
protest stir for the first time and said he would prefer to continue eating
with the other officers. Milo told him it wouldn't work.
"I don't see what there is to work," Major Major argued. "Nothing
ever happened before."
"You were never the squadron commander before."
"Major Duluth was the squadron commander and he always ate at
the same table with the rest of the men."
"It was different with Major Duluth, sir."
"In what way was it different with Major Duluth?"
"I wish you wouldn't ask me that, sir," said Milo.
"Is it because I look like Henry Fonda?" Major Major mustered the
courage to demand.
"Some people say you are Henry Fonda," Milo answered.
"Well, I'm not Henry Fonda," Major Major exclaimed, in a voice
quavering with exasperation. "And I don't look the least bit like him.
And even if I do look like Henry Fonda, what difference does that
make?"
"It doesn't make any difference. That's what I'm trying to tell you,
sir. It's just not the same with you as it was with Major Duluth."
And it just wasn't the same, for when Major Major, at the next meal,
stepped from the food counter to sit with the others at the regular
tables, he was frozen in his tracks by the impenetrable wall of antagonism
thrown up by their faces and stood petrified with his tray quivering
in his hands until Milo glided forward wordlessly to rescue him, by
leading him tamely to his private table. Major Major gave up after that
and always ate at his table alone with his back to the others. He was certain
they resented him because he seemed too good to eat with them
now that he was squadron commander. There was never any conversation
in the mess tent when Major Major was present. He was conscious
that other officers tried to avoid eating at the same time, and everyone
was greatly relieved when he stopped coming there altogether and
began taking his meals in his trailer.
Major Major began forging Washington Irving's name to official
documents the day after the first C.I.D. man showed up to interrogate
him about somebody at the hospital who had been doing it and gave
him the idea. He had been bored and dissatisfied in his new position.
He had been made squadron commander but had no idea what he was
supposed to do as squadron commander, unless all he was supposed to
do was forge Washington Irving's name to official documents and listen
to the isolated clinks and thumps of Major -- de Coverley's
horseshoes falling to the ground outside the window of his small office
in the rear of the orderly-room tent. He was hounded incessantly by
an impression of vital duties left unfulfilled and waited in vain for his
responsibilities to overtake him. He seldom went out unless it was
absolutely necessary, for he could not get used to being stared at.
Occasionally, the monotony was broken by some officer or enlisted
man Sergeant Towser referred to him on some matter that Major
Major was unable to cope with and referred right back to Sergeant
Towser for sensible disposition. Whatever he was supposed to get done
as squadron commander apparently was getting done without any
assistance from him. He grew moody and depressed. At times he
thought seriously of going with all his sorrows to see the chaplain, but
the chaplain seemed so overburdened with miseries of his own that
Major Major shrank from adding to his troubles. Besides, he was not
quite sure if chaplains were for squadron commanders.
He had never been quite sure about Major -- de Coverley, either,
who, when he was not away renting apartments or kidnapping foreign
laborers, had nothing more pressing to do than pitch horseshoes.
Major Major often paid strict attention to the horseshoes falling softly
against the earth or riding down around the small steel pegs in the
ground. He peeked out at Major -- de Coverley for hours and marveled
that someone so august had nothing more important to do. He
was often tempted to join Major -- de Coverley, but pitching horseshoes
all day long seemed almost as dull as signing "Major Major
Major" to official documents, and Major -- de Coverley's countenance
was so forbidding that Major Major was in awe of approaching
him.
Major Major wondered about his relationship to Major -- de
Coverley and about Major -- de Coverley's relationship to him. He
knew that Major -- de Coverley was his executive officer, but he did
not know what that meant, and he could not decide whether in Major
-- de Coverley he was blessed with a lenient superior or cursed with
a delinquent subordinate. He did not want to ask Sergeant Towser, of
whom he was secretly afraid, and there was no one else he could ask,
least of all Major -- de Coverley. Few people ever dared approach
Major -- de Coverley about anything and the only officer foolish
enough to pitch one of his horseshoes was stricken the very next day
with the worst case of Pianosan crud that Gus or Wes or even Doc
Daneeka had ever seen or even heard about. Everyone was positive the
disease had been inflicted upon the poor officer in retribution by
Major -- de Coverley, although no one was sure how.
Most of the official documents that came to Major Major's desk did
not concern him at all. The vast majority consisted of allusions to prior
communications which Major Major had never seen or heard of. There
was never any need to look them up, for the instructions were invariably to disregard. In the space of a single productive minute, therefore,
he might endorse twenty separate documents each advising him to pay
absolutely no attention to any of the others. From General Peckem's
office on the mainland came prolix bulletins each day headed by such
cheery homilies as "Procrastination Is the Thief of Time" and "Cleanliness
Is Next to Godliness."
General Peckem's communications about cleanliness and procrastination
made Major Major feel like a filthy procrastinator, and he
always got those out of the way as quickly as he could. The only official
documents that interested him were those occasional ones pertaining
to the unfortunate second lieutenant who had been killed on
the mission over Orvieto less than two hours after he arrived on
Pianosa and whose partly unpacked belongings were still in Yossarian's
tent. Since the unfortunate lieutenant had reported to the operations
tent instead of to the orderly room, Sergeant Towser had decided that
it would be safest to report him as never having reported to the
squadron at all, and the occasional documents relating to him dealt
with the fact that he seemed to have vanished into thin air, which, in
one way, was exactly what did happen to him. In the long run, Major
Major was grateful for the official documents that came to his desk, for
sitting in his office signing them all day long was a lot better than sitting
in his office all day long not signing them. They gave him something
to do.
Inevitably, every document he signed came back with a fresh page
added for a new signature by him after intervals of from two to ten
days. They were always much thicker than formerly, for in between the
sheet bearing his last endorsement and the sheet added for his new
endorsement were the sheets bearing the most recent endorsements of
all the other officers in scattered locations who were also occupied in
signing their names to that same official document. Major Major grew
despondent as he watched simple communications swell prodigiously
into huge manuscripts. O matter how many times he signed one, it
always came back for still another signature, and he began to despair
of ever being free of any of them. One day-it was the day after the
C.I.D. man's first visit-Major Major signed Washington Irving's
name to one of the documents instead of his own, just to see how it
would feel. He liked it. He liked it so much that for the rest of that
afternoon he did the same with all the official documents. It was an act
of impulsive frivolity and rebellion for which he knew afterward he
would be punished severely. The next morning he entered his office in
trepidation and waited to see what would happen. Nothing happened.
He had sinned, and it was good, for none of the documents to which
he had signed Washington Irving's name ever came back! Here, at last,
was progress, and Major Major threw himself into his new career with
uninhibited gusto. Signing Washington Irving's name to official documents
was not much of a career, perhaps, but it was less monotonous
than signing "Major Major Major." When Washington Irving did
grow monotonous, he could reverse the order and sign Irving Washington
until that grew monotonous. And he was getting something
done, for none of the documents signed with either of these names
ever came back to the squadron.
What did come back, eventually, was a second C.I.D. man, masquerading
as a pilot. The men knew he was a C.I.D. man because he
confided to them he was and urged each of them not to reveal his true
identity to any of the other men to whom he had already confided that
he was a C.I.D. man.
"You're the only one in the squadron who knows I'm a C.I.D. man,"
he confided to Major Major, "and it's absolutely essential that it remain
a secret so that my efficiency won't be impaired. Do you understand?"
"Sergeant Towser knows."
"Yes, I know. I had to tell him in order to get in to see you. But I
know he won't tell a soul under any circumstances."
"He told me," said Major Major. "He told me there was a C.I.D.
man outside to see me."
"That bastard. I'll have to throw a security check on him. I wouldn't
leave any top-secret documents lying around here if I were you. At
least not until I make my report."
"I don't get any top-secret documents," said Major Major.
"That's the kind I mean. Lock them in your cabinet where Sergeant
Towser can't get his hands on them."
"Sergeant Towser has the only key to the cabinet."
"I'm afraid we're wasting time," said the second C.I.D. man rather
stiffly. He was a brisk, pudgy, high-strung person whose movements
were swift and certain. He took a number of photostats out of a large
red expansion envelope he had been hiding conspicuously beneath a
leather flight jacket painted garishly with pictures of airplanes flying
through orange bursts of flak and with orderly rows of little bombs signifying
fifty-five combat missions flown. "Have you ever seen any of
these?"
Major Major looked with a blank expression at copies of personal
correspondence from the hospital on which the censoring officer had
written "Washington Irving" or "Irving Washington."
"No."
"How about these?"
Major Major gazed next at copies of official documents addressed to
him to which he had been signing the same signatures.
"No."
"Is the man who signed these names in your squadron?"
"Which one? There are two names here."
"Either one. We figure that Washington Irving and Irving Washington
are one man and that he's using two names just to throw us off
the track. That's done very often, you know."
"I don't think there's a man with either of those names in my
squadron."
A look of disappointment crossed the second C.I.D. man's face.
"He's a lot cleverer than we thought," he observed. "He's using a third
name and posing as someone else. And I think ... yes, I think I know
what the third name is." With excitement and inspiration, he held
another photostat out for Major Major to study. "How about this?"
Major Major bent forward slightly and saw a copy of the piece of V
mail from which Yossarian had blacked out everything but the name
Mary and on which he had written, "I yearn for you tragically. A. T.
Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army." Major Major shook his head.
"I've never seen it before."
"Do you know who A. T. Tappman is?"
"He's the group chaplain."
"That locks it up," said the second C.I.D. man. "Washington Irving
is the group chaplain."
Major Major felt a twinge of alarm. "A. T. Tappman is the group
chaplain," he corrected.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Why should the group chaplain write this on a letter?"
"Perhaps somebody else wrote it and forged his name."
"Why would somebody want to forge the group chaplain's name?"
"To escape detection."
"You may be right," the second C.I.D. man decided after an instant's
hesitation, and smacked his lips crisply. "Maybe we're confronted with
a gang, with two men working together who just happen to have opposite
names. Yes, I'm sure that's it. One of them here in the squadron,
one of them up at the hospital and one of them with the chaplain. That
makes three men, doesn't it? Are you absolutely sure you never saw any
of these official documents before?"
"I would have signed them if! had."
"With whose name?" asked the second C.I.D. man cunningly.
"Yours or Washington Irving's?"
"With my own name," Major Major told him. "I don't even know
Washington Irving's name."
The second C.I.D. man broke into a smile.
"Major, I'm glad you're in the clear. It means we'll be able to work
together, and I'm going to need every man I can get. Somewhere in the
European theater of operations is a man who's getting his hands on
communications addressed to you. Have you any idea who it can be?"
"No."
"Well, I have a pretty good idea," said the second C.I.D. man, and
leaned forward to whisper confidentially. "That bastard Towser. Why
else would he go around shooting his mouth off about me? Now, you
keep your eyes open and let me know the minute you hear anyone even
talking about Washington Irving. I'll throw a 'security check on the
chaplain and everyone else around here."
The moment he was gone, the first C.I.D. man jumped into Major
Major's office through the window and wanted to know who the second
C.I.D. man was. Major Major barely recognized him.
"He was a C.I.D. man," Major Major told him.
"Like hell he was," said the first C.I.D. man. "I'm the C.I.D. man
around here."
Major Major barely recognized him because he was wearing a faded
maroon corduroy bathrobe with open seams under both arms, limy
flannel pajamas, and worn house slippers with one flapping sole. This
was regulation hospital dress, Major Major recalled. The man had
added about twenty pounds and seemed bursting with good health.
"I'm really a very sick man," he whined. "I caught cold in the hospital
from a fighter pilot and came down with a very serious case of
pneumonia."
"I'm very sorry," Major Major said.
"A lot of good that does me," the C.I.D. man sniveled. "I don't want
your sympathy. I just want you to know what I'm going through. I came
down to warn you that Washington Irving seems to have shifted his
base of operations from the hospital to your squadron. You haven't
heard anyone around here talking about Washington Irving, have you?"
"As a matter of fact, I have," Major Major answered. "That man
who was just in there. He was talking about Washington Irving."
"Was he really?" the first C.I.D. man cried with delight. "This might
be just what we needed to crack the case wide open! You keep him under
surveillance twenty-four hours a day while I rush back to the hospital
and write my superiors for further instructions." The C.I.D. man
jumped out of Major Major's office through the window and was gone.
A minute later, the flap separating Major Major's office from the
orderly room flew open and the second C.I.D. man was back, puffing
frantically in haste. Gasping for breath, he shouted, "I just saw a man
in red pajamas come jumping out of your window and go running up
the road! Didn't you see him?"
"He was here talking to me," Major Major answered.
"I thought that looked mighty suspicious, a man jumping out the
window in red pajamas." The man paced about the small office in vigorous
circles. "At first I thought it was you, hightailing it for Mexico.
But now I see it wasn't you. He didn't say anything about Washington
Irving, did he?"
"As a matter of fact," said Major Major, "he did."
"He did?" cried the second C.I.D. man. "That's fine! This might be
just the break we needed to crack the case wide open. Do you know
where we can find him?"
"At the hospital. He's really a very sick man."
"That's great!" exclaimed the second C.I.D. man. "I'll go right up
there after him. It would be best if I went incognito. I'll go explain the
situation at the medical tent and have them send me there as a patient."
"They won't send me to the hospital as a patient unless I'm sick," he
reported back to Major Major. "Actually, I am pretty sick. I've been
meaning to turn myself in for a checkup, and this will be a good opportunity.
I'll go back to the medical tent and tell them I'm sick, and I'll
get sent to the hospital that way."
"Look what they did to me," he reported back to Major Major with
purple gums. His distress was inconsolable. He carried his shoes and
socks in his hands, and his toes had been painted with gentian-violet
solution, too. "Who ever heard of a C.I.D. man with purple gums?" he
moaned.
He walked away from the orderly room with his head down and
tumbled into a slit trench and broke his nose. His temperature was still
normal, but Gus and Wes made an exception of him and sent him to
the hospital in an ambulance.
Major Major had lied, and it was good. He was not really surprised
that it was good, for he had observed that people who did lie were, on
the whole, more resourceful and ambitious and successful than people
who did not lie. Had he told the truth to the second C.I.D. man, he
would have found himself in trouble. Instead he had lied, and he was
free to continue his work.
He became more circumspect in his work as a result of the visit from
the second C.I.D. man. He did all his signing with his left hand and
only while wearing the dark glasses and false mustache he had used
unsuccessfully to help him begin playing basketball again. As an additional
precaution, he made a happy switch from Washington Irving to
John Milton. John Milton was supple and concise. Like Washington
Irving, he could be reversed with good effect whenever he grew monotonous.
Furthermore, he enabled Major Major to double his output,
for John Milton was so much shorter than either his own name or
Washington Irving's and took so much less time to write. John Milton
proved fruitful in still one more respect. He was versatile, and Major
Major soon found himself incorporating the signature in fragments of
imaginary dialogues. Thus, typical endorsements on the official documents
might read, "John, Milton is a sadist" or "Have you seen Milton,
John?" One signature of which he was especially proud read, "Is anybody
in the John, Milton?" John Milton threw open whole new vistas
filled with charming, inexhaustible possibilities that promised to ward
off monotony forever. Major Major went back to Washington Irving
when John Milton grew monotonous.
Major Major had bought the dark glasses and false mustache in
Rome in a final, futile attempt to save himself from the swampy degradation
into which he was steadily sinking. First there had been the
awful humiliation of the Great Loyalty Oath Crusade, when not one of
the thirty or forty people circulating competitive loyalty oaths would
even allow him to sign. Then, just when that was blowing over, there
was the matter of Clevinger's plane disappearing so mysteriously in
thin air with every member of the crew, and blame for the strange
mishap centering balefully on him because he had never signed any of
the loyalty oaths.
The dark glasses had large magenta rims. The false black mustache
was a flamboyant organ grinder's, and he wore them both to the basketball
game one day when he felt he could endure his loneliness no
longer. He affected an air of jaunty familiarity as he sauntered to the
court and prayed silently that he would not be recognized. The others
pretended not to recognize him, and he began to have fun. Just as he
finished congratulating himself on his innocent ruse he was bumped
hard by one of his opponents and knocked to his knees. Soon he was
bumped hard again, and it dawned on him that they did recognize him
and that they were using his disguise as a license to elbow, trip and maul
him. They did not want him at all. And just as he did realize this, the
players on his team fused instinctively with the players on the other
team into a single, howling, bloodthirsty mob that descended upon him
from all sides with foul curses and swinging fists. They knocked him to
the ground, kicked him while he was on the ground, attacked him again
after he had struggled blindly to his feet. He covered his face with his
hands and could not see. They swarmed all over each other in their
frenzied compulsion to bludgeon him, kick him, gouge him, trample
him. He was pummeled spinning to the edge of the ditch and sent slithering
down on his head and shoulders. At the bottom he found his footing,
clambered up the other wall and staggered away beneath the hail
of hoots and stones with which they pelted him until he lurched into
shelter around a corner of the orderly-room tent. ,His paramount concern
throughout the entire assault was to keep his dark glasses and false
mustache in place so that he might continue pretending he was somebody
else and be spared the dreaded necessity of having to confront
them with his authority.
Back in his office, he wept; and when he finished weeping he washed
the blood from his mouth and nose, scrubbed the dirt from the abrasions
on his cheek and forehead, and summoned Sergeant Towser.
"From now on," he said, "I don't want anyone to come in to see me
while I'm here. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir," said Sergeant Towser. "Does that include me?"
"Yes."
"I see. Will that be all?"
"Yes."
"What shall I say to the people who do come to see you while you're
here?"
"Tell them I'm in and ask them to wait."
"Yes, sir. For how long?"
"Until I've left."
"And then what shall I do with them?"
"I don't care."
"May I send them in to see you after you've left?"
"Yes."
"But you won't be here then, will you?"
"No."
"Yes, sir. Will that be all?"
"Yes."
"Yes, sir."
"From now on," Major Major said to the middle-aged enlisted man
who took care of his trailer, "I don't want you to come here while I'm
here to ask me if there's anything you can do for me. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir," said the orderly. "When should I come here to find out if
there's anything you want me to do for you?"
"When I'm not here."
"Yes, sir. And what should I do?"
"Whatever I tell you to."
"But you won't be here to tell me. Will you?"
"No."
"Then what should I do?"
"Whatever has to be done."
"Yes, sir."
"That will be all," said Major Major.
"Yes, sir," said the orderly. "Will that be all?"
"No," said Major Major. "Don't come in to clean, either. Don't
come in for anything unless you're sure I'm not here."
"Yes, sir. But how can I always be sure?"
"If you're not sure, just assume that I am here and go away until you
are sure. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir."
"I'm sorry to have to talk to you in this way, but I have to. Goodbye."
"Goodbye, sir."
"And thank you. For everything."
"Yes, sir."
"From now on," Major Major said to Milo Minderbinder, "I'm not
going to come to the mess hall any more. I'll have all my meals brought
to me in my trailer."
"I think that's a good idea sir," Milo answered. "Now I'll be able to
serve you special dishes that the others will never know about. I'm sure
you'll enjoy them. Colonel Cathcart always does."
"I don't want any special dishes. I want exactly what you serve all the
other officers. Just have whoever brings it knock once on my door and
leave the tray on the step. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir," said Milo. "That's very clear. I've got some live Maine
lobsters hidden away that I can serve you tonight with an excellent
Roquefort salad and two frozen eclairs that were smuggled out of Paris
only yesterday together with an important member of the French
underground. Will that do for a start?"
"No."
"Yes, sir. I understand."
For dinner that night Milo served him broiled Maine lobster with
excellent Roquefort salad and two frozen eclairs. Major Major was
annoyed. If he sent it back, though, it would only go to waste or to
somebody else, and Major Major had a weakness for broiled lobster.
He ate with a guilty conscience. The next day for lunch there was terrapin
Maryland with a whole quart of Dom Perignon 1937, and Major
Major gulped it down without a thought.
After Milo, there remained only the men in the orderly room, and
Major Major avoided them by entering and leaving every time through
the dingy celluloid window of his office. The window unbuttoned and
was low and large and easy to jump through from either side. He managed
the distance between the orderly room and his trailer by darting
around the corner of the tent when the coast was clear, leaping down
into the railroad ditch and dashing' along with his head bowed until he
attained the sanctuary of the forest. Abreast of his trailer, he left the
ditch and wove his way speedily toward home through the dense
underbrush, in which the only person he, ever encountered was Captain
Flume, ~ho, drawn and ghostly, frightened him half to death one
twilight by materializing without warning out of a patch of dewberry
bushes to complain that Chief White Halfoat had threatened to slit his
throat open from ear to ear.
"If you ever frighten me like that again," Major Major told him, "I'll
slit your throat open from ear to ear."
Captain Flume gasped and dissolved right back into the patch of
dewberry bushes, and Major Major never set eyes on him again.
When Major Major looked back on what he had accomplished, he was
pleased. In the midst of a few foreign acres teeming with more than two
hundred people, he had succeeded in becoming a recluse. With a little
ingenuity and vision, he had made it all but impossible for anyone in the
squadron to talk to him, which was just fine with everyone, he noticed,
since no one wanted to talk to him anyway. No one, it turned out, but that
madman Yossarian, who brought him down with a flying tackle one day
as he was scooting along the bottom of the ditch to his trailer for lunch.
The last person in the squadron Major Major wanted to be brought
down with a flying tackle by was Yossarian. There was something inherently
disreputable about Yossarian, always carrying on so disgracefully
about that dead man in his tent who wasn't even there and then taking
off all his clothes after the Avignon mission and going around without
them right up to the day General Dreedle stepped up to pin a medal on
him for his heroism over Ferrara and found him standing in formation
stark naked. No one in the world had the power to remove the dead
man's disorganized effects from Yossarian's tent. Major Major had forfeited
the authority when he permitted Sergeant Towser to report the
lieutenant who had been killed over Orvieto less than two hours after
he arrived in the squadron as never having arrived in the squadron at all.
The only one with any right to remove his belongings from Yossarian's
tent, it seemed to Major Major, was Yossarian himself, and Yossarian, it
seemed to Major Major, had no right.
Major Major groaned after Yossarian brought him down with a flying
tackle, and tried to wiggle to his feet. Yossarian wouldn't let him.
"Captain Yossarian," Yossarian said, "requests permission to speak
to the major at once about a matter of life or death,"
"Let me up, please," Major Major bid him in cranky discomfort. "I
can't return your salute while I'm lying on my arm."
Yossarian released him. They stood up slowly. Yossarian saluted
again and repeated his request.
"Let's go to my office," Major Major said. "I don't think this is the
best place to talk."
"Yes, sir," answered Yossarian.
They smacked the gravel from their clothing and walked in constrained
silence to the entrance of the orderly room.
"Give me a minute or two to put some Mercurochrome on these
cuts. Then have Sergeant Towser send you in."
"Yes, sir."
Major Major strode with dignity to the rear of the orderly room without
glancing at any of the clerks and typists working at the desks and filing
cabinets. He let the flap leading to his office fall closed behind him.
As soon as he was alone in his office, he raced across the room to the
window and jumped outside to dash away. He found Yossarian blocking
his path. Yossarian was waiting at attention and saluted again.
"Captain Yossarian requests permission to speak to the major at
once about a matter of life and death," he repeated determinedly.
"Permission denied," Major Major snapped.
"That won't do it."
Major Major gave in. "All right," he conceded wearily. "I'll talk to
you. Please jump inside my office."
"After you."
They jumped inside the office. Major Major sat down, and Yossarian
moved around in front of his desk and told him that he did not want to
fly any more combat missions. What could he do? Major Major asked
himself. All he could do was what he had been instructed to do by
Colonel Korn and hope for the best.
"Why not?" he asked.
"I'm afraid."
"That's nothing to be ashamed of," Major Major counseled him
kindly. "We're all afraid."
"I'm not ashamed," Yossarian said. "I'm just afraid."
"You wouldn't be normal if you were never afraid. Even the bravest
men experience fear. One of the biggest jobs we all face in combat is to
overcome fear."
"Oh, come on, Major. Can't we do without that horseshit?"
Major Major lowered his gaze sheepishly and fiddled with his fingers.
"What do you want me to tell you?"
"That I've flown enough missions and can go home."
"How many have you flown?"
"Fifty-one."
"You've only got four more to fly."
"He'll raise them. Every time I get close he raises them."
"Perhaps he won't this time."
"He never sends anyone home, anyway. He just keeps them around
waiting for rotation orders until he doesn't have enough men left for
the crews, and then raises the number of missions and throws them all
back on combat status. He's been doing that ever since he got here."
"You mustn't blame Colonel Cathcart for any delay with the
orders," Major Major advised. "It's Twenty-seventh Air Force's responsibility
to process the orders promptly once they get them from us."
"He could still ask for replacements and send us home when the
orders did come back. Anyway, I've been told that Twenty-seventh Air
Force wants only forty missions and that it's only his own idea to get
us to fly fifty-five."
"I wouldn't know anything about that," Major Major answered.
"Colonel Cathcart is our commanding officer and we must obey him.
Why don't you fly the four more missions and see what happens?"
"I don't want to."
What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could
you do with a man who looked you squarely in the eye and said he
would rather die than be killed in combat, a man who was at least as
mature and intelligent as you were and who you had to pretend was
not? What could you say to him?
"Suppose we let you pick your missions and fly milk runs," Major
Major said. "That way you can fly the four missions and not run any
risks."
"I don't want to fly milk runs. I don't want to be in the war any
more."
"Would you like to see our country lose?" Major Major asked.
"We won't lose. We've got more men, more money and more material.
There are ten million men in uniform who could replace me.
Some people are getting killed and a lot more are making money and
having fun. Let somebody else get killed."
"But suppose everybody on our side felt that way."
"Then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way.
Wouldn't I?"
What could you possibly say to him? Major Major wondered forlornly.
One thing he could not say was that there was nothing he could do. To
say there was nothing he could do would suggest he would do something
if he could and imply the existence of an error or injustice in
Colonel Korn's policy. Colonel Korn had been most explicit about
that. He must never say there was nothing he could do.
"I'm sorry," he said. "But there's nothing I can do."

10. Wintergreen

Clevinger was dead. That was the basic flaw in his philosophy. Eighteen
planes had let down through a beaming white cloud off the coast
of Elba one afternoon on the way back from the weekly milk run to
Parma; seventeen came out. No trace was ever found of the other, not
in the air or on the smooth surface of the jade waters below. There was
no debris. Helicopters circled the white cloud till sunset. During the
night the cloud blew away, and in the morning there was no more
Clevinger.
The disappearance was astounding, as astounding, certainly, as the
Grand Conspiracy of Lowery Field, when all sixty-four men in a single
barrack vanished one payday and were never heard of again. Until
Clevinger was snatched from existence so adroitly, Yossarian had
assumed that the men had simply decided unanimously to go AWOL
the same day. In fact, he had been so encouraged by what appeared to
be a mass desertion from sacred responsibility that he had gone running
outside in elation to carry the exciting news to ex-PF.e. Wintergreen.
"What's so exciting about it?" ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen sneered obnoxiously,
resting his filthy GI shoe on his spade and lounging back in
a surly slouch against the wall of one of the deep, square holes it was
his military specialty to dig.
ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen was a snide little punk who enjoyed working
at cross-purposes. Each time he went AWOL, he was caught and sentenced
to dig and fill up holes six feet deep, wide and long for a specified
length of time. Each time he finished his sentence, he went
AWOL again. ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen accepted his role of digging and
filling up holes with all the uncomplaining dedication of a true patriot.
"It's not a bad life," he would observe philosophically. "And I guess
somebody has to do it."
He had wisdom enough to understand that digging holes in
Colorado was not such a bad assignment in wartime. Since the holes
were in no great demand, he could dig them and fill them up at a
leisurely pace, and he was seldom overworked. On the other hand, he
was busted down to buck private each time he was court-martialed. He
regretted this loss of rank keenly.
"It was kind of nice being a P.F.C.," he reminisced yearningly. "I had
status-you know what I mean?-and I used to travel in the best circles."
His face darkened with resignation. "But that's all behind me
now," he guessed. "The next time I go over the hill it will be as a buck
private, and I just know it won't be the same." There was no future in
digging holes. "The job isn't even steady. I lose it each time I finish
serving my sentence. Then I have to go over the hill again if I want it
back. And I can't even keep doing that. There's a catch, Catch-22. The
next time I go over the hill, it will mean the stockade. I don't know
what's going to become of me. I might even wind up overseas if I'm not
careful." He did not want to keep digging holes for the rest of his life,
although he had no objection to doing it as long as there was a war
going on and it was part of the war effort. "It's a matter of duty," he
observed, "and we each have our own to perform. My duty is to keep
digging these holes, and I've been doing such a good job of it that I've
just been recommended for the Good Conduct Medal. Your duty is to
screw around in cadet school and hope the war ends before you get
out. The duty of the men in combat is to win the war, and I just wish
they were doing their duty as well as I've been doing mine. It wouldn't
be fair if! had to go overseas and do their job too, would it?"
One day ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen struck open a water pipe while digging
in one of his holes and almost drowned to death before he was
fished out nearly unconscious. Word spread that it was oil, and Chief
White Halfoat was kicked off the base. Soon every man who could find
a shovel was outside digging frenziedly for oil. Dirt flew everywhere;
the scene was almost like the morning in Pianosa seven months later
after the night Milo bombed the squadron with every plane he had
accumulated in his M & M syndicate, and the airfield, bomb dump and
repair hangars as well, and all the survivors were outside hacking cavernous
shelters into the solid ground and roofing them over with
sheets of armor plate stolen from the repair sheds at the field and with
tattered squares of waterproof canvas stolen from the side flaps of each
other's tents. Chief White Halfoat was transferred out of Colorado at
the first rumor of oil and came to rest finally in Pianosa as a replacement
for Lieutenant Coombs, who had gone out on a mission as a
guest one day just to see what combat was like and had died over
Ferrara in the plane with Kraft. Yossarian felt guilty each time he
remembered Kraft, guilty because Kraft had been killed on Yossarian's
second bomb run, and guilty because Kraft had got mixed up innocently
also in the Splendid Atabrine Insurrection that had begun in
Puerto Rico on the first leg of their flight overseas and ended in
Pianosa ten days later with Appleby striding dutifully into the orderly
room the moment he arrived to report Yossarian for refusing to take
his Atabrine tablets. The sergeant there invited him to be seated.
"Thank you, Sergeant, I think I will," said Appleby. "About how
long will I have to wait? I've still got a lot to get done today so that I
can be fully prepared bright and early tomorrow morning to go into
combat the minute they want me to."
"Sir?"
"What's that, Sergeant?"
"What was your question?"
"About how long will I have to wait before I can go in to see the
major?"
"Just until he goes out to lunch," Sergeant Towser replied. "Then
you can go right in."
"But he won't be there then. Will he?"
"No, sir. Major Major won't be back in his office until after lunch."
"I see," Appleby decided uncertainly. "I think I'd better come back
after lunch, then."
Appleby turned from the orderly room in secret confusion. The
moment he stepped outside, he thought he saw a tall, dark officer who
looked a little like Henry Fonda come jumping out the window of the
orderly-room tent and go scooting out of sight around the corner.
Appleby halted and squeezed his eyes closed. An anxious doubt assailed
him. He wondered if he were suffering from malaria, or, worse, from
an overdose of Atabrine tablets. Appleby had been taking four times as
many Atabrine tablets as the amount prescribed because he wanted to
be four times as good a pilot as everyone else. His eyes were still shut
when Sergeant Towser tapped him. lightly on the shoulder and told
him he could go in now if he wanted to, since Major Major had just
gone out. Appleby's confidence returned.
"Thank you, Sergeant. Will he be back soon?"
"He'll be back right after lunch. Then you'll have to go right out
and wait for him in front till he leaves for dinner. Major Major never
sees anyone in his office while he's in his office."
"Sergeant, what did you just say?"
"I said that Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he's in
his office."
Appleby stared at Sergeant Towser intently and attempted a firm
tone. "Sergeant, are you trying to make a fool out of me just because
I'm new in the squadron and you've been overseas a long time?"
"Oh, no, sir," answered the sergeant deferentially. "Those are my
orders. You can ask Major Major when you see him."
"That's just what I intend to do, Sergeant. When can I see him?"
"Never."
Crimson with humiliation, Appleby wrote down his report about
Yossarian and the Atabrine tablets on a pad the sergeant offered him
and left quickly, wondering if perhaps Yossarian were not the only man
privileged to wear an officer's uniform who was crazy.
By the time Colonel Cathcart had raised the number of missions to
fifty-five, Sergeant Towser had begun to suspect that perhaps every
man who wore a uniform was crazy. Sergeant Towser was lean and
angular and had fine blond hair so light it was almost without color,
sunken cheeks, and teeth like large white marshmallows. He ran the
squadron and was not happy doing it. Men like Hungry Joe glowered
at him with blameful hatred, and Appleby subjected him to vindictive
discourtesy now that he had established himself as a hot pilot and a
Ping-Pong player who never lost a point. Sergeant Towser ran the
squadron because there was no one else in the squadron to run it. He
had no interest in war or advancement. He was interested in shards and
Hepplewhite furniture.
Almost without realizing it, Sergeant Towser had fallen into the
habit of thinking of the dead man in Yossarian's tent in Yossarian's own
terms-as a dead man in Yossarian's tent. In reality, he was no such
thing. He was simply a replacement pilot who had been killed in combat
before he had officially reported for duty. He had stopped at the
operations tent to inquire the way to the orderly-room tent and had
been sent right into action because so many men had completed the
thirty-five missions required then that Captain Piltchard and Captain
Wren were finding it difficult to assemble the number of crews specified
by Group. Because he had never officially gotten into the squadron,
he could never officially be gotten out, and Sergeant Towser
sensed that the multiplying communications relating to the poor man
would continue reverberating forever.
His name was Mudd. To Sergeant Towser, who deplored violence
and waste with equal aversion, it seemed like such an abhorrent extravagance
to fly Mudd all the way across the ocean just to have him blown
into bits over Orvieto less than two hours after he arrived. No one
could recall who he was or what he had looked like, least of all Captain
Piltchard and Captain Wren, who remembered only that a new officer
had shown up at the operations tent just in time to be killed and who
colored uneasily every time the matter of the dead man in Yossarian's
tent was mentioned. The only ones who might have seen Mudd, the
men in the same plane, had all been blown to bits with him.
Yossarian, on the other hand, knew exactly who Mudd was. Mudd
was the unknown soldier who had never had a chance, for that was the
only thing anyone ever did know about all the unknown soldiers-they
never had a chance. They had to be dead. And this dead one was really
unknown, even though his belongings still lay in a tumble on the cot
in Yossarian's tent almost exactly as he had left them three months earlier
the day he never arrived-all contaminated with death less -than
two hours later, in the same way that all was contaminated with death
the very next week during the Great Big Siege of Bologna when the
moldy odor of mortality hung wet in the air with the sulphurous fog
and every man scheduled to fly was already tainted.
There was no escaping the mission to Bologna once Colonel Cathcart
had volunteered his group for the ammunition dumps there that
the heavy bombers on the Italian mainland had been unable to destroy
from their higher altitudes. Each day's delay deepened the awareness
and deepened the gloom. The clinging, overpowering conviction of
death spread steadily with the continuing rainfall, soaking mordantly
into each man's ailing countenance like the corrosive blot of some
crawling disease. Everyone smelled of formaldehyde. There was
nowhere to turn for help, not even to the medical tent, which had been
ordered closed by Colonel Korn so that no one could report for sick
call, as the men had done on the one clear day with a mysterious epidemic
of diarrhea that had forced still another postponement. With
sick call suspended and the door to the medical tent nailed shut, Doc
Daneeka spent the intervals between rain perched on a high stool,
wordlessly absorbing the bleak outbreak of fear with a sorrowing neutrality, roosting like a melancholy buzzard below the ominous, handlettered
sign tacked up on the closed door of the medical tent by
Captain Black as a joke and left hanging there by Doc Daneeka
because it was no joke. The sign was bordered in dark crayon and read:
"CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. DEATH IN THE FAMILY."
The fear flowed everywhere, into Dunbar's squadron, where Dunbar
poked his head inquiringly through the entrance of the medical
tent there one twilight and spoke respectfully to the blurred outline of
Dr. Stubbs, who was sitting in the dense shadows inside before a bottle
of whiskey and a bell jar filled with purified drinking water.
"Are you all right?" he asked solicitously.
"Terrible," Dr. Stubbs answered.
"What are you doing here?"
"Sitting."
"I thought there was no more sick call."
"There ain't."
"Then why are you sitting here?"
"Where else should I sit? At the goddam officers' club with Colonel
Cathcart and Korn? Do you know what I'm doing here?"
"Sitting."
"In the squadron, I mean. Not in the tent. Don't be such a goddam
wise guy. Can you figure out what a doctor is doing here in the squadron?"
"They've got the doors to the medical tents nailed shut in the other
squadrons," Dunbar remarked.
"If anyone sick walks through my door I'm going to ground him,"
Dr. Stubbs vowed. "I don't give a damn what they say."
"You can't ground anyone," Dunbar reminded. "Don't you know
the orders?"
"I'll knock 'him flat on his ass with an injection and really ground
him.'" Dr. Stubbs laughed with sardonic amusement at the prospect.
"They think they can order sick call out of existence. The bastards.
Ooops, there it goes again." The rain began falling again, first in the
trees, then in the mud puddles, then, faintly, like a soothing murmur,
on the tent top. "Everything's wet," Dr. Stubbs observed with revulsion.
"Even the latrines and urinals are backing up in protest. The
whole goddam world smells like a charnel house."
The silence seemed bottomless when he stopped talking. Night fell.
There was a sense of vast isolation.
"Turn on the light," Dunbar suggested.
"There is no light. I don't feel like starting my generator. I used to
get a big kick out of saving people's lives. Now I wonder what the hell's
the point, since they all have to die anyway."
"Oh, there's a point, all right," Dunbar assured him.
"Is there? What is the point?"
"The point is to keep them from dying for as long as you can."
"Yeah, but what's the point, since they all have to die anyway?"
"The trick is not to think about that."
"Never mind the trick. What the hell's the point?"
Dunbar pondered in silence for a few moments. "Who the hell
knows?"
Dunbar didn't know. Bologna should have exulted Dunbar, because
the minutes dawdled and the hours dragged like centuries. Instead it
tortured him, because he knew he was going to be killed.
"Do you really want some more codeine?" Dr. Stubbs asked.
"It's for my friend Yossarian. He's sure he's going to be killed."
"Yossarian? Who the hell is Yossarian? What the hell kind of a name
is Yossarian, anyway? Isn't he the one who got drunk and started that
fight with Colonel Korn at the officers' club the other night?"
"That's right. He's Assyrian."
"That crazy bastard."
"He's not so crazy," Dunbar said. "He swears he's not going to fly to
Bologna."
"That's just what I mean," Dr. Stubbs answered. "That crazy bastard
may be the only sane one left."

11. Captain Black

Corporal Kolodny learned about it first in a phone call from Group
and was so shaken by the news that he crossed the intelligence tent on
tiptoe to Captain Black, who was resting drowsily with his bladed shins
up on the desk, and relayed the information to him in a shocked whisper.
Captain Black brightened immediately. "Bologna?" he exclaimed
with delight. "Well, I'll be damned." He broke into loud laughter.
"Bologna, huh?" He laughed again and shook his head in pleasant
amazement. "Oh, boy! I can't wait to see those bastards' faces when
they find out they're going to Bologna. Ha, ha hal"
It was the first really good laugh Captain Black had enjoyed since
the day Major Major outsmarted him and was appointed squadron
commander, and he rose with torpid enthusiasm and stationed himself
behind the front counter in order to wring the most enjoyment from
the occasion when the bombardiers arrived for their map kits.
"That's right, you bastards, Bologna," he kept repeating to all the
bombardiers who inquired incredulously if they were really going to
Bologna. "Ha! Ha! Ha! Eat your livers, you bastards. This time you're
really in for it."
Captain Black followed the last of them outside to observe with
relish the effect of the knowledge upon all of the other officers and enlisted
men who were assembling with their helmets, parachutes and
flak suits around the four trucks idling in the center of the squadron
area. He was a tall, narrow, disconsolate man who moved with a
crabby listlessness. He shaved his pinched, pale face every third or
fourth day, and most of the time he appeared to be growing a reddish-gold
mustache over his skinny upper lip. He was not disappointed in
the scene outside. There was consternation darkening every expression,
and Captain Black yawned deliciously, rubbed the last lethargy
from his eyes and laughed gloatingly each time he told someone else
to eat his liver.
Bologna turned out to be the most rewarding event in Captain
Black's life since the day Major Duluth was killed over Perugia and he
was almost selected to replace him. When word of Major Duluth's
death was radioed back to the field, Captain Black responded with a
surge of joy. Although he had never really contemplated the possibility
before; Captain Black understood at once that he was the logical
man to succeed Major Duluth as squadron commander. To begin with,
he was the squadron intelligence officer, which meant he was more
intelligent than everyone else in the squadron. True, he was not on
combat status, as Major Duluth had been and as all squadron commanders
customarily were; but this was really another powerful argument
in his favor, since his life was in no danger and he would be able
to fill the post for as long as his country needed him. The more
Captain Black thought about it, the more inevitable it seemed. It was
merely a matter of dropping the right word in the right place quickly.
He hurried back to his office to determine a course of action. Settling
back in his swivel chair, his feet up on the desk and his eyes closed, he
began imagining how beautiful everything would be once he was
squadron commander.
While Captain Black was imagining, Colonel Cathcart was acting,
and Captain Black was flabbergasted by the speed with which, he concluded,
Major Major had outsmarted him. His great dismay at the
announcement of Major Major's appointment as squadron commander
was tinged with an embittered resentment he made no effort to conceal..
When fellow administrative officers expressed astonishment at Colonel
Cathcart's choice of Major Major, Captain Black muttered that there
was something funny going on; when they speculated on the political
value of Major Major's resemblance to Henry Fonda, Captain Black
asserted that Major Major really was Henry Fonda; and when they
remarked that Major Major was somewhat odd, Captain Black
announced that he was a Communist.
"They're taking over everything," he declared rebelliously. "Well,
you fellows can stand around and let them if you want to, but I'm not
going to. I'm going to do something about it. From now on I'm going
to make every son of a bitch who comes to my intelligence tent sign a
loyalty oath. And I'm not going to let that bastard Major Major sign
one even if he wants to."
Almost overnight the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was in full
flower, and Captain Black was enraptured to discover himself spearheading
it. He had really hit on something. All the enlisted men and
officers on combat duty had to sign a loyalty oath to get their map
cases from the intelligence tent, a second loyalty oath to receive their
flak suits and parachutes from the parachute tent, a third loyalty oath
for Lieutenant Balkington, the motor vehicle officer, to be allowed to
ride from the squadron to the airfield in one of the trucks. Every time
they turned around there was another loyalty oath to be signed. They
signed a loyalty oath to get their pay from the finance officer, to obtain
their PX supplies, to have their hair cut by the Italian barbers. To
Captain Black, every officer who supported his Glorious Loyalty Oath
Crusade was a competitor, and he planned and plotted twenty-four
hours a day to keep one step ahead. He would stand second to none in
his devotion to country. When other officers had followed his urging
and introduced loyalty oaths of their own, he went them one better by
making every son of a bitch who came to his intelligence tent sign two
loyalty oaths, then three, then four; then he introduced the pledge of
allegiance, and after that "The Star-Spangled Banner," one chorus,
two choruses, three choruses, four choruses. Each time Captain Black
forged ahead of his competitors, he swung upon them scornfully for
their failure to follow his example. Each time they followed his example,
he retreated with concern and racked his brain for some new stratagem
that would enable him to turn upon them scornfully again.
Without realizing how it had come about, the combat men in the
squadron discovered themselves dominated by the administrators
appointed to serve them. They were bullied, insulted, harassed and
shoved about all day long by one after the other. When they voiced
objection, Captain Black replied that people who were loyal would not
mind signing all the loyalty oaths they had to. To anyone who questioned
the effectiveness of the loyalty oaths, he replied that people who
really did owe allegiance to their country would be proud to pledge it
as often as he forced them to. And to anyone who questioned the
morality, he replied that "The Star-Spangled Banner" was the greatest
piece of music ever composed. The more loyalty oaths a person signed,
the more loyal he was; to Captain Black it was as simple as that, and he
had Corporal Kolodny sign hundreds with his name each day so that
he could always prove he was more loyal than anyone else.
"The important thing is to keep them pledging," he explained to his
cohorts. "It doesn't matter whether they mean it or not. That's why
they make little kids pledge allegiance even before they know what
'pledge' and 'allegiance' mean."
To Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren, the Glorious Loyalty Oath
Crusade was a glorious pain in the ass, since it complicated their task
of organizing the crews for each combat mission. Men were tied up all
over the squadron signing, pledging and singing, and the missions took
hours longer to get under way. Effective emergency action became
impossible, but Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren were both too
timid to raise any outcry against Captain Black, who scrupulously
enforced each day the doctrine of "Continual Reaffirmation" that he
had originated, a doctrine designed to trap all those men who had
become disloyal since the last time they had signed a loyalty oath the
day before. It was Captain Black who came with advice to Captain
Piltchard and Captain Wren as they pitched about in their bewildering
predicament. He came with a delegation and advised them bluntly to
make each man sign a loyalty oath before allowing him to fly on a combat
mission.
"Of course, it's up to you," Captain Black pointed out. "Nobody's
trying to pressure you. But everyone else is making them sign loyalty
oaths, and it's going to look mighty funny to the F.B.I. if you two are
.the only ones who don't care enough about your country to make them
sign loyalty oaths, too. If you want to get a bad reputation, that's nobody's
business but your own. All we're trying to do is help."
Milo was not convinced and absolutely refused to deprive Major
Major of food, even if Major Major was a Communist, which Milo
secretly doubted. Milo was by nature opposed to any innovation that
threatened to disrupt the normal course of affairs. Milo took a firm
moral stand and absolutely refused to participate in the Glorious
Loyalty Oath Crusade until Captain Black called upon him with his
delegation and requested him to.
"National defense is everybody's job," Captain Black replied to Milo's
objection. "And this whole program is voluntary, Milo-don't forget
that. The men don't have to sign Piltchard and Wren's loyalty oath if
they don't want to. But we need you to starve them to death if they
don't. It's just like Catch-22. Don't you get it? You're not against
Catch-22, are you?"
Doc Daneeka was adamant.
"What makes you so sure Major Major is a Communist?"
"You never heard him denying it until we began accusing him, did
you? And you don't see him signing any of our loyalty oaths."
"You aren't letting him sign any."
"Of course not," Captain Black explained. "That would defeat the
whole purpose of our crusade. Look, you don't have to play ball with
us if you don't want to. But what's the point of the rest of us working
so hard if you're going to give Major Major medical attention the
minute Milo begins starving him to death? 1 just wonder what they're
going to think up at Group about the man who's undermining our
whole security program. They'll probably transfer you to the Pacific."
Doc Daneeka surrendered swiftly. "I'll go tell Gus and Wes to do
whatever you want them to."
Up at Group, Colonel Cathcart had already begun wondering what
was going on.
"It's that idiot Black off on a patriotism binge," Colonel Korn
reported with a smile. "I think you'd better play ball with him for a
while, since you're the one who promoted Major Major to squadron
commander."
"That was your idea," Colonel Cathcart accused him petulantly. "I
never should have let you talk me into it."
"And a very good idea it was, too," retorted Colonel Korn, "since it
eliminated that superfluous major that's been giving you such an awful
black eye as an administrator. Don't worry, this will probably run its
course soon. :The best thing to do now is send Captain Black a letter
of total support and hope he drops dead before he does too much damage."
Colonel Korn was struck with a whimsical thought. "I wonder!
You don't suppose that imbecile will try to turn Major Major out of his
trailer, do you?"
"The next thing we've got to do is turn that bastard Major Major
out of his trailer," Captain Black decided. "I'd like to turn his wife and
kids out into the woods, too. But we can't. He has no wife and kids. So
we'll just have to make do with what we have and turn him out. Who's
in charge of the tents?"
"He is."
"You see?" cried Captain Black. "They're taking over everything!
Well, I'm not going to stand for it. I'll take this matter right to Major
-- de Coverley himself if! have to. I'll have Milo speak to him about
it the minute he gets back from Rome."
Captain Black had boundless faith in the wisdom, power and justice
of Major -- de Coverley, even though he had never spoken to him
before and still found himself without the courage to do so. He deputized
Milo to speak to Major -- de Coverley for him and stormed·
out impatiently as he waited for the tall executive officer to return.
Along with everyone else in the squadron, he lived in profound awe
and reverence of the majestic, white-haired major with the craggy face
and Jehovean bearing, who came back from Rome finally with an
injured eye inside a new celluloid eye patch and smashed his whole
Glorious Crusade to bits with a single stroke.
Milo carefully said nothing when Major -- de Coverley stepped
into the mess hall with his fierce and austere dignity the day he
returned and found his way blocked by a wall of officers waiting in line
to sign loyalty oaths. At the far end of the food counter, a group of men
who had arrived earlier were pledging allegiance to the flag, with trays
of food balanced in one hand, in order to be allowed to take seats at the
table. Already at the tables, a group that had arrived still earlier was
singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in order that they might use the
salt and pepper and ketchup there. The hubbub began to subside slowly
as Major -- de Coverley paused in the doorway with a frown of
puzzled disapproval, as though viewing something bizarre. He started
forward in a straight line, and the wall of officers before him parted like
the Red Sea. Glancing neither left nor right, he strode indomitably up
to the steam counter and, in a clear, full-bodied voice that was gruff
with age and resonant with ancient eminence and authority, said:
"Gimme eat."
Instead of eat, Corporal Snark gave Major -- de Coverley a loyalty
oath to sign. Major -- de Coverley swept it away with mighty
displeasure the moment he recognized what it was, his good eye flaring
up blindingly with fiery disdain and his enormous old corrugated
face darkening in mountainous wrath.
"Gimme eat, I said," he ordered loudly in harsh tones that rumbled
ominously through the silent tent like claps of distant thunder.
Corporal Snark turned pale and began to tremble. He glanced
toward Milo pleadingly for guidance. For several terrible seconds there
was not a sound. Then Milo nodded.
"Give him eat," he said.
Corporal Snark began giving Major -- de Coverley eat. Major
-- de Coverley turned from the counter with his tray full and came
to a stop. His eyes fell on the groups of other officers gazing at him
in mute appeal, and, with righteous belligerence, he roared:
"Give everybody eat!"
"Give everybody eat!" Milo echoed with joyful relief, and the Glorious
Loyalty Oath Crusade came to an end.
Captain Black was deeply disillusioned by this treacherous stab in
the back from someone in high place upon whom he had relied so confidently
for support. Major -- de Coverley had let him down.
"Oh, it doesn't bother me a bit," he responded cheerfully to everyone who came to him with sympathy. "We completed our task. Our
purpose was to make everyone we don't like afraid and to alert people
to the danger of Major Major, and we certainly succeeded at that. Since
we weren't going to let him sign loyalty oaths anyway, it doesn't really
matter whether we have them or not."
Seeing everyone in the squadron he didn't like afraid once again
throughout the appalling, interminable Great Big Siege of Bologna
reminded Captain Black nostalgically of the good old days of his
Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade when he had been a man of real consequence,
and when even big shots like Milo Minderbinder, Doc
Daneeka and Piltchard and Wren had trembled at his approach and
groveled at his feet. To prove to newcomers that he really had been a
man of consequence once, he still had the letter of commendation he
had received from Colonel Cathcart.

12. Bologna

Actually, it was not Captain Black but Sergeant Knight who triggered
the solemn panic of Bologna, slipping silently off the truck for two
extra flak suits as soon as he learned the target and signaling the start
of the grim procession back into the parachute tent that degenerated
into a frantic stampede finally before all the extra flak suits were gone.
"Hey, what's going on?" Kid Sampson asked nervously. "Bologna
can't be that rough, can it?"
Nately, sitting trancelike on the floor of the truck, held his grave
young face in both hands and did not answer him.
It was Sergeant Knight and the cruel series of postponements, for
just as they were climbing up into their planes that first morning, along
came a jeep with the news that it was raining in Bologna and that the
mission would be delayed. It was raining in Pianosa too by the time
they returned to the squadron, and they had the rest of that day to stare
woodenly at the bomb line on the map under the awning of the intelligence
tent and ruminate hypnotically on the fact that there was no
escape. The evidence was there vividly in the narrow red ribbon tacked
across the mainland: the ground forces in Italy were pinned down
forty-two insurmountable miles south of the target and could not possibly
capture the city in time. Nothing could save the men in Pianosa
from the mission to Bologna. They were trapped.
Their only hope was that it would never stop raining, and they had
no hope because they all knew it would. When it did stop raining in
Pianosa, it rained in Bologna. When it stopped raining in Bologna, it
began again in Pianosa. If there was no rain at all, there were freakish,
inexplicable phenomena like the epidemic of diarrhea or the bomb line
that moved. Four times during the first six days they were assembled
and briefed and then sent back. Once, they took off and were flying in
formation when the control tower summoned them down. The more
it rained, the worse they suffered. The worse they suffered, the more
they prayed that it would continue raining. All through the night, men
looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars. All through the day,
they looked at the bomb line on the big, wobbling easel map of Italy
that blew over in the wind and was dragged in under the awning of the
intelligence tent every time the rain began. The bomb line was a scarlet
band of narrow satin ribbon that delineated the forwardmost position
of the Allied ground forces in every sector of the Italian mainland.
The morning after Hungry Joe's fist fight with Huple's cat, the rain
stopped falling in both places. The landing strip began to dry. It would
take a full twenty-four hours to harden; but the sky remained cloudless.
The resentments incubating in each man hatched into hatred.
First they hated the infantrymen on the mainland because they had
failed to capture Bologna. Then they began to hate the bomb line
itself. For hours they stared relentlessly at the scarlet ribbon on the
map and hated it because it would not move up high enough to encompass
the city. When night fell, they congregated in the darkness with
flashlights, continuing their macabre vigil at the bomb line in brooding
entreaty as though hoping to move the ribbon up by the collective
weight of their sullen prayers.
"I really can't believe it," Clevinger exclaimed to Yossarian in a voice
rising and falling in protest and wonder. "It's a complete reversion to
primitive superstition. They're confusing cause and effect. It makes as
much sense as knocking on wood or crossing your fingers. They really
believe that we wouldn't have to fly that mission tomorrow if someone
would only tiptoe up to the map in the middle of the night and move
the bomb line over Bologna. Can you imagine? You and I must be the
only rational ones left."
In the middle of the night Yossarian knocked on wood, crossed his
fingers, and tiptoed out of his tent to move the bomb line up over
Bologna.
Corporal Kolodny tiptoed steathily into Captain Black's tent early
the next morning, reached inside the mosquito net and gently shook
the moist shoulder blade he found there until Captain Black opened
his eyes.
"What are you waking me up for?" whimpered Captain Black.
"They captured Bologna, sir," said Corporal Kolodny. "I thought
you'd want to know. Is the mission canceled?"
Captain Black tugged himself erect and began scratching his
scrawny long thighs methodically. In a little while he dressed and
emerged from his tent, squinting, cross and unshaven. The sky was
clear and warm. He peered without emotion at the map. Sure enough,
they had captured Bologna. Inside the intelligence tent, Corporal Kolodny was already removing the maps of Bologna from the navigation
kits. Captain Black seated himself with a loud yawn, lifted his feet to
the top of his desk and phoned Colonel Korn.
"What are you waking me up for?" whimpered Colonel Korn.
"They captured Bologna during the night, sir. Is the mission canceled?"
"What are you talking about, Black?" Colonel Korn growled. "Why
should the mission be canceled?"
"Because they captured Bologna, sir. Isn't the mission canceled?"
"Of course the mission is canceled. Do you think we're bombing
our own troops now?"
"What are you waking me up for?" Colonel Cathcart whimpered to
Colonel Korn.
"They captured Bologna," Colonel Korn told him. "I thought you'd
want to know."
"Who captured Bologna?"
"We did."
Colonel Cathcart was overjoyed, for he was relieved of the embarrassing
commitment to bomb Bologna without blemish to the reputation
for valor he had earned by volunteering his men to do it. General
Dreedle was pleased with the capture of Bologna, too, although he was
angry with Colonel Moodus for waking him up to tell him about it.
Headquarters was also pleased and decided to award a medal to the
officer who had captured the city. There was no officer who had captured
the city, so they gave the medal to General Peckem instead,
because General Peckem was the only officer with sufficient initiative
to ask for it.
As soon as General Peckem had received his medal, he began asking
for increased responsibility. It was General Peckem's opinion that
all combat units in the theater should be placed under the jurisdiction
of the Special Service Corps, of which General Peckem himself was the
commanding officer. If dropping bombs on the enemy was not a special
service, he reflected aloud frequently with the martyred smile of
.sweet reasonableness that was his loyal confederate in every dispute,
then he could not help wondering what in the world was. With amiable
regret, he declined the offer of a combat post under General
Dreedle.
"Flying combat missions for General Dreedle is not exactly what I
had in mind," he explained indulgently with a smooth laugh. "I was
thinking more in terms of replacing General Dreedle, or perhaps of
something above General Dreedle where I could exercise supervision
over a great many other generals too. You see, my most precious abilities
are mainly administrative ones. I have a happy facility for getting
different people-to agree." .
"He has a happy facility for getting different people to agree what a
prick he is," Colonel Cargill confided invidiously to ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen
in the hope that ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen would spread the unfavorable
report along through Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters.
"If anyone deserves that combat post, I do. It was even my idea that we
ask for the medal."
"You really want to go into combat?" ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen inquired.
"Combat?" Colonel Cargill was aghast. "Oh, no-you misunderstand
me. Of course, I wouldn't actually mind going into combat, but
my best abilities are mainly administrative ones. I too have a happy
facility for getting different people to agree."
"He too has a happy facility for getting different people to agree
what a prick he is," ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen confided with a laugh to
Yossarian, after he had come to Pianosa to learn if it was really true
about Milo and the Egyptian cotton. "If anyone deserves a promotion,
I do." Actually, he had risen already to ex-corporal, having shot
through the ranks shortly after his transfer to Twenty-seventh Air
Force Headquarters as a mail clerk and been busted right down to private
for making odious audible comparisons about the commissioned
.officers for whom he worked. The heady taste of success had infused
him further with morality and fired him with ambition for loftier
attainments. "Do you want to buy some Zippo lighters?" he asked
Yossarian. "They were stolen right from quartermaster."
"Does Milo know you're selling cigarette lighters?"
"What's it his business? Milo's not carrying cigarette lighters too
now, is he?"
"He sure is," Yossarian told him. "And his aren't stolen."
"That's what you think," ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen answered with a
laconic snort. "I'm selling mine for a buck apiece. What's he getting for
his?"
"A dollar and a penny."
ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen snickered triumphantly. "I beat him every
time," he gloated. "Say, what about all that Egyptian cotton he's stuck
with? How much did he buy?"
"All."
"In the whole world? Well, I'll be damned!" ex-P.F.C Wintergreen
crowed with malicious glee. "What a dope! You were in Cairo with
him. Why'd you let him do it?"
"Me?" Yossarian answered with a shrug. "I have no influence on
him. It was those Teletype machines they have in all the good restaurants
there. Milo had never seen a stock ticker before, and the quotation
for Egyptian cotton happened to be going in just as he asked the
headwaiter to explain it to him. 'Egyptian cotton?' Milo said with that
look of his. 'How much is Egyptian cotton selling for?' The next thing
I knew he had bought the whole goddam harvest. And now he can't
unload any of it."
"He has no imagination. I can unload plenty of it in the black market
if he'll make a deal."
"Milo knows the black market. There's no demand for cotton."
"But there is a demand for medical supplies. I can roll the cotton up
on wooden toothpicks and peddle them as sterile swabs. Will he sell to
me at a good price?"
"He won't sell to you at any price," Yossarian answered. "He's pretty
sore at you for going into competition with him. In fact, he's pretty
sore at everybody for getting diarrhea last weekend and giving his mess
hall a bad name. Say, you can help us." Yossarian suddenly seized
his arm. "Couldn't you forge some official orders on that mimeograph
machine of yours and get us out of flying to Bologna?"
Ex-P.F.C Wintergreen pulled away slowly with a look of scorn.
"Sure I could," he explained with pride. "But I would never dream of
doing anything like that."
"Why not?"
"Because it's your job. We all have our jobs to do. My job is to unload
these Zippo lighters at a profit if I can and pick up some cotton
from Milo. Your job is to bomb the ammunition dumps at Bologna."
"But I'm going to be killed at Bologna," Yossarian pleaded. "We're
all going to be killed."
"Then you'll just have to be killed," replied ex-P.F.C Wintergreen.
"Why can't you be a fatalist about it the way I am? If I'm destined to
unload these lighters at a profit and pick up some Egyptian cotton
cheap from Milo, then that's what I'm going to do. And if you're
destined to be killed over Bologna, then you're going to be killed, so
you might just as well go out and die like a man. I hate to say this,
Yossarian, but you're turning into a chronic complainer."
Clevinger agreed with ex-P.F.C Wintergreen that it was Yossarian's
job to get killed over Bologna and was livid with condemnation when
Yossarian confessed that it was he who had moved the bomb line and
caused the mission to be canceled.
"Why the hell not?" Yossarian snarled, arguing all the more vehemently
because he suspected he was wrong. "Am I supposed to get my
ass shot off just because the colonel wants to be a general?"
"What about the men on the mainland?" Clevinger demanded with
just as much emotion. "Are they supposed to get their asses shot off just
because you don't want to go? Those men are entitled to air support!"
"But not necessarily by me. Look, they don't care who knocks out
those ammunition dumps. The only reason we're going is because that
bastard Cathcart volunteered us."
"Oh, I know all that," Clevinger assured him, his gaunt face pale and
his agitated, brown eyes swimming in sincerity. "But the fact remains
that those ammunition dumps are still standing. You know very well
that I don't approve of Colonel Cathcart any more than you do."
Clevinger paused for emphasis, his mouth quivering, and then beat his
fist down softly against his sleeping bag. "But it's not for us to determine
what targets must be destroyed or who's to destroy them or-"
"Or who gets killed doing it? And why?"
"Yes, even that. We have no right to question-"
"You're insane!"
"-no right to question-"
"Do you really mean that it's not my business how or why I get
killed and that it is Colonel Cathcart's? Do you really mean that?"
"Yes, I do," Clevinger insisted, seeming unsure. "There are men
entrusted with winning the war who are in a much better position than
we are to decide what targets have to be bombed."
"We are talking about two different things," Yossarian answered
with exaggerated weariness. "You are talking about the relationship of
the Air Corps to the infantry, and I am talking about the relationship
of me to Colonel Cathcart. You are talking about winning the war, and
I am talking about winning the war and keeping alive."
"Exactly," Clevinger snapped smugly. "And which do you think is
more important?"
"To whom?" Yossarian shot back. "Open your eyes, Clevinger. It
doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone
who's dead."
Clevinger sat for a moment as though he'd been slapped. "Congratulations!"
he exclaimed bitterly, the thinnest milk-white line
enclosing his lips tightly in a bloodless, squeezing ring. "I can't think
of another attitude that could be depended upon to give greater comfort
to the enemy."
"The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody
who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on, and
that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don't you forget that, because the
longer you remember it, the longer you might live."
But Clevinger did forget it, and now he was dead. At the time,
Clevinger was so upset by the incident that Yossarian did not dare tell
him he had also been responsible for the epidemic of diarrhea that
had caused the other unnecessary postponement. Milo was even more
upset by the possibility that someone had poisoned his squadron again,
I and he came bustling fretfully to Yossarian for assistance.
"Please find out from Corporal Snark if he put laundry soap in the
sweet potatoes again," he requested furtively. "Corporal Snark trusts
you and will tell you the truth if you give him your word you won't tell
anyone else. As soon as he tells you, come and tell me."
"Of course I put laundry soap in the sweet potatoes," Corporal
Snark admitted to Yossarian. "That's what you asked me to do, isn't it?
Laundry soap is the best way."
"He swears to God he didn't have a thing to do with it," Yossarian
reported back to Milo.
Milo pouted dubiously. "Dunbar says there is no God."
There was no hope left. By the middle of the second week, everyone
in the squadron began to look like Hungry Joe, who was not
scheduled to fly and screamed horribly in his sleep. He was the only
one who could sleep. All night long, men moved through the darkness
outside their tents like tongueless wraiths with cigarettes. In the daytime
they stared at the bomb line in futile, drooping clusters or at the
still figure of Doc Daneeka sitting in front of the closed door of the
medical tent beneath the morbid hand-lettered sign. They began to
invent humorless, glum jokes of their own and disastrous rumors about
the destruction awaiting them at Bologna.
Yossarian sidled up drunkenly to Colonel Korn at the officers' club
one night to kid with him about the new Lepage gun that the Germans
had moved in.
"What Lepage gun?" Colonel Korn inquired with curiosity.
"The new three-hundred-and-forty-four-millimeter Lepage glue
gun," Yossarian answered. "It glues a whole formation of planes together
in mid-air."
Colonel Korn jerked his elbow free from Yossarian's clutching fingers
in startled affront. "Let go of me, you idiot!" he cried out furiously,
glaring with vindictive approval as Nately leaped upon
Yossarian's back and pulled him away. "Who is that lunatic, anyway?"
Colonel Cathcart chortled merrily. "That's the man you made me
give a medal to after Ferrara. You had me promote him to captain, too,
remember? It serves you right."
Nately was lighter than Yossarian and had great difficulty maneuvering
Yossarian's lurching bulk across the room to an unoccupied
table. "Are you crazy?" Nately kept hissing with trepidation. "That was
Colonel Korn. Are you crazy?"
Yossarian wanted another drink and promised to leave quietly if
Nately brought him one. Then he made Nately bring him two more.
When Nately finally coaxed him to the door, Captain Black came
stomping in from outside, banging his sloshing shoes down hard on
the wood floor and spilling water from his eaves like a high roof.
"Boy, are you bastards in for it!" he announced exuberantly, splashing
away from the puddle forming at his feet. "I just got a call from
Colonel Korn. Do you know what they've got waiting for you at
Bologna? Ha! Hal They've got the new Lepage glue gun. It glues a
whole formation of planes together right in mid-air."
"My God, it's true!" Yossarian shrieked, and collapsed against
Nately in terror.
"There is no God," answered Dunbar calmly, coming up with a
slight stagger.
"Hey, give me a hand with him, will you? I've got to get him back
in his tent."
"Says who?"
"Says me. Gee, look at the rain."
"'We've got to get a car."
"Steal Captain Black's car," said Yossarian. "That's what I always do."
"We can't steal anybody's car. Since you began stealing the nearest
car every time you wanted one, nobody leaves the ignition on."
"Hop in," said Chief White Halfoat, driving up drunk in a covered
jeep. He waited until they had crowded inside and then spurred ahead
with a suddenness that rolled them all over backward. He roared with
laughter at their curses. He drove straight ahead when he left the parking
lot and rammed the car into the embankment on the other side of
the road. The others piled forward in a helpless heap and began cursing
him again. "I forgot to turn," he explained.
"Be careful, will you?" Nately cautioned. "You'd better put your
headlights on."
Chief White Halfoat pulled back in reverse, made his turn and shot
away up the road at top speed. The wheels were sibilant on the
whizzing black-top surface.
"Not so fast," urged Nately.
"You'd better take me to your squadron first so I can help you put
him to bed. Then you can drive me back to my squadron."
"Who the hell are you?"
"Dunbar."
"Hey, put your headlights on," Nately shouted. "And watch the
road!"
"They are on. Isn't Yossarianin this car? That's the only reason I let
the rest of you bastards in." Chief White Halfoat turned completely
around to stare into the back seat.
"Watch the road!"
"Yossarian? Is Yossarian in here?"
"I'm here, Chief. Let's go home. What makes you so sure? You
never answered my question."
"You see? I told you he was here."
"What question?"
"Whatever it was we were talking about."
"Was it important?"
"I don't remember if it was important or not. I wish to God I knew
what it was."
"There is no God."
"That's what we were talking about," Yossarian cried. "What makes
you so sure?"
"Hey, are you sure your headlights are on?" Nately called out.
"They're on, they're on. What does he want from me? It's all this
rain on the windshield that makes it look dark from back there."
"Beautiful, beautiful rain."
"I hope it never stops raining. Rain, rain, go a-"
"-way. Come a-"
"-gain some oth-"
"-er day. Little Yo-Yowants-"
"-to play. In-"
"-the meadow, in-"
Chief White Halfoat missed the next turn in the road and ran the
jeep all the way up to the crest of a steep embankment. Rolling back
down, the jeep turned over on its side and settled softly in the mud.
There was a frightened silence.
"Is everyone all right?" Chief White Halfoat inquired in a hushed
voice. No one was injured, and he heaved a long sigh of relief. "You
know, that's my trouble," he groaned. "I never listen to anybody.
Somebody kept telling me to put my headlights on, but I just wouldn't
listen."
"I kept telling you to put your headlights on."
"I know, I know. And I just wouldn't listen, would I? I wish I had a
drink. I do have a drink. Look. It's not broken."
"It's raining in," Nately noticed. "I'm getting wet."
Chief White Halfoat got the bottle of rye open, drank and handed
it off. Lying tangled up on top of each other, they all drank but Nately,
who kept groping ineffectually for the door handle. The bottle fell
against his head with a clunk, and whiskey poured down his neck. He
began writhing convulsively.
"Hey, we've got to get out of here!" he cried. "We'll all drown."
"Is anybody in there?" asked Clevinger with concern, shining a
flashlight down from the top.
"It's Clevinger!" they shouted, and tried to pull him in through the
window as he reached down to aid them.
"Look at them!" Clevinger exclaimed indignantly to McWatt, who
sat grinning at the wheel of the staff car. "Lying there like a bunch of
drunken animals. You too, Nately? You ought to be ashamed! Come
on-help me get them out of there before they all die of pneumonia."
"You know, that don't sound like such a bad idea," Chief White
Halfoat reflected. "I think I will die of pneumonia."
"Why?"
"Why not?" answered Chief White Halfoat, and lay back in the
mud contentedly with the bottle of rye cuddled in his arms.
"Oh, now look what he's doing!" Clevinger exclaimed with irritation.
"%11 you get up and get into the car so we can all go back to the
squadron?"
"We can't all go back. Someone has to stay here and help the Chief
with this car he signed out of the motor pool."
Chief White Halfoat settled back in the staff car with an ebullient,
prideful chuckle. "That's Captain Black's car," he informed them jubilantly.
"I stole it from him at the officers' club just now with an extra
set of keys he thought he lost this morning."
"Well, I'll be damned! That calls for a drink."
"Haven't you had enough to drink?" Clevinger began scolding as
soon as McWatt started the car. "Look at you. You don't care if you
drink yourselves to death or drown yourselves to death, do you?"
"Just as long as we don't fly ourselves to death."
"Hey, open it up, open it up," Chief White Halfoat urged McWatt.
"And turn off the headlights. That's the only way to do it."
"Doc Daneeka is right," Clevinger went on. "People don't know
enough to take care of themselves. I really am disgusted with all of
you."
"Okay, fatmouth, out of the car," Chief White Halfoat ordered.
"Everybody get out of the car but Yossarian. Where's Yossarian?"
"Get the hell off me." Yossarian laughed, pushing him away. "You're
all covered with mud."
Clevinger focused on Nately. "You're the one who really surprises
me. Do you know what you smell like? Instead of trying to keep him
out of trouble, you get just as drunk as he is. Suppose he got in another
fight with Appleby?" Clevinger's eyes opened wide with alarm when he
heard Yossarian chuckle. "He didn't get in another fight with Appleby"
did he?"
"Not this time," said Dunbar.
"O, not this time. This time I did even better."
"This time he got in a fight with Colonel Korn."
"He didn't!" gasped Clevinger.
"He did?" exclaimed Chief White Halfoat with delight. "That calls
for a drink."
"But that's terrible!" Clevinger declared with deep apprehension.
"Why in the world did you have to pick on Colonel Korn? Say, what
happened to the lights? Why is everything so dark?"
"I turned them off," answered McWatt. "You know, Chief White
Halfoat is right. It's much better with the headlights off."
"Are you crazy?" Clevinger screamed, and lunged forward to snap
the headlights on. He whirled around upon Yossarian in near hysteria.
"You see what you're doing? You've got them all acting like you!
Suppose it stops raining and we have to fly to Bologna tomorrow.
You'll be in fine physical condition."
"It won't ever gonna stop raining. No, sir, a rain like this really
might go on forever."
"It bas stopped raining!" someone said, and the whole car fell silent.
"You poor bastards," Chief White Halfoat murmured compassionately
after a few moments had passed.
"Did it really stop raining?" Yossarian asked meekly.
McWatt switched off the windshield wipers to make certain. The
rain had stopped. The sky was starting to clear. The moon was sharp
behind a gauzy brown mist.
"Oh, well," sang McWatt soberly. "What the hell."
"Don't worry, fellas," Chief White Halfoat said. "The landing strip
is too soft to use tomorrow. Maybe it'll start raining again before the
field dries out."
"You goddam stinking lousy son of a bitch," Hungry Joe screamed
from his tent as they sped into the squadron.
"Jesus, is he back here tonight? I thought he was still in Rome with
the courier ship."
"Oh! Ooooh! Oooooooh!" Hungry Joe screamed.
Chief White Halfoat shuddered. "That guy gives me the willies," he
confessed in a grouchy whisper. "Hey, whatever happened to Captain
Flume?"
"There's a guy that gives me the willies. I saw him in the woods last
week eating wild berries. He never sleeps in his trailer any more. He
looked like hell."
"Hungry Joe's afraid he'll have to replace somebody who goes on
sick call, even though there is no sick call. Did you see him the other
night when he tried to kill Havermeyer and fell into Yossarian's slit
trench?"
"Ooooh!" screamed Hungry Joe. "Oh! Ooooh! Oooooooh!"
"It sure is a pleasure not having Flume around in the mess hall any
more. No more of that 'Pass the salt, Walt.'''
"Or 'Pass the bread, Fred.'''
"Or 'Shoot me a beet, Pete.'''
"Keep away, keep away," Hungry Joe screamed. "I said keep away,
keep away, you goddam stinking lousy son of a bitch."
"At least we found out what he dreams about," Dunbar observed
wryly. "He dreams about goddam stinking lousy sons of bitches."
Late that night Hungry Joe dreamed that Huple's cat was sleeping
on his face, suffocating him, and when he woke up, Huple's cat was
sleeping' on his face. His agony was terrifying, the piercing, unearthly
howl with which he split the moonlit dark vibrating in its own impact
for seconds afterward like a devastating shock. A numbing silence followed,
and then a riotous din rose from inside his tent.
Yossarian was among the first ones there. When he burst through
the entrance, Hungry Joe had his gun out and was struggling to
wrench his arm free from Huple to shoot the cat, who kept spitting and
feinting at him ferociously to distract him from shooting Huple. Both
humans were in their GI underwear. The unfrosted light bulb overhead
was swinging crazily on its loose wire, and the jumbled black
shadows kept swirling and bobbing chaotically, so that the entire tent
seemed to be reeling. Yossarian reached out instinctively for balance
and then launched himself forward in a prodigious dive that crushed
the three combatants to the ground beneath him. He emerged from
the melee with the scruff of a neck in each hand-Hungry Joe's neck
and the cat's. Hungry Joe and the cat glared at each other savagely. The
cat spat viciously at Hungry Joe, and Hungry Joe tried to hit it with a
haymaker.
"A fair fight," Yossarian decreed, and all the others who had come
running to the uproar in horror began cheering ecstatically in a tremendous
overflow of relief. "We'll have a fair fight," he explained officially
to Hungry Joe and the cat after he had carried them both outside,
still holding them apart by the scruffs of their necks. "Fists, fangs and
claws. But no guns," he warned Hungry Joe. "And no spitting," he
warned the cat sternly. "When I turn you both loose, go. Break clean in
the clinches and come back fighting. Go!"
There was a huge, giddy crowd of men who were avid for any diversion,
but the cat turned chicken the moment Yossarian released him
and fled from Hungry Joe ignominiously like a yellow dog. Hungry Joe
was declared the winner. He swaggered away happily with the proud
smile of a champion, his shriveled head high and his emaciated chest
out. He went back to bed victorious and dreamed again that Huple's
cat was sleeping on his face, suffocating him.

13. Major - de Coverley

Moving the bomb line did not fool the Germans, but it did fool Major
-- de Coverley, who packed his musette bag, commandeered an airplane
and, under the impression that Florence too had been captured
by the allies, had himself flown to that city to rent two apartments for
the officers and the enlisted men in the squadron to use on rest leaves.
He had still not returned by the time Yossarian jumped back outside
Major Major's office and wondered whom to appeal to next for help.
Major -- de Coverley was a splendid, awe-inspiring, grave old
man with a massive leonine head and an angry shock of wild white hair
that raged like a blizzard around his stern, patriarchal face. His duties
as squadron executive officer did consist entirely, as both Doc Daneeka
and Major Major had conjectured, of pitching horseshoes, kidnapping
Italian laborers, and renting apartments for the enlisted men and officers
to use on rest leaves, and he excelled at all three.
Each time the fall of a city like Naples, Rome or Florence seemed
imminent, Major -- de Coverley would pack his musette bag, commandeer
an airplane and a pilot, and have himself flown away, accomplishing
all this without uttering a word, by the sheer force of his
solemn, domineering visage and the peremptory gestures of his wrinkled
finger. A day or two after the city fell, he would be back with
leases on two large and luxurious apartments there, one for the officers
and one for the enlisted men, both already staffed with competent,
jolly cooks and maids. A few days after that, newspapers would appear
throughout the world with photographs of the first American soldiers
bludgeoning their way into the shattered city through rubble and
smoke. Inevitably, Major -- de Coverley was among them, seated
straight as a ramrod in a jeep he had obtained from somewhere, glancing
neither right nor left as the artillery fire burst about his invincible
head and lithe young infantrymen with carbines went loping up along
the sidewalks in the shelter of burning buildings or fell dead in doorways.
He seemed eternally indestructible as he sat there surrounded by
danger, his features molded firmly into that same fierce, regal, just and
forbidding countenance which was recognized and revered by every
man in the squadron.
To German intelligence, Major -- de Coverley was a vexatious
enigma; not one of the hundreds of American prisoners would ever
supply any concrete information about the elderly white-haired officer
with the gnarled and menacing brow and blazing, powerful eyes who
seemed to spearhead every important advance so fearlessly and successfully.
To American authorities his identity was equally perplexing;
a whole regiment of crack C.I.D. men had been thrown into the front
lines to find out who he was, while a battalion of combat-hardened
public-relations officers stood on red alert twenty-four hours a day
with orders to begin publicizing him the moment he was located.
In Rome, Major -- de Coverley had outdone himself with the
apartments. For the officers, who arrived in groups of four or five,
there was an immense double room for each in a new white stone
building, with three spacious bathrooms with walls of shimmering
aquamarine tile and one skinny maid named Michaela who tittered at
everything and kept the apartment in spotless order. On the landing
below lived the obsequious owners. On the landing above lived the
beautiful rich black-haired countess and her beautiful rich black-haired
daughter-in-law, both of whom would put out only for Nately, who
was too shy to want them, and for Aarfy, who was too stuffy to take
them and tried to dissuade them from ever putting out for anyone but
their husbands, who had chosen to remain in the north with the family's
business interests.
"They're really a couple of good kids," Aarfy confided earnestly to
Yossarian, whose recurring dream it was to have the nude milk-white
female bodies of both these beautiful rich black-haired good kids lying
stretched out in bed erotically with him at the same time.
The enlisted men descended upon Rome in gangs of twelve or more
with Gargantuan appetites and heavy crates filled with canned food for
the women to cook and serve to them in the dining room of their own
apartment on the sixth floor of a red brick building with a clinking elevator.
There was always more activity at the enlisted men's place.
There were always more enlisted men, to begin with, and more women
to cook and serve and sweep and scrub, and then there were always the
gay and silly sensual young girls that Yossarian had found and brought
there and those that the sleepy enlisted men returning to Pianosa after
their exhausting seven-day debauch had brought there on their own
and were leaving behind for whoever wanted them next. The girls had
shelter and food for as long as they wanted to stay. All they had to do
in return was hump any of the men who asked them to, which seemed
to make everything just about perfect for them.
Every fourth day or so Hungry Joe came crashing in like a man in
torment, hoarse, wild, and frenetic, if he had been unlucky enough to
finish his missions again and was flying the courier ship. Most times he
slept at the enlisted men's apartment. Nobody was certain how many
rooms Major -- de Coverley had rented, not even the stout black-bodiced
woman in corsets on the first floor from whom he had rented
them. They covered the whole top floor, and Yossarian knew they
extended down to the fifth floor as well, for it was in Snowden's room
on the fifth floor that he had finally found the maid in the lime-colored
panties with a dust mop the day after Bologna, after Hungry Joe had
discovered him in bed with Luciana at the officers' apartment that
same morning and had gone running like a fiend for his camera.
The maid in the lime-colored panties was a cheerful, fat, obliging
woman in her mid-thirties with squashy thighs and swaying hams in
lime-colored panties that she was always rolling off for any man who
wanted her. She had a plain broad face and was the most virtuous
woman alive: she laid for everybody, regardless of race, creed, color or
place of national origin, donating herself sociably as an act of hospitality,
procrastinating not even for the moment it might take to discard
the cloth or broom or dust mop she was clutching at the time she was
grabbed. Her allure stemmed from her accessibility; like Mt. Everest,
she was there, and the men climbed on top of her each time they felt
the urge. Yossarian was in love with the maid in the lime-colored
panties because she seemed to be the only woman left he could make
love to without falling in love with. Even the bald-headed girl in Sicily
still evoked in him strong sensations of pity, tenderness and regret.
Despite the multiple perils to which Major -- de Coverley exposed
himself each time he rented apartments, his only injury had
occurred, ironically enough, while he was leading the triumphal procession
into the open city of Rome, where he was wounded in the eye
by a flower fired at him from close range by a seedy, cackling, intoxicated
old man, who, like Satan himself, had then bounded up on Major
-- de Coverley's car with malicious glee, seized him roughly and contemptuously
by his venerable white head arid kissed him mockingly on
each cheek with a mouth reeking with sour fumes of wine, cheese and
garlic, before dropping back into the joyous celebrating throngs with a
hollow, dry, excoriating laugh. Major -- de Coverley, a Spartan in
adversity, did not flinch once throughout the whole hideous ordeal.
And not until he had returned to Pianosa, his business in Rome completed,
did he seek medical attention for his wound.
He resolved to remain binocular and specified to Doc Daneeka that
his eye patch be transparent so that h~ could continue pitching horseshoes,
kidnapping Italian laborers and renting apartments with unimpaired
vision. To the men in the squadron, Major -- de Coverley was
a colossus, although they never dared tell him so. The only one who
ever did dare address him was Milo Minderbinder, who approached
the horseshoe-pitching pit with a hard-boiled egg his second week in
the squadron and held it aloft for Major -- de Coverley to see.
Major -- de Coverley straightened with astonishment at Milo's
effrontery and concentrated upon him the full fury of his storming
countenance with its rugged overhang of gullied forehead and huge
crag of a humpbacked nose that came charging out of his face wrathfully
like a Big Ten fullback. Milo stood his ground; taking shelter
behind the hard-boiled egg raised protectively before his face like a
magic charm. In time the gale began to subside, and the danger passed.
"What is that?" Major -- de Coverley demanded at last.
"An egg," Milo answered.
"What kind of an egg?" Major -- de Coverley demanded.
"A hard-boiled egg," Milo answered.
"What kind of a hard-boiled egg?" Major -- de Coverley demanded.
"A fresh hard-boiled egg," Milo answered.
"Where did the fresh egg come from?" Major -- de Coverley
demanded.
"From a chicken," Milo answered.
"Where is the chicken?" Major -- de Coverley demanded.
"The chicken is in Malta," Milo answered.
"How many chickens are there in Malta?"
"Enough chickens to lay fresh eggs for every officer in the squadron
at five cents apiece from the mess fund," Milo answered.
"I have a weakness for fresh eggs," Major -- de Coverley confessed.
"If someone put a plane at my disposal, I could fly down there once
a week in a squadron plane and bring back all the fresh eggs we need,"
Milo answered. "After all, Malta's not so far away."
"Malta's not so far away," Major -- de Coverley observed. "You
could probably fly down there once a week in a squadron plane and
bring back all the fresh eggs we need."
"Yes," Milo agreed. "I suppose I could do that, if someone wanted
me to and put a plane at my disposal."
"I like my fresh eggs fried," Major -- de Coverley remembered.
"In fresh butter."
"I can find all the fresh butter we need in Sicily for twenty-five cents
a pound," Milo answered. "Twenty-five cents a pound for fresh butter
is a good buy. There's enough money in the mess fund for butter too,
and we could probably sell some to the other squadrons at a profit and
get back most of what we pay for our own."
"What's your name, son?" asked Major -- de Coverley.
"My name is Milo Minderbinder, sir. I am twenty-seven years old."
"You're a good mess officer, Milo."
"I'm not the mess officer, sir."
"You're a good mess officer, Milo."
"Thank you, sir. I'll do everything ill my power to be a good mess
officer."
"Bless you, my boy. Have a horseshoe."
"Thank you, sir. What should I do with it?"
"Throw it."
"Away?"
"At that peg there. Then pick it up and throw it at this peg. It's a
game, see? You get the horseshoe back."
"Yes, sir. I see. How much are horseshoes selling for?"
The smell of a fresh egg snapping exotically in a pool of fresh butter
carried a long way on the Mediterranean trade winds and brought
General Dreedle racing back with a voracious appetite, accompanied
by his nurse, who accompanied him everywhere, and his son-in-law,
Colonel Moodus. In the beginning General Dreedle devoured all his
meals in Milo's mess hall. Then the other three squadrons in Colonel
Cathcart's group turned their mess halls over to Milo and gave him an
airplane and a pilot each so that he could buy fresh eggs and fresh butter
for them too. Milo's planes shuttled back and forth seven days a
week as every officer in the four squadrons began devouring fresh eggs
in an insatiable orgy of fresh-egg eating. General Dreedle devoured
fresh eggs for breakfast, lunch and dinner-between meals he
devoured more fresh eggs-until Milo located abundant sources of
fresh veal, beef, duck, baby lamb chops, mushroom caps, broccoli,
South African rock lobster tails, shrimp, hams, puddings, grapes, ice
cream, strawberries and artichokes. There were three other bomb
groups in General Dreedle's combat wing, and they each jealously dispatched
their own planes to Malta for fresh eggs, but discovered that
fresh eggs were selling there for seven cents apiece. Since they could
buy them from Milo for five cents apiece, it made more sense to turn
over their mess halls to his syndicate, too, and give him the planes and
pilots needed to ferry in all the other good food he promised to supply
as well.
Everyone was elated with this turn of events, most of all Colonel
Cathcart, who was convinced he had won a feather in his cap. He
greeted Milo jovially each time they met and, in an excess of contrite
generosity, impulsively recommended Major Major for promotion.
The recommendation was rejected at once at Twenty-seventh Air
Force Headquarters by ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, who scribbled a
brusque, unsigned reminder that the Army had only one Major Major
Major Major and did not intend to lose him by promotion just to
please Colonel Cathcart. Colonel Cathcart was stung by the blunt
rebuke and skulked guiltily about his room in smarting repudiation.
He blamed Major Major for this black eye and decided to bust him
down to lieutenant that very same day.
"They probably won't let you," Colonel Korn remarked with a condescending
smile, savoring the situation. "For precisely the same reasons
that they wouldn't let you promote him. Besides, you'd certainly
look foolish trying to bust him down to lieutenant right after you tried
to promote him to my rank."
Colonel Cathcart felt hemmed in on every side. He had been much
more successful in obtaining a medal for Yossarian after the debacle of
Ferrara, when the bridge spanning the Po was still standing undamaged
seven days after Colonel Cathcart had volunteered to destroy it.
Nine missions his men had flown there in six days, and the bridge was
not demolished until the tenth mission on the seventh day, when
Yossarian killed Kraft and his crew by taking his flight of six planes in
over the target a second time. Yossarian came in carefully on his second
bomb run because he was brave then. He buried his head in his
bombsight until his bombs were away; when he looked up, everything
inside the ship was suffused in a weird orange glow. At first he thought
that his own plane was on fire. Then he spied the plane with the burning
engine directly above him and screamed to McWatt through the
intercom to turn left hard. A second later, the wing of Kraft's plane
blew off. The flaming wreck dropped, first the fuselage, then the spinning
wing, while a shower of tiny metal fragments began tap dancing
on the roof of Yossarian's own plane and the incessant cachung! cachung!
cachung! of the flak was still thumping all around him.
Back on the ground, every eye watched grimly as he walked in dull
dejection up to Captain Black outside the green clapboard briefing
room to make his intelligence report and learned that Colonel Cathcart
and Colonel Korn were waiting to speak to him inside. Major
Danby stood barring the door, waving everyone else away in ashen
silence. Yossarian was leaden with fatigue and longed to remove his
sticky clothing. He stepped into the briefing room with mixed emotions,
uncertain how he was supposed to feel about Kraft and the others,
for they had all died in the distance of a mute and secluded agony
at a moment when he was up to his own ass in the same vile, excruciating
dilemma of duty and damnation.
Colonel Cathcart, on the other hand, was all broken up by the
event. "Twice?" he asked.
"I would have missed it the first time," Yossarian replied softly, his
face lowered.
Their voices echoed slightly in the long, narrow bungalow.
"But twice?" Colonel Cathcart repeated, in vivid disbelief.
"I would have missed it the first time," Yossarian repeated.
"But Kraft would be alive."
"And the bridge would still be up."
"A trained bombardier is supposed to drop his bombs the first
time," Colonel Cathcart reminded him. "The other five bombardiers
dropped their bombs the first time."
"And missed the target," Yossarian said. "We'd have had to go back
there again."
"And maybe you would have gotten it the first time then."
"And maybe 1 wouldn't have gotten it at all."
"But maybe there wouldn't have been any losses."
"And maybe there would have been more losses, with the bridge still
left standing. 1 thought you wanted the bridge destroyed."
"Don't contradict me," Colonel Cathcart said. "We're all in enough
trouble."
"I'm not contradicting you, sir."
"Yes you are. Even that's a contradiction."
"Yes, sir. I'm sorry."
Colonel Cathcart cracked his knuckles violently. Colonel Korn, a
stocky, dark, flaccid man with a shapeless paunch, sat completely relaxed
on one of the benches in the front row, his hands clasped comfortably
over the top of his bald and swarthy head. His eyes were
amused behind his glinting rimless spectacles.
"We're trying to be perfectly objective about this," he prompted
Colonel Cathcart.
"We're trying to be perfectly objective about this," Colonel Cathcart
said to Yossarian with the zeal of sudden inspiration. "It's not that
I'm being sentimental or anything. I don't give a damn about the men
or the airplane. It's just that it looks so lousy on the report. How am I
going to cover up something like this in the report?"
"Why don't you give me a medal?" Yossarian suggested timidly.
"For going around twice?"
"You gave one to Hungry Joe when he cracked up that airplane by
mistake."
Colonel Cathcart snickered ruefully, "You'll be lucky if we don't
give you a court-martial."
"But I got the bridge the second time around," Yossarian protested.
"I thought you wanted the bridge destroyed."
"Oh, I don't know what I wanted," Colonel Cathcart cried out in
exasperation. "Look, of course I wanted the bridge destroyed. That
bridge has been a source of trouble to me ever since I decided to send
you men out to get it, But why couldn't you do it the first time?"
"I didn't have enough time, My navigator wasn't sure we had the
right city."
"The right city?" Colonel Cathcart was baffled. "Are you trying to
blame it all on Aarfy now?"
"No, sir. It was my mistake for letting him distract me. All I'm trying
to say is that I'm not infallible."
"Nobody is infallible," Colonel Cathcart said sharply, and then
continued vaguely, with an afterthought: "Nobody is indispensable,
either."
There was no rebuttal. Colonel Kom stretched sluggishly. "We've
got to reach a decision," he observed casually to Colonel Cathcart.
"We've got to reach a decision," Colonel Cathcart said to Yossarian.
"And it's all your fault. Why did you have to go around twice? Why
couldn't you drop your bombs the first time like all the others?"
"I would have missed the first time."
"It seems to me that we're going around twice," Colonel Kom interrupted
with a chuckle.
"But what are we going to do?" Colonel Cathcart exclaimed with
distress. "The others are all waiting outside."
"Why don't we give him a medal?" Colonel Korn proposed.
"For going around twice? What can we give him a medal for?"
"For going around twice," Colonel Korn answered with a reflective,
self-satisfied smile. "After all, I suppose it did take a lot of courage to
go over that target a second time with no other planes around to divert
the antiaircraft fire. And he did hit the bridge. You know, that might be
the answer-to act boastfully about something we ought to be
ashamed of. That's a trick that never seems to fail."
"Do you think it will work?"
"I'm sure it will. And let's promote him to captain, too, just to make
certain."
"Don't you think that's going a bit farther than we have to?"
"No, I don't think so. It's best to play safe. And a captain's not much
difference. "
"All right," Colonel Cathcart decided. "We'll give him a medal for
being brave enough to go around over the target twice. And we'll make
him a captain, too."
Colonel Korn reached for his hat.
"Exit smiling," he joked, and put his arm around Yossarian's shoulders
as they stepped outside the door.

14. Kid Sampson

By the time of the mission to Bologna, Yossarian was brave enough not
to go around over the target even once, and when he found himself
aloft finally in the nose of Kid Sampson's plane, he pressed in the button
of his throat mike and asked,
"Well? What's wrong with the plane?"
Kid Sampson let out a shriek. "Is something wrong with the plane?
What's the matter?"
Kid Sampson's cry turned Yossarian to ice.-"Is something the matter?"
he yelled in horror. "Are we bailing out?"
"I don't know!" Kid Sampson shot back in anguish, wailing excitedly.
"Someone said we're bailing out! Who is this, anyway? Who is
this?"
"This is Yossarian in the nose! Yossarian in the nose. I heard you say
there was something the matter. Didn't you say there was something
the matter?"
"I thought you said there was something wrong. Everything seems
okay. Everything is all right."
Yossarian's heart sank. Something was terribly wrong if everything
was all right and they had no excuse for turning back. He hesitated
gravely.
"I can't hear you," he said.
"I said everything is all right."
The sun was blinding white on the porcelain-blue water below and
on the flashing edges of the other airplanes. Yossarian took hold of the
colored wires leading into the jackbox of the intercom system and tore
them loose.
"I still can't hear you," he said.
He heard nothing. Slowly he collected his map case and his three
flak suits and crawled back to the main compartment. Nately, sitting
stiffly in the co-pilot's seat, spied him through the corner of his eye as
he stepped up on the flight deck behind Kid Sampson. He smiled at
Yossarian wanly, looking frail and exceptionally young and bashful in
the bulky dungeon of his earphones, hat, throat mike, flak suit and
parachute. Yossarian bent close to Kid Sampson's ear.
"I still can't hear you," he shouted above the even drone of the
engines.
Kid Sampson glanced back at him with surprise. Kid Sampson had
an angular, comical face with arched eyebrows and a scrawny blond
mustache.
"What?" he called out over his shoulder.
"I still can't hear you," Yossarian repeated.
"You'll have to talk louder," Kid Sampson said. "I still can't hear
you."
"I said 1 still can't hear you!" Yossarian yelled.
"I can't help it," Kid Sampson yelled back at him. "I'm shouting as
loud as 1 can."
"I couldn't hear you over my intercom," Yossarian bellowed in
mounting helplessness. "You'll have to turn back."
"For an intercom?" asked Kid Sampson incredulously.
"Turn back," said Yossarian, "before 1 break your head."
Kid Sampson looked for moral support toward Nately, who. stared
away from him pointedly. Yossarian outranked them both. Kid Sampson
resisted doubtfully for another moment and then capitulated
eagerly with a triumphant whoop.
"That's just fine with me," he announced gladly, and blew out a
shrill series of whistles up into his mustache. "Yes sirree, that's just fine
with old Kid Sampson." He whistled again and shouted over the intercom.
"Now hear this, my little chickadees. This is Admiral Kid Sampson
talking. This is Admiral Kid Sampson squawking, the pride of the
Queen's marines. Yessiree. We're turning back, boys, by crackee, we're
turning back!"
Nately ripped off his hat and earphones in one jubilant sweep and
began rocking back and forth happily like a handsome child in a high
chair. Sergeant Knight came plummeting down from the top gun turret
and began pounding them all on the back with delirious enthusiasm.
Kid Sampson turned the plane away from the formation in a wide,
graceful arc and headed 'toward the airfield. When Yossarian plugged
his headset into one of the auxiliary jackboxes, the two gunners in the
rear section of the plane were both singing "La Cucaracha."
Back at the field, the party fizzled out abruptly. An uneasy silence
replaced it, and Yossarian was sober and self-conscious as he climbed
down from the plane and took his place in the jeep that was already
waiting for them. None of the men spoke at all on the drive back
through the heavy, mesmerizing quiet blanketing mountains, sea and
forests. The feeling of desolation persisted when they turned off the
road at the squadron. Yossarian got out of the car last. After a minute,
Yossarian and a gentle warm wind were the only things stirring in the
haunting tranquillity that hung like a drug over the vacated tents.
The squadron stood insensate, bereft of everything human but Doc
Daneeka, who roosted dolorously like a shivering turkey buzzard
beside the closed door of the medical tent, his stuffed nose jabbing
away in thirsting futility at the hazy sunlight streaming down around
him. Yossarian knew Doc Daneeka would not go swimming with him.
Doc Daneeka would never go swimming again; a person could swoon
or suffer a mild coronary occlusion in an inch or two of water and
drown to death, be carried out to sea by an undertow, or made vulnerable
to poliomyelitis or meningococcus infection through chilling or
overexertion. The threat of Bologna to others had instilled in Doc
Daneeka an even more poignant solicitude for his own safety. At night
now, he heard burglars.
Through the lavender gloom clouding the entrance of the operations
tent, Yossarian glimpsed Chief White Halfoat, diligently embezzling
whiskey rations, forging the signatures of nondrinkers and
pouring off the alcohol with which he was poisoning himself into separate
bottles rapidly in order to steal as much as he could before
Captain Black roused himself with recollection and came hurrying
over indolently to steal the rest himself.
The jeep started up again softly. Kid Sampson, Nately and the others
wandered apart in a noiseless eddy of motion and were sucked away
into the cloying yellow stillness. The jeep vanished with a cough.
Yossarian was alone in a ponderous, primeval lull in which everything
green looked black and everything else was imbued with the color of
pus. The breeze rustled leaves in a dry and diaphanous distance. He was
restless, scared and sleepy. The sockets of his eyes felt grimy with
exhaustion. Wearily he moved inside the parachute tent with its long
table of smoothed wood, a nagging bitch of a doubt burrowing painlessly
inside a conscience that felt perfectly clear. He left his flak suit
and parachute there and crossed back past the water wagon to the intelligence
tent to return his map case to Captain Black, who sat drowsing
in his chair with his skinny long legs up on his desk and inquired with
indifferent curiosity why Yossarian's plane had turned back. Yossarian
ignored him. He set the map down on the counter and walked out.
Back in his own tent, he squirmed out of his parachute harness and
then out of his clothes. Orr was in Rome, due back that same afternoon
from the rest leave he had won by ditching his plane in the waters off
Genoa. Nately would already be packing to replace him, entranced to
find himself still alive and undoubtedly impatient to resume his
wasted and heartbreaking courtship of his prostitute in Rome. When
Yossarian was undressed, he sat down on his cot to rest. He felt much
better as soon as he was naked. He never felt comfortable in clothes.
In a little while he put fresh undershorts back on and set out for the
beach in his moccasins, a khaki-colored bath towel draped over his
shoulders.
The path from the squadron led him around a mysterious gun
emplacement in the woods; two of the three enlisted men stationed
there lay sleeping on the circle of sand bags and the third sat eating a
purple pomegranate, biting off large mouthfuls between his churning
jaws and spewing the ground roughage out away from him into the
bushes. When he bit, red juice ran out of his mouth. Yossarian padded
ahead into the forest again, caressing his bare, tingling belly adoringly
from time to time as though to reassure himself it was all still there. He
rolled a piece of lint out of his navel. Along the ground suddenly, on
both sides of the path, he saw dozens of new mushrooms the rain had
spawned poking their nodular fingers up through the clammy earth
like lifeless stalks of flesh, sprouting in such necrotic profusion everywhere
he looked that they seemed to be proliferating right before his
eyes. There were thousands of them swarming as far back into the
underbrush as he could see, and they appeared to swell in size and multiply
in number as he spied them. He hurried away from them with a
shiver of eerie alarm and did not slacken his pace until the soil crumbled
to dry sand beneath his feet and they had been left behind. He
glanced back apprehensively, half expecting to find the limp white
things crawling after him in sightless pursuit or snaking up through the
treetops in a writhing and ungovernable mutative mass.
The beach was deserted. The only sounds were hushed ones, the
bloated gurgle of the stream, the respirating hum of the tall grass and
shrubs behind him, the apathetic moaning of the dumb, translucent
waves. The surf was always small, the water clear and cool. Yossarian
left his things on the sand and moved through the knee-high waves
until he was completely immersed. On the other side of the sea, a
bumpy sliver of dark land lay wrapped in mist, almost invisible. He
swam languorously out to the raft, held on a moment, and swam languorously back to where he could stand on the sand bar. He submerged
himself head first into the green water several times until he
felt clean and wide-awake and then stretched himself out face down in
the sand and slept until the planes returning from Bologna were almost
overhead and the great, cumulative rumble of their many engines came
crashing in through his slumber in an earth-shattering roar.
He woke up blinking with a slight pain in his head and opened his
eyes upon a world boiling in chaos in which everything was in proper
order. He gasped in utter amazement at the fantastic sight of the
twelve flights of planes organized calmly into exact formation.· The
scene was too unexpected to be true. There were no planes spurting
ahead with wounded, none lagging behind with damage. No distress
flares smoked in the sky. No ship was missing but his own. For an
instant he was paralyzed with a sensation of madness. Then he understood,
and almost wept at the irony. The explanation was simple:
clouds had covered the target before the planes could bomb it, and the
mission to Bologna was still to be flown.
He was wrong. There had been no clouds. Bologna had been
bombed. Bologna was a milk run. There had been no flak there at all.

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