Yossarian was startled. ‘Are we losing?’
‘Losing?’ Doc Daneeka cried. ‘The whole military situation has been going to hell ever since we captured Paris. I knew it would happen.’ He paused, his sulking ire turning to melancholy, and frowned irritably as though it were all Yossarian’s fault. ‘American troops are pushing into German soil. The Russians have captured back all of Romania. Only yesterday the Greeks in the Eighth Army captured Rimini. The Germans are on the defensive everywhere!’ Doc Daneeka paused again and fortified himself with a huge breath for a piercing ejaculation of grief. ‘There’s no more Luftwaffe left!’ he wailed. He seemed ready to burst into tears. ‘The whole Gothic line is in danger of collapsing!’
‘So?’ asked Yossarian. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘What’s wrong?’ Doc Daneeka cried. ‘If something doesn’t happen soon, Germany may surrender. And then we’ll all be sent to the Pacific!’
Yossarian gawked at Doc Daneeka in grotesque dismay. ‘Are you crazy? Do you know what you’re saying?’
‘Yeah, it’s easy for you to laugh,’ Doc Daneeka sneered. ‘Who the hell is laughing?’
‘At least you’ve got a chance. You’re in combat and might get killed. But what about me? I’ve got nothing to hope for.’
‘You’re out of your goddam head!’ Yossarian shouted at him emphatically, seizing him by the shirt front. ‘Do you know that? Now keep your stupid mouth shut and listen to me.’
Doc Daneeka wrenched himself away. ‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that. I’m a licensed physician.’ ‘Then keep your stupid licensed physician’s mouth shut and listen to what they told me up at the hospital. I’m crazy. Did you know that?’
‘So?’
‘Really crazy.’ ‘So?’
‘I’m nuts. Cuckoo. Don’t you understand? I’m off my rocker. They sent someone else home in my place by mistake. They’ve got a licensed psychiatrist up at the hospital who examined me, and that was his verdict. I’m really insane.’
‘So?’
‘So?’ Yossarian was puzzled by Doc Daneeka’s inability to comprehend. ‘Don’t you see what that means? Now you can take me off combat duty and send me home. They’re not going to send a crazy man out to be killed, are they?’
‘Who else will go?’ 28 DOBBS
McWatt went, and McWatt was not crazy. And so did Yossarian, still walking with a limp, and when Yossarian had gone two more times and then found himself menaced by the rumor of another mission to Bologna, he limped determinedly into Dobbs’s tent early one warm afternoon, put a finger to his mouth and said, ‘Shush!’
‘What are you shushing him for?’ asked Kid Sampson, peeling a tangerine with his front teeth as he perused the dog-eared pages of a comic book. ‘He isn’t even saying anything.’
‘Screw,’ said Yossarian to Kid Sampson, jerking his thumb back over his shoulder toward the entrance of the tent.
Kid Sampson cocked his blond eyebrows discerningly and rose to co-operate. He whistled upward four times into his drooping yellow mustache and spurted away into the hills on the dented old green motorcycle he had purchased secondhand months before. Yossarian waited until the last faint bark of the motor had died away in the distance. Things inside the tent did not seem quite normal. The place was too neat. Dobbs was watching him curiously, smoking a fat cigar. Now that Yossarian had made up his mind to be brave, he was deathly afraid.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s kill Colonel Cathcart. We’ll do it together.’
Dobbs sprang forward off his cot with a look of wildest terror. ‘Shush!’ he roared. ‘Kill Colonel Cathcart? What are you talking about?’
‘Be quiet, damn it,’ Yossarian snarled. ‘The whole island will hear. Have you still got that gun?’ ‘Are you crazy or something?’ shouted Dobbs. ‘Why should I want to kill Colonel Cathcart?’
‘Why?’ Yossarian stared at Dobbs with an incredulous scowl. ‘Why? It was your idea, wasn’t it? Didn’t you come to the hospital and ask me to do it?’
Dobbs smiled slowly. ‘But that was when I had only fifty-eight missions,’ he explained, puffing on his cigar luxuriously. ‘I’m all packed now and I’m waiting to go home. I’ve finished my sixty missions.’
‘So what?’ Yossarian replied. ‘He’s only going to raise them again.’ ‘Maybe this time he won’t.’
‘He always raises them. What the hell’s the matter with you, Dobbs? Ask Hungry Joe how many time he’s packed his bags.’
‘I’ve got to wait and see what happens,’ Dobbs maintained stubbornly. ‘I’d have to be crazy to get mixed up in something like this now that I’m out of combat.’ He flicked the ash from his cigar. ‘No, my advice to you,’ he remarked, ‘is that you fly your sixty missions like the rest of us and then see
what happens.’
Yossarian resisted the impulse to spit squarely in his eye. ‘I may not live through sixty,’ he wheedled in a flat, pessimistic voice. ‘There’s a rumor around that he volunteered the group for Bologna again.’
‘It’s only a rumor,’ Dobbs pointed out with a self-important air. ‘You mustn’t believe every rumor you hear.’
‘Will you stop giving me advice?’
‘Why don’t you speak to Orr?’ Dobbs advised. ‘Orr got knocked down into the water again last week on that second mission to Avignon. Maybe he’s unhappy enough to kill him.’
‘Orr hasn’t got brains enough to be unhappy.’
Orr had been knocked down into the water again while Yossarian was still in the hospital and had eased his crippled airplane down gently into the glassy blue swells off Marseilles with such flawless skill that not one member of the six-man crew suffered the slightest bruise. The escape hatches in the front and rear sections flew open while the sea was still foaming white and green around the plane, and the men scrambled out as speedily as they could in their flaccid orange Mae West life jackets that failed to inflate and dangled limp and useless around their necks and waists. The life jackets failed to inflate because Milo had removed the twin carbon-dioxide cylinders from the inflating chambers to make the strawberry and crushed-pineapple ice-cream sodas he served in the officers’ mess hall and had replaced them with mimeographed notes that read: ‘What’s good for M & M Enterprises is good for the country.’ Orr popped out of the sinking airplane last.
‘You should have seen him!’ Sergeant Knight roared with laughter as he related the episode to Yossarian. ‘It was the funniest goddam thing you ever saw. None of the Mae Wests would work because Milo had stolen the carbon dioxide to make those ice-cream sodas you bastards have been getting in the officers’ mess. But that wasn’t too bad, as it turned out. Only one of us couldn’t swim, and we lifted that guy up into the raft after Orr had worked it over by its rope right up against the fuselage while we were all still standing on the plane. That little crackpot sure has a knack for things like that. Then the other raft came loose and drifted away, so that all six of us wound up sitting in one with our elbows and legs pressed so close against each other you almost couldn’t move without knocking the guy next to you out of the raft into the water. The plane went down about three seconds after we left it and we were out there all alone, and right after that we began unscrewing the caps on our Mae Wests to see what the hell had gone wrong and found those goddam notes from Milo telling us that what was good for him was good enough for the rest of us. That bastard! Jesus, did we curse him, all except that buddy of yours, Orr, who just kept grinning as though for all he cared what was good for Milo might be good enough for the rest of us.
‘I swear, you should have seen him sitting up there on the rim of the raft like the captain of a ship while the rest of us just watched him and waited for him to tell us what to do. He kept slapping his
hands on his legs every few seconds as though he had the shakes and saying, “All right now, all right,” and giggling like a crazy little freak, then saying, “All right now, all right,” again, and giggling like a crazy little freak some more. It was like watching some kind of a moron. Watching him was all that kept us from going to pieces altogether during the first few minutes, what with each wave washing over us into the raft or dumping a few of us back into the water so that we had to climb back in again before the next wave came along and washed us right back out. It was sure funny. We just kept falling out and climbing back in. We had the guy who couldn’t swim stretched out in the middle of the raft on the floor, but even there he almost drowned, because the water inside the raft was deep enough to keep splashing in his face. Oh, boy!
‘Then Orr began opening up compartments in the raft, and the fun really began. First he found a box of chocolate bars and he passed those around so we sat there eating salty chocolate bars while the waves kept knocking us out of the raft into the water. Next he found some bouillon cubes and aluminum cups and made us some soup. Then he found some tea. Sure, he made it! Can’t you see him serving us tea as we sat there soaking wet in water up to our ass? Now I was falling out of the raft because I was laughing so much. We were all laughing. And he was dead serious, except for that goofy giggle of his and that crazy grin. What a jerk! Whatever he found he used. He found some shark repellent and he sprinkled it right out into the water. He found some marker dye and he threw it into the water. The next thing he finds is a fishing line and dried bait, and his face lights up as though the Air-Sea Rescue launch had just sped up to save us before we died of exposure or before the Germans sent a boat out from Spezia to take us prisoner or machine-gun us. In no time at all, Orr had that fishing line out into the water, trolling away as happy as a lark. “Lieutenant, what do you expect to catch?” I asked him. “Cod,” he told me. And he meant it. And it’s a good thing he didn’t catch any, because he would have eaten that codfish raw if he had caught any, and would have made us eat it, too, because he had found this little book that said it was all right to eat codfish raw.
‘The next thing he found was this little blue oar about the size of a Dixie-cup spoon, and, sure enough, he began rowing with it, trying to move all nine hundred pounds of us with that little stick. Can you imagine? After that he found a small magnetic compass and a big waterproof map, and he spread the map open on his knees and set the compass on top of it. And that’s how he spent the time until the launch picked us up about thirty minutes later, sitting there with that baited fishing line out behind him, with the compass in his lap and the map spread out on his knees, and paddling away as hard as he could with that dinky blue oar as though he was speeding to Majorca. Jesus!’
Sergeant Knight knew all about Majorca, and so did Orr, because Yossarian had told them often of such sanctuaries as Spain, Switzerland and Sweden where American fliers could be interned for the duration of the war under conditions of utmost ease and luxury merely by flying there. Yossarian was the squadron’s leading authority on internment and had already begun plotting an emergency
heading into Switzerland on every mission he flew into northernmost Italy. He would certainly have preferred Sweden, where the level of intelligence was high and where he could swim nude with beautiful girls with low, demurring voices and sire whole happy, undisciplined tribes of illegitimate Yossarians that the state would assist through parturition and launch into life without stigma; but Sweden was out of reach, too far away, and Yossarian waited for the piece of flak that would knock out one engine over the Italian Alps and provide him with the excuse for heading for Switzerland. He would not even tell his pilot he was guiding him there. Yossarian often thought of scheming with some pilot he trusted to fake a crippled engine and then destroy the evidence of deception with a belly landing, but the only pilot he really trusted was McWatt, who was happiest where he was and still got a big boot out of buzzing his plane over Yossarian’s tent or roaring in so low over the bathers at the beach that the fierce wind from his propellers slashed dark furrows in the water and whipped sheets of spray flapping back for seconds afterward.
Dobbs and Hungry Joe were out of the question, and so was Orr, who was tinkering with the valve of the stove again when Yossarian limped despondently back into the tent after Dobbs had turned him down. The stove Orr was manufacturing out of an inverted metal drum stood in the middle of the smooth cement floor he had constructed. He was working sedulously on both knees. Yossarian tried paying no attention to him and limped wearily to his cot and sat down with a labored, drawn-out grunt. Prickles of perspiration were turning chilly on his forehead. Dobbs had depressed him. Doc Daneeka depressed him. An ominous vision of doom depressed him when he looked at Orr. He began ticking with a variety of internal tremors. Nerves twitched, and the vein in one wrist began palpitating.
Orr studied Yossarian over his shoulder, his moist lips drawn back around convex rows of large buck teeth. Reaching sideways, he dug a bottle of warm beer out of his foot locker, and he handed it to Yossarian after prying off the cap. Neither said a word. Yossarian sipped the bubbles off the top and tilted his head back. Orr watched him cunningly with a noiseless grin. Yossarian eyed Orr guardedly. Orr snickered with a slight, mucid sibilance and turned back to his work, squatting. Yossarian grew tense.
‘Don’t start,’ he begged in a threatening voice, both hands tightening around his beer bottle. ‘Don’t start working on your stove.’
Orr cackled quietly. ‘I’m almost finished.’ ‘No, you’re not. You’re about to begin.’
‘Here’s the valve. See? It’s almost all together.’
‘And you’re about to take it apart. I know what you’re doing, you bastard. I’ve seen you do it three hundred times.’
Orr shivered with glee. ‘I want to get the leak in this gasoline line out,’ he explained. ‘I’ve got it down now to where it’s only an ooze.’
‘I can’t watch you,’ Yossarian confessed tonelessly. ‘If you want to work with something big, that’s okay. But that valve is filled with tiny parts, and I just haven’t got the patience right now to watch you working so hard over things that are so goddam small and unimportant.’
‘Just because they’re small doesn’t mean they’re unimportant.’ ‘I don’t care.’
‘Once more?’
‘When I’m not around. You’re a happy imbecile and you don’t know what it means to feel the way I do. Things happen to me when you work over small things that I can’t even begin to explain. I find out that I can’t stand you. I start to hate you, and I’m soon thinking seriously about busting this bottle down on your head or stabbing you in the neck with that hunting knife there. Do you understand?’
Orr nodded very intelligently. ‘I won’t take the valve apart now,’ he said, and began taking it apart, working with slow, tireless, interminable precision, his rustic, ungainly face bent very close to the floor, picking painstakingly at the minute mechanism in his fingers with such limitless, plodding concentration that he seemed scarcely to be thinking of it at all.
Yossarian cursed him silently and made up his mind to ignore him. ‘What the hell’s your hurry with that stove, anyway?’ he barked out a moment later in spite of himself. ‘It’s still hot out. We’re probably going swimming later. What are you worried about the cold for.’
‘The days are getting shorter,’ Orr observed philosophically. ‘I’d like to get this all finished for you while there’s still time. You’ll have the best stove in the squadron when I’m through. It will burn all night with this feed control I’m fixing, and these metal plates will radiate the heat all over the tent. If you leave a helmet full of water on this thing when you go to sleep, you’ll have warm water to wash with all ready for you when you wake up. Won’t that be nice? If you want to cook eggs or soup, all you’ll have to do is set the pot down here and turn the fire up.’
‘What do you mean, me?’ Yossarian wanted to know. ‘Where are you going to be?’
Orr’s stunted torso shook suddenly with a muffled spasm of amusement. ‘I don’t know,’ he exclaimed, and a weird, wavering giggle gushed out suddenly through his chattering buck teeth like an exploding jet of emotion. He was still laughing when he continued, and his voice was clogged with saliva. ‘If they keep on shooting me down this way, I don’t know where I’m going to be.’ Yossarian was moved. ‘Why don’t you try to stop flying, Orr? You’ve got an excuse.’
‘I’ve only got eighteen missions.’
‘But you’ve been shot down on almost every one. You’re either ditching or crash-landing every time you go up.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind flying missions. I guess they’re lots of fun. You ought to try flying a few with me when you’re not flying lead. Just for laughs. Tee-hee.’ Orr gazed up at Yossarian through the corners of his eyes with a look of pointed mirth.
Yossarian avoided his stare. ‘They’ve got me flying lead again.’
‘When you’re not flying lead. If you had any brains, do you know what you’d do? You’d go right to Piltchard and Wren and tell them you want to fly with me.’
‘And get shot down with you every time you go up? What’s the fun in that?’
‘That’s just why you ought to do it,’ Orr insisted. ‘I guess I’m just about the best pilot around now when it comes to ditching or making crash landings. It would be good practice for you.’
‘Good practice for what?’
‘Good practice in case you ever have to ditch or make a crash landing. Tee-hee-hee.’ ‘Have you got another bottle of beer for me?’ Yossarian asked morosely.
‘Do you want to bust it down on my head?’
This time Yossarian did laugh. ‘Like that whore in that apartment in Rome?’
Orr sniggered lewdly, his bulging crab apple cheeks blowing outward with pleasure. ‘Do you really want to know why she was hitting me over the head with her shoe?’ he teased.
‘I do know,’ Yossarian teased back. ‘Nately’s whore told me.’ Orr grinned like a gargoyle. ‘No she didn’t.’
Yossarian felt sorry for Off. Orr was so small and ugly. Who would protect him if he lived? Who would protect a warm-hearted, simple-minded gnome like Orr from rowdies and cliques and from expert athletes like Appleby who had flies in their eyes and would walk right over him with swaggering conceit and self-assurance every chance they got? Yossarian worried frequently about Orr. Who would shield him against animosity and deceit, against people with ambition and the embittered snobbery of the big shot’s wife, against the squalid, corrupting indignities of the profit motive and the friendly neighborhood butcher with inferior meat? Orr was a happy and unsuspecting simpleton with a thick mass of wavy polychromatic hair parted down the center. He would be mere child’s play for them. They would take his money, screw his wife and show no kindness to his children. Yossarian felt a flood of compassion sweep over him.
Orr was an eccentric midget, a freakish, likable dwarf with a smutty mind and a thousand valuable skills that would keep him in a low income group all his life. He could use a soldering iron and hammer two boards together so that the wood did not split and the nails did not bend. He could drill holes. He had built a good deal more in the tent while Yossarian was away in the hospital. He had filed or chiseled a perfect channel in the cement so that the slender gasoline line was flush with the floor as it ran to the stove from the tank he had built outside on an elevated platform. He had constructed andirons for the fireplace out of excess bomb parts and had filled them with stout silver logs, and he had framed with stained wood the photographs of girls with big breasts he had torn out of cheesecake magazines and hung over the mantelpiece. Orr could open a can of paint. He could mix paint, thin paint, remove paint. He could chop wood and measure things with a ruler. He knew how to build fires. He could dig holes, and he had a real gift for bringing water for them both in
cans and canteens from the tanks near the mess hall. He could engross himself in an inconsequential task for hours without growing restless or bored, as oblivious to fatigue as the stump of a tree, and almost as taciturn. He had an uncanny knowledge of wildlife and was not afraid of dogs or cats or beetles or moths, or of foods like scrod or tripe.
Yossarian sighed drearily and began brooding about the rumored mission to Bologna. The valve Orr was dismantling was about the size of a thumb and contained thirty-seven separate parts, excluding the casing, many of them so minute that Orr was required to pinch them tightly between the tips of his fingernails as he placed them carefully on the floor in orderly, catalogued rows, never quickening his movements or slowing them down, never tiring, never pausing in his relentless, methodical, monotonous procedure unless it was to leer at Yossarian with maniacal mischief. Yossarian tried not to watch him. He counted the parts and thought he would go clear out of his mind. He turned away, shutting his eyes, but that was even worse, for now he had only the sounds, the tiny maddening, indefatigable, distinct clicks and rustles of hands and weightless parts. Orr was breathing rhythmically with a noise that was stertorous and repulsive. Yossarian clenched his fists and looked at the long bone-handled hunting knife hanging in a holster over the cot of the dead man in the tent. As soon as he thought of stabbing Orr, his tension eased. The idea of murdering Orr was so ridiculous that he began to consider it seriously with queer whimsy and fascination. He searched the nape of Orr’s neck for the probable site of the medulla oblongata. Just the daintiest stick there would kill him and solve so many serious, agonizing problems for them both.
‘Does it hurt?’ Orr asked at precisely that moment, as though by protective instinct. Yossarian eyed him closely. ‘Does what hurt?’
‘Your leg,’ said Orr with a strange, mysterious laugh. ‘You still limp a little.’
‘It’s just a habit, I guess,’ said Yossarian, breathing again with relief. ‘I’ll probably get over it soon.’ Orr rolled over sideways to the floor and came up on one knee, facing toward Yossarian. ‘Do you remember,’ he drawled reflectively, with an air of labored recollection, ‘that girl who was hitting me on the head that day in Rome?’ He chuckled at Yossarian’s involuntary exclamation of tricked annoyance. ‘I’ll make a deal with you about that girl. I’ll tell you why that girl was hitting me on the head with her shoe that day if you answer one question.’
‘What’s the question?’
‘Did you ever screw Nately’s girl?’
Yossarian laughed with surprise. ‘Me? No. Now tell me why that girl hit you with her shoe.’
‘That wasn’t the question,’ Orr informed him with victorious delight. ‘That was just conversation. She acts like you screwed her.’
‘Well, I didn’t. How does she act?’ ‘She acts like she don’t like you.’ ‘She doesn’t like anyone.’
‘She likes Captain Black,’ Orr reminded.
‘That’s because he treats her like dirt. Anyone can get a girl that way.’ ‘She wears a slave bracelet on her leg with his name on it.’
‘He makes her wear it to needle Nately.’
‘She even gives him some of the money she gets from Nately.’ ‘Listen, what do you want from me?’
‘Did you ever screw my girl?’
‘Your girl? Who the hell is your girl?’
‘The one who hit me over the head with her shoe.’
‘I’ve been with her a couple of times,’ Yossarian admitted. ‘Since when is she your girl? What are you getting at?’
‘She don’t like you, either.’
‘What the hell do I care if she likes me or not? She likes me as much as she likes you.’ ‘Did she ever hit you over the head with her shoe?’
‘Orr, I’m tired. Why don’t you leave me alone?’
‘Tee-hee-hee. How about that skinny countess in Rome and her skinny daughter-in-law?’ Orr persisted impishly with increasing zest. ‘Did you ever screw them?’
‘Oh, how I wish I could,’ sighed Yossarian honestly, imagining, at the mere question, the prurient, used, decaying feel in his petting hands of their teeny, pulpy buttocks and breasts.
‘They don’t like you either,’ commented Orr. ‘They like Aarfy, and they like Nately, but they don’t like you. Women just don’t seem to like you. I think they think you’re a bad influence.’
‘Women are crazy,’ Yossarian answered, and waited grimly for what he knew was coming next. ‘How about that other girl of yours?’ Orr asked with a pretense of pensive curiosity. ‘The fat one? The bald one? You know, that fat bald one in Sicily with the turban who kept sweating all over us all night long? Is she crazy too?’
‘Didn’t she like me either?’
‘How could you do it to a girl with no hair?’ ‘How was I supposed to know she had no hair?’ ‘I knew it,’ Orr bragged. ‘I knew it all the time.’
‘You knew she was bald?’ Yossarian exclaimed in wonder.
‘No, I knew this valve wouldn’t work if I left a part out,’ Orr answered, glowing with cranberry-red elation because he had just duped Yossarian again. ‘Will you please hand me that small composition gasket that rolled over there? It’s right near your foot.’
‘No it isn’t.’
‘Right here,’ said Orr, and took hold of something invisible with the tips of his fingernails and held it up for Yossarian to see. ‘Now I’ll have to start all over again.’
‘I’ll kill you if you do. I’ll murder you right on the spot.’
‘Why don’t you ever fly with me?’ Orr asked suddenly, and looked straight into Yossarian’s face for the first time. ‘There, that’s the question I want you to answer. Why don’t you ever fly with me?’ Yossarian turned away with intense shame and embarrassment. ‘I told you why. They’ve got me flying lead bombardier most of the time.’
‘That’s not why,’ Orr said, shaking his head. ‘You went to Piltchard and Wren after the first Avignon mission and told them you didn’t ever want to fly with me. That’s why, isn’t it?’
Yossarian felt his skin turn hot. ‘No I didn’t,’ he lied.
‘Yes you did,’ Orr insisted equably. ‘You asked them not to assign you to any plane piloted by me, Dobbs or Huple because you didn’t have confidence in us at the controls. And Piltchard and Wren said they couldn’t make an exception of you because it wouldn’t be fair to the men who did have to fly with us.’
‘So?’ said Yossarian. ‘It didn’t make any difference then, did it?’
‘But they’ve never made you fly with me.’ Orr, working on both knees again, was addressing Yossarian without bitterness or reproach, but with injured humility, which was infinitely more painful to observe, although he was still grinning and snickering, as though the situation were comic. ‘You really ought to fly with me, you know. I’m a pretty good pilot, and I’d take care of you. I may get knocked down a lot, but that’s not my fault, and nobody’s ever been hurt in my plane. Yes, sir – if you had any brains, you know what you’d do? You’d go right to Piltchard and Wren and tell them you want to fly all your missions with me.’
Yossarian leaned forward and peered closely into Orr’s inscrutable mask of contradictory emotions. ‘Are you trying to tell me something?’
‘Tee-hee-hee-hee,’ Orr responded. ‘I’m trying to tell you why that big girl with the shoe was hitting me on the head that day. But you just won’t let me.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Will you fly with me?’
Yossarian laughed and shook his head. ‘You’ll only get knocked down into the water again.’
Orr did get knocked down into the water again when the rumored mission to Bologna was flown, and he landed his single-engine plane with a smashing jar on the choppy, windswept waves tossing and falling below the warlike black thunderclouds mobilizing overhead. He was late getting out of the plane and ended up alone in a raft that began drifting away from the men in the other raft and was out of sight by the time the Air-Sea Rescue launch came plowing up through the wind and splattering raindrops to take them aboard. Night was already falling by the time they were returned to the squadron. There was no word of Orr.
‘Don’t worry,’ reassured Kid Sampson, still wrapped in the heavy blankets and raincoat in which he had been swaddled on the boat by his rescuers. ‘He’s probably been picked up already if he didn’t
drown in that storm. It didn’t last long. I bet he’ll show up any minute.’
Yossarian walked back to his tent to wait for Orr to show up any minute and lit a fire to make things warm for him. The stove worked perfectly, with a strong, robust blaze that could be raised or lowered by turning the tap Orr had finally finished repairing. A light rain was falling, drumming softly on the tent, the trees, the ground. Yossarian cooked a can of hot soup to have ready for Orr and ate it all himself as the time passed. He hard-boiled some eggs for Orr and ate those too. Then he ate a whole tin of Cheddar cheese from a package of K rations.
Each time he caught himself worrying he made himself remember that Orr could do everything and broke into silent laughter at the picture of Orr in the raft as Sergeant Knight had described him, bent forward with a busy, preoccupied smile over the map and compass in his lap, stuffing one soaking-wet chocolate bar after another into his grinning, tittering mouth as he paddled away dutifully through the lightning, thunder and rain with the bright-blue useless toy oar, the fishing line with dried bait trailing out behind him. Yossarian really had no doubt about Orr’s ability to survive. If fish could be caught with that silly fishing line, Orr would catch them, and if it was codfish he was after, then Orr would catch a codfish, even though no codfish had ever been caught in those waters before. Yossarian put another can of soup up to cook and ate that too when it was hot. Every time a car door slammed, he broke into a hopeful smile and turned expectantly toward the entrance, listening for footsteps. He knew that any moment Orr would come walking into the tent with big, glistening, rain-soaked eyes, cheeks and buck teeth, looking ludicrously like a jolly New England oysterman in a yellow oilskin rain hat and slicker numerous sizes too large for him and holding up proudly for Yossarian’s amusement a great dead codfish he had caught. But he didn’t.
PECKEM
There was no word about Orr the next day, and Sergeant Whitcomb, with commendable dispatch and considerable hope, dropped a reminder in his tickler file to send a form letter over Colonel Cathcart’s signature to Orr’s next of kin when nine more days had elapsed. There was word from General Peckem’s headquarters, though, and Yossarian was drawn to the crowd of officers and enlisted men in shorts and bathing trunks buzzing in grumpy confusion around the bulletin board just outside the orderly room.
‘What’s so different about this Sunday, I want to know?’ Hungry Joe was demanding vociferously of Chief White Halfoat. ‘Why won’t we have a parade this Sunday when we don’t have a parade every Sunday? Huh?’
Yossarian worked his way through to the front and let out a long, agonized groan when he read the terse announcement there:
Due to circumstances beyond my control, there will be no big parade this Sunday afternoon. Colonel Scheisskopf
Dobbs was right. They were indeed sending everyone overseas, even Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who had resisted the move with all the vigor and wisdom at his command and who reported for duty at General Peckem’s office in a mood of grave discontent.
General Peckem welcomed Colonel Scheisskopf with effusive charm and said he was delighted to have him. An additional colonel on his staff meant that he could now begin agitating for two additional majors, four additional captains, sixteen additional lieutenants and untold quantities of additional enlisted men, typewriters, desks, filing cabinets, automobiles and other substantial equipment and supplies that would contribute to the prestige of his position and increase his striking power in the war he had declared against General Dreedle. He now had two full colonels; General Dreedle had only five, and four of those were combat commanders. With almost no intriguing at all, General Peckem had executed a maneuver that would eventually double his strength. And General Dreedle was getting drunk more often. The future looked wonderful, and General Peckem contemplated his bright new colonel enchantedly with an effulgent smile.
In all matters of consequence, General P. P. Peckem was, as he always remarked when he was about to criticize the work of some close associate publicly, a realist. He was a handsome, pink-skinned man of fifty-three. His manner was always casual and relaxed, and his uniforms were custom-made. He had silver-gray hair, slightly myopic eyes and thin, overhanging, sensual lips. He was a perceptive, graceful, sophisticated man who was sensitive to everyone’s weaknesses but his own and found everyone absurd but himself. General Peckem laid great, fastidious stress on small matters of taste and style. He was always augmenting things. Approaching events were never coming, but always upcoming. It was not true that he wrote memorandums praising himself and recommending that his authority be enhanced to include all combat operations; he wrote memoranda. And the prose in the memoranda of other officers was always turgid, stilted, or ambiguous. The errors of others were inevitably deplorable. Regulations were stringent, and his data never was obtained from a reliable source, but always were obtained. General Peckem was frequently constrained. Things were often incumbent upon him, and he frequently acted with greatest reluctance. It never escaped his memory that neither black nor white was a color, and he never used verbal when he meant oral. He could quote glibly from Plato, Nietzsche, Montaigne, Theodore Roosevelt, the Marquis de Sade and Warren G. Harding. A virgin audience like Colonel Scheisskopf was grist for General Peckem’s mill, a stimulating opportunity to throw open his whole dazzling erudite treasure house of puns, wisecracks, slanders, homilies, anecdotes, proverbs, epigrams, apophthegms, bon mots and other pungent sayings. He beamed urbanely as he began orienting Colonel Scheisskopf to his new surroundings.
‘My only fault,’ he observed with practiced good humor, watching for the effect of his words, ‘is that I have no faults.’
Colonel Scheisskopf didn’t laugh, and General Peckem was stunned. A heavy doubt crushed his enthusiasm. He had just opened with one of his most trusted paradoxes, and he was positively alarmed that not the slightest flicker of acknowledgment had moved across that impervious face, which began to remind him suddenly, in hue and texture, of an unused soap eraser. Perhaps Colonel Scheisskopf was tired, General Peckem granted to himself charitably; he had come a long way, and everything was unfamiliar. General Peckem’s attitude toward all the personnel in his command, officers and enlisted men, was marked by the same easy spirit of tolerance and permissiveness. He mentioned often that if the people who worked for him met him halfway, he would meet them more than halfway, with the result, as he always added with an astute chuckle, that there was never any meeting of the minds at all. General Peckem thought of himself as aesthetic and intellectual. When people disagreed with him, he urged them to be objective.
And it was indeed an objective Peckem who gazed at Colonel Scheisskopf encouragingly and resumed his indoctrination with an attitude of magnanimous forgiveness. ‘You’ve come to us just in time, Scheisskopf. The summer offensive has petered out, thanks to the incompetent leadership with which we supply our troops, and I have a crying need for a tough, experienced, competent officer like you to help produce the memoranda upon which we rely so heavily to let people know how good we are and how much work we’re turning out. I hope you are a prolific writer.’
‘I don’t know anything about writing,’ Colonel Scheisskopf retorted sullenly.
‘Well, don’t let that trouble you,’ General Peckem continued with a careless flick of his wrist. ‘Just pass the work I assign you along to somebody else and trust to luck. We call that delegation of responsibility. Somewhere down near the lowest level of this co-ordinated organization I run are people who do get the work done when it reaches them, and everything manages to run along smoothly without too much effort on my part. I suppose that’s because I am a good executive. Nothing we do in this large department of ours is really very important, and there’s never any rush. On the other hand, it is important that we let people know we do a great deal of it. Let me know if you find yourself shorthanded. I’ve already put in a requisition for two majors, four captains and sixteen lieutenants to give you a hand. While none of the work we do is very important, it is important that we do a great deal of it. Don’t you agree?’
‘What about the parades?’ Colonel Scheisskopf broke in.
‘What parades?’ inquired General Peckem with a feeling that his polish just wasn’t getting across. ‘Won’t I be able to conduct parades every Sunday afternoon?’ Colonel Scheisskopf demanded petulantly.
‘No. Of course not. What ever gave you that idea?’ ‘But they said I could.’
‘Who said you could?’
‘The officers who sent me overseas. They told me I’d be able to march the men around in parades
all I wanted to.’ ‘They lied to you.’ ‘That wasn’t fair, sir.’
‘I’m sorry, Scheisskopf. I’m willing to do everything I can to make you happy here, but parades are out of the question. We don’t have enough men in our own organization to make up much of a parade, and the combat units would rise up in open rebellion if we tried to make them march. I’m afraid you’ll just have to hold back awhile until we get control. Then you can do what you want with the men.’
‘What about my wife?’ Colonel Scheisskopf demanded with disgruntled suspicion. ‘I’ll still be able to send for her, won’t I?’
‘Your wife? Why in the world should you want to?’ ‘A husband and wife should be together.’
‘That’s out of the question also.’ ‘But they said I could send for her!’ ‘They lied to you again.’
‘They had no right to lie to me!’ Colonel Scheisskopf protested, his eyes wetting with indignation. ‘Of course they had a right,’ General Peckem snapped with cold and calculated severity, resolving right then and there to test the mettle of his new colonel under fire. ‘Don’t be such an ass, Scheisskopf. People have a right to do anything that’s not forbidden by law, and there’s no law against lying to you. Now, don’t ever waste my time with such sentimental platitudes again. Do you hear?’
‘Yes, sir,’ murmured Colonel Scheisskopf
Colonel Scheisskopf wilted pathetically, and General Peckem blessed the fates that had sent him a weakling for a subordinate. A man of spunk would have been unthinkable. Having won, General Peckem relented. He did not enjoy humiliating his men. ‘If your wife were a Wac, I could probably have her transferred here. But that’s the most I can do.’
‘She has a friend who’s a Wac,’ Colonel Scheisskopf offered hopefully.
‘I’m afraid that isn’t good enough. Have Mrs. Scheisskopf join the Wacs if she wants to, and I’ll bring her over here. But in the meantime, my dear Colonel, let’s get back to our little war, if we may. Here, briefly, is the military situation that confronts us.’ General Peckem rose and moved toward a rotary rack of enormous colored maps.
Colonel Scheisskopf blanched. ‘We’re not going into combat, are we?’ he blurted out in horror.
‘Oh, no, of course not,’ General Peckem assured him indulgently, with a companionable laugh. ‘Please give me some credit, won’t you? That’s why we’re still down here in Rome. Certainly, I’d like to be up in Florence, too, where I could keep in closer touch with ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen. But Florence is still a bit too near the actual fighting to suit me.’ General Peckem lifted a wooden
pointer and swept the rubber tip cheerfully across Italy from one coast to the other. ‘These, Scheisskopf, are the Germans. They’re dug into these mountains very solidly in the Gothic Line and won’t be pushed out till late next spring, although that isn’t going to stop those clods we have in charge from trying. That gives us in Special Services almost nine months to achieve our objective. And that objective is to capture every bomber group in the U.S. Air Force. After all,’ said General Peckem with his low, well-modulated chuckle, ‘if dropping bombs on the enemy isn’t a special service, I wonder what in the world is. Don’t you agree?’ Colonel Scheisskopf gave no indication that he did agree, but General Peckem was already too entranced with his own loquacity to notice. ‘Our position right now is excellent. Reinforcements like yourself keep arriving, and we have more than enough time to plan our entire strategy carefully. Our immediate goal,’ he said, ‘is right here.’ And General Peckem swung his pointer south to the island of Pianosa and tapped it significantly upon a large word that had been lettered on there with black grease pencil. The word was DREEDLE.
Colonel Scheisskopf, squinting, moved very close to the map, and for the first time since he entered the room a light of comprehension shed a dim glow over his stolid face. ‘I think I understand,’ he exclaimed. ‘Yes, I know I understand. Our first job is to capture Dreedle away from the enemy. Right?’
General Peckem laughed benignly. ‘No, Scheisskopf. Dreedle’s on our side, and Dreedle is the enemy. General Dreedle commands four bomb groups that we simply must capture in order to continue our offensive. Conquering General Dreedle will give us the aircraft and vital bases we need to carry our operations into other areas. And that battle, by the way, is just about won.’ General Peckem drifted toward the window, laughing quietly again, and settled back against the sill with his arms folded, greatly satisfied by his own wit and by his knowledgeable, blase impudence. The skilled choice of words he was exercising was exquisitely titillating. General Peckem liked listening to himself talk, like most of all listening to himself talk about himself. ‘General Dreedle simply doesn’t know how to cope with me,’ he gloated. ‘I keep invading his jurisdiction with comments and criticisms that are really none of my business, and he doesn’t know what to do about it. When he accuses me of seeking to undermine him, I merely answer that my only purpose in calling attention to his errors is to strengthen our war effort by eliminating inefficiency. Then I ask him innocently if he’s opposed to improving our war effort. Oh, he grumbles and he bristles and he bellows, but he’s really quite helpless. He’s simply out of style. He’s turning into quite a souse, you know. The poor blockhead shouldn’t even be a general. He has no tone, no tone at all. Thank God he isn’t going to last.’ General Peckem chuckled with jaunty relish and sailed smoothly along toward a favorite learned allusion. ‘I sometimes think of myself as Fortinbras – ha, ha – in the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, who just keeps circling and circling around the action until everything else falls apart, and then strolls in at the end to pick up all the pieces for himself.
Shakespeare is -‘
‘I don’t know anything about plays,’ Colonel Scheisskopf broke in bluntly.
General Peckem looked at him with amazement. Never before had a reference of his to Shakespeare’s hallowed Hamlet been ignored and trampled upon with such rude indifference. He began to wonder with genuine concern just what sort of shithead the Pentagon had foisted on him. ‘What do you know about?’ he asked acidly.
‘Parades,’ answered Colonel Scheisskopf eagerly. ‘Will I be able to send out memos about parades?’ ‘As long as you don’t schedule any.’ General Peckem returned to his chair still wearing a frown. ‘And as long as they don’t interfere with your main assignment of recommending that the authority of Special Services be expanded to include combat activities.’
‘Can I schedule parades and then call them off?’
General Peckem brightened instantly. ‘Why, that’s a wonderful idea! But just send out weekly announcements postponing the parades. Don’t even bother to schedule them. That would be infinitely more disconcerting.’ General Peckem was blossoming spryly with cordiality again. ‘Yes, Scheisskopf,’ he said, ‘I think you’ve really hit on something. After all, what combat commander could possibly quarrel with us for notifying his men that there won’t be a parade that coming Sunday? We’d be merely stating a widely known fact. But the implication is beautiful. Yes, positively beautiful. We’re implying that we could schedule a parade if we chose to. I’m going to like you, Scheisskopf. Stop in and introduce yourself to Colonel Cargill and tell him what you’re up to. I know you two will like each other.’
Colonel Cargill came storming into General Peckem’s office a minute later in a furor of timid resentment. ‘I’ve been here longer than Scheisskopf,’ he complained. ‘Why can’t I be the one to call off the parades?’
‘Because Scheisskopf has experience with parades, and you haven’t. You can call off U.S.O. shows if you want to. In fact why don’t you? Just think of all the places that won’t be getting a U.S.O. show on any given day. Think of all the places each big-name entertainer won’t be visiting. Yes, Cargill, I think you’ve hit on something. I think you’ve just thrown open a whole new area of operation for us. Tell Colonel Scheisskopf I want him to work along under your supervision on this. And send him in to see me when you’re through giving him instructions.’
‘Colonel Cargill says you told him you want me to work along under his supervision on the U.S.O. project,’ Colonel Scheisskopf complained.
‘I told him no such thing,’ answered General Peckem. ‘Confidentially, Scheisskopf, I’m not too happy with Colonel Cargill. He’s bossy and he’s slow. I’d like you to keep a close eye on what he’s doing and see if you can’t get a little more work out of him.’
‘He keeps butting in,’ Colonel Cargill protested. ‘He won’t let me get any work done.’
‘There’s something very funny about Scheisskopf,’ General Peckem agreed reflectively. ‘Keep a
very close eye on him and see if you can’t find out what he’s up to.’ ‘Now he’s butting into my business!’ Colonel Scheisskopf cried.
‘Don’t let it worry you, Scheisskopf,’ said General Peckem, congratulating himself on how adeptly he had fit Colonel Scheisskopf into his standard method of operation. Already his two colonels were barely on speaking terms. ‘Colonel Cargill envies you because of the splendid job you’re doing on parades. He’s afraid I’m going to put you in charge of bomb patterns.’
Colonel Scheisskopf was all ears. ‘What are bomb patterns?’
‘Bomb patterns?’ General Peckem repeated, twinkling with self-satisfied good humor. ‘A bomb pattern is a term I dreamed up just several weeks ago. It means nothing, but you’d be surprised at how rapidly it’s caught on. Why, I’ve got all sorts of people convinced I think it’s important for the bombs to explode close together and make a neat aerial photograph. There’s one colonel in Pianosa who’s hardly concerned any more with whether he hits the target or not. Let’s fly over and have some fun with him today. It will make Colonel Cargill jealous, and I learned from Wintergreen this morning that General Dreedle will be off in Sardinia. It drives General Dreedle insane to find out I’ve been inspecting one of his installations while he’s been off inspecting another. We may even get there in time for the briefing. They’ll be bombing a tiny undefended village, reducing the whole community to rubble. I have it from Wintergreen – Wintergreen’s an ex-sergeant now, by the way – that the mission is entirely unnecessary. Its only purpose is to delay German reinforcements at a time when we aren’t even planning an offensive. But that’s the way things go when you elevate mediocre people to positions of authority.’ He gestured languidly toward his gigantic map of Italy. ‘Why, this tiny mountain village is so insignificant that it isn’t even there.’
They arrived at Colonel Cathcart’s group too late to attend the preliminary briefing and hear Major Danby insist, ‘But it is there, I tell you. It’s there, it’s there.’
‘It’s where?’ Dunbar demanded defiantly, pretending not to see.
‘It’s right there on the map where this road makes this slight turn. Can’t you see this slight turn on your map?’
‘No, I can’t see it.’
‘I can see it,’ volunteered Havermeyer, and marked the spot on Dunbar’s map. ‘And here’s a good picture of the village right on these photographs. I understand the whole thing. The purpose of the mission is to knock the whole village sliding down the side of the mountain and create a roadblock that the Germans will have to clear. Is that right?’
‘That’s right,’ said Major Danby, mopping his perspiring forehead with his handkerchief. ‘I’m glad somebody here is beginning to understand. These two armored divisions will be coming down from Austria into Italy along this road. The village is built on such a steep incline that all the rubble from the houses and other buildings you destroy will certainly tumble right down and pile upon the road.’ ‘What the hell difference will it make?’ Dunbar wanted to know, as Yossarian watched him
excitedly with a mixture of awe and adulation. ‘It will only take them a couple of days to clear it.’ Major Danby was trying to avoid an argument. ‘Well, it apparently makes some difference to Headquarters,’ he answered in a conciliatory tone. ‘I suppose that’s why they ordered the mission.’ ‘Have the people in the village been warned?’ asked McWatt.
Major Danby was dismayed that McWatt too was registering opposition. ‘No, I don’t think so.’ ‘Haven’t we dropped any leaflets telling them that this time we’ll be flying over to hit them?’ asked Yossarian. ‘Can’t we even tip them off so they’ll get out of the way?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ Major Danby was swearing some more and still shifting his eyes about uneasily. ‘The Germans might find out and choose another road. I’m not sure about any of this. I’m just making assumptions.’
‘They won’t even take shelter,’ Dunbar argued bitterly. ‘They’ll pour out into the streets to wave when they see our planes coming, all the children and dogs and old people. Jesus Christ! Why can’t we leave them alone?’
‘Why can’t we create the roadblock somewhere else?’ asked McWatt. ‘Why must it be there?’
‘I don’t know,’ Major Danby answered unhappily. ‘I don’t know. Look, fellows, we’ve got to have some confidence in the people above us who issue our orders. They know what they’re doing.’
‘The hell they do,’ said Dunbar.
‘What’s the trouble?’ inquired Colonel Korn, moving leisurely across the briefing room with his hands in his pockets and his tan shirt baggy.
‘Oh, no trouble, Colonel,’ said Major Danby, trying nervously to cover up. ‘We’re just discussing the mission.’
‘They don’t want to bomb the village,’ Havermeyer snickered, giving Major Danby away. ‘You prick!’ Yossarian said to Havermeyer.
‘You leave Havermeyer alone,’ Colonel Korn ordered Yossarian curtly. He recognized Yossarian as the drunk who had accosted him roughly at the officers’ club one night before the first mission to Bologna, and he swung his displeasure prudently to Dunbar. ‘Why don’t you want to bomb the village?’
‘It’s cruel, that’s why.’
‘Cruel?’ asked Colonel Korn with cold good humor, frightened only momentarily by the uninhibited vehemence of Dunbar’s hostility. ‘Would it be any less cruel to let those two German divisions down to fight with our troops? American lives are at stake, too, you know. Would you rather see American blood spilled?’
‘American blood is being spilled. But those people are living up there in peace. Why can’t we leave them the hell alone?’
‘Yes, it’s easy for you to talk,’ Colonel Korn jeered. ‘You’re safe here in Pianosa. It won’t make any difference to you when these German reinforcements arrive, will it?’
Dunbar turned crimson with embarrassment and replied in a voice that was suddenly defensive. ‘Why can’t we create the roadblock somewhere else? Couldn’t we bomb the slope of a mountain or the road itself?’
‘Would you rather go back to Bologna?’ The question, asked quietly, rang out like a shot and created a silence in the room that was awkward and menacing. Yossarian prayed intensely, with shame, that Dunbar would keep his mouth shut. Dunbar dropped his gaze, and Colonel Korn knew he had won. ‘No, I thought not,’ he continued with undisguised scorn. ‘You know, Colonel Cathcart and I have to go to a lot of trouble to get you a milk run like this. If you’d sooner fly missions to Bologna, Spezia and Ferrara, we can get those targets with no trouble at all.’ His eyes gleamed dangerously behind his rimless glasses, and his muddy jowls were square and hard. ‘Just let me know.’
‘I would,’ responded Havermeyer eagerly with another boastful snicker. ‘I like to fly into Bologna straight and level with my head in the bombsight and listen to all that flak pumping away all around me. I get a big kick out of the way the men come charging over to me after the mission and call me dirty names. Even the enlisted men get sore enough to curse me and want to take socks at me.’ Colonel Korn chucked Havermeyer under the chin jovially, ignoring him, and then addressed himself to Dunbar and Yossarian in a dry monotone. ‘You’ve got my sacred word for it. Nobody is more distressed about those lousy wops up in the hills than Colonel Cathcart and myself. Mais c’est la guerre. Try to remember that we didn’t start the war and Italy did. That we weren’t the aggressors and Italy was. And that we couldn’t possibly inflict as much cruelty on the Italians, Germans, Russians and Chinese as they’re already inflicting on themselves.’ Colonel Korn gave Major Danby’s shoulder a friendly squeeze without changing his unfriendly expression. ‘Carry on with the briefing, Danby. And make sure they understand the importance of a tight bomb pattern.’
‘Oh, no, Colonel,’ Major Danby blurted out, blinking upward. ‘Not for this target. I’ve told them to space their bombs sixty feet apart so that we’ll have a roadblock the full length of the village instead of in just one spot. It will be a much more effective roadblock with a loose bomb pattern.’ ‘We don’t care about the roadblock,’ Colonel Korn informed him. ‘Colonel Cathcart wants to come out of this mission with a good clean aerial photograph he won’t be ashamed to send through channels. Don’t forget that General Peckem will be here for the full briefing, and you know how he feels about bomb patterns. Incidentally, Major, you’d better hurry up with these details and clear out before he gets here. General Peckem can’t stand you.’
‘Oh, no, Colonel,’ Major Danby corrected obligingly. ‘It’s General Dreedle who can’t stand me.’ ‘General Peckem can’t stand you either. In fact, no one can stand you. Finish what you’re doing, Danby, and disappear. I’ll conduct the briefing.’
‘Where’s Major Danby?’ Colonel Cathcart inquired, after he had driven up for the full briefing with General Peckem and Colonel Scheisskopf.
‘He asked permission to leave as soon as he saw you driving up,’ answered Colonel Korn. ‘He’s
afraid General Peckem doesn’t like him. I was going to conduct the briefing anyway. I do a much better job.’
‘Splendid!’ said Colonel Cathcart. ‘No!’ Colonel Cathcart countermanded himself an instant later when he remembered how good a job Colonel Korn had done before General Dreedle at the first Avignon briefing. ‘I’ll do it myself.’
Colonel Cathcart braced himself with the knowledge that he was one of General Peckem’s favorites and took charge of the meeting, snapping his words out crisply to the attentive audience of subordinate officers with the bluff and dispassionate toughness he had picked up from General Dreedle. He knew he cut a fine figure there on the platform with his open shirt collar, his cigarette holder, and his close-cropped, gray-tipped curly black hair. He breezed along beautifully, even emulating certain characteristic mispronunciations of General Dreedle’s, and he was not the least bit intimidated by General Peckem’s new colonel until he suddenly recalled that General Peckem detested General Dreedle. Then his voice cracked, and all confidence left him. He stumbled ahead through instinct in burning humiliation. He was suddenly in terror of Colonel Scheisskopf. Another colonel in the area meant another rival, another enemy, another person who hated him. And this one was tough! A horrifying thought occurred to Colonel Cathcart: Suppose Colonel Scheisskopf had already bribed all the men in the room to begin moaning, as they had done at the first Avignon mission. How could he silence them? What a terrible black eye that would be! Colonel Cathcart was seized with such fright that he almost beckoned to Colonel Korn. Somehow he held himself together and synchronized the watches. When he had done that, he knew he had won, for he could end now at any time. He had come through in a crisis. He wanted to laugh in Colonel Scheisskopf’s face with triumph and spite. He had proved himself brilliantly under pressure, and he concluded the briefing with an inspiring peroration that every instinct told him was a masterful exhibition of eloquent tact and subtlety.
‘Now, men,’ he exhorted. ‘We have with us today a very distinguished guest, General Peckem from Special Services, the man who gives us all our softball bats, comic books and U.S.O. shows. I want to dedicate this mission to him. Go on out there and bomb – for me, for your country, for God, and for that great American, General P. P. Peckem. And let’s see you put all those bombs on a dime!’
