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Catch-22(10)

By:Joseph Heller


They were in a race and knew it, because they knew from bitter experience that Colonel Cathcart might raise the number of missions again at any time. They had nothing better to do than wait. Only Hungry Joe had something better to do each time he finished his missions. He had screaming nightmares and won fist fights with Huple’s cat. He took his camera to the front row of every U.S.O. show and tried to shoot pictures up the skirt of the yellow-headed singer with two big ones in a sequined dress that always seemed ready to burst. The pictures never came out.

Colonel Cargill, General Peckem’s troubleshooter, was a forceful, ruddy man. Before the war he had been an alert, hard-hitting, aggressive marketing executive. He was a very bad marketing executive. Colonel Cargill was so awful a marketing executive that his services were much sought after by firms eager to establish losses for tax purposes. Throughout the civilized world, from Battery Park to Fulton Street, he was known as a dependable man for a fast tax write-off. His prices were high, for failure often did not come easily. He had to start at the top and work his way down, and with sympathetic friends in Washington, losing money was no simple matter. It took months of hard work and careful misplanning. A person misplaced, disorganized, miscalculated, overlooked everything and opened every loophole, and just when he thought he had it made, the government gave him a lake or a forest or an oilfield and spoiled everything. Even with such handicaps, Colonel Cargill could be relied on to run the most prosperous enterprise into the ground. He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.

“Men,” Colonel Cargill began in Yossarian’s squadron, measuring his pauses carefully. “You’re American officers. The officers of no other army in the world can make that statement. Think about it.”

Sergeant Knight thought about it and then politely informed Colonel Cargill that he was addressing the enlisted men and that the officers were to be found waiting for him on the other side of the squadron. Colonel Cargill thanked him crisply and glowed with self-satisfaction as he strode across the area. It made him proud to observe that twenty-nine months in the service had not blunted his genius for ineptitude.

“Men,” he began his address to the officers, measuring his pauses carefully. “You’re American officers. The officers of no other army in the world can make that statement. Think about it.” He waited a moment to permit them to think about it. “These people are your guests!” he shouted suddenly. “They’ve traveled over three thousand miles to entertain you. How are they going to feel if nobody wants to go out and watch them? What’s going to happen to their morale? Now, men, it’s no skin off my behind. But that girl that wants to play the accordion for you today is old enough to be a mother. How would you feel if your own mother traveled over three thousand miles to play the accordion for some troops that didn’t want to watch her? How is that kid whose mother that accordion player is old enough to be going to feel when he grows up and learns about it? We all know the answer to that one. Now, men, don’t misunderstand me. This is all voluntary, of course. I’d be the last colonel in the world to order you to go to that U.S.O. show and have a good time, but I want every one of you who isn’t sick enough to be in a hospital to go to that U.S.O. show right now and have a good time, and that’s an order!”

Yossarian did feel almost sick enough to go back into the hospital, and he felt even sicker three combat missions later when Doc Daneeka still shook his melancholy head and refused to ground him.

“You think you’ve got troubles?” Doc Daneeka rebuked him grievingly. “What about me? I lived on peanuts for eight years while I learned how to be a doctor. After the peanuts, I lived on chicken feed in my own office until I could build up a practice decent enough to even pay expenses. Then, just as the shop was finally starting to show a profit, they drafted me. I don’t know what you’re complaining about.”

Doc Daneeka was Yossarian’s friend and would do just about nothing in his power to help him. Yossarian listened very carefully as Doc Daneeka told him about Colonel Cathcart at Group, who wanted to be a general, about General Dreedle at Wing and General Dreedle’s nurse, and about all the other generals at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters, who insisted on only forty missions as a completed tour of duty.

“Why don’t you just smile and make the best of it?” he advised Yossarian glumly. “Be like Havermeyer.”

Yossarian shuddered at the suggestion. Havermeyer was a lead bombardier who never took evasive action going in to the target and thereby increased the danger of all the men who flew in the same formation with him.