Nately turned to him quickly with alarm. “What is it?” he whispered. “What’s the matter?”
Yossarian did not hear him. He was sick with lust and mesmerized with regret. General Dreedle’s nurse was only a little chubby, and his senses were stuffed to congestion with the yellow radiance of her hair and the unfelt pressure of her soft short fingers, with the rounded, untasted wealth of her nubile breasts in her Army-pink shirt that was opened wide at the throat and with the rolling, ripened, triangular confluences of her belly and thighs in her tight, slick forest-green gabardine officer’s pants. He drank her in insatiably from head to painted toenail. He never wanted to lose her. “Oooooooooooooh,” he moaned again, and this time the whole room rippled at his quavering, drawnout cry. A wave of startled uneasiness broke over the officers on the dais, and even Major Danby, who had begun synchronizing the watches, was distracted momentarily as he counted out the seconds and almost had to begin again. Nately followed Yossarian’s transfixed gaze down the long frame auditorium until he came to General Dreedle’s nurse. He blanched with trepidation when he guessed what was troubling Yossarian.
“Cut it out, will you?” Nately warned in a fierce whisper.
“Oooooooooooooooooooooh,” Yossarian moaned a fourth time, this time loudly enough for everyone to hear him distinctly.
“Are you crazy?” Nately hissed vehemently. “You’ll get into trouble.”
“Oooooooooooooooooooooh,” Dunbar answered Yossarian from the opposite end of the room.
Nately recognized Dunbar’s voice. The situation was now out of control, and he turned away with a small moan. “Ooh.”
“Oooooooooooooooooooh,” Dunbar moaned back at him.
“Oooooooooooooooooooh,” Nately moaned out loud in exasperation when he realized that he had just moaned.
“Oooooooooooooooooooooh,” Dunbar moaned back at him again.
“Oooooooooooooooooooooh,” someone entirely new chimed in from another section of the room, and Nately’s hair stood on end.
Yossarian and Dunbar both replied while Nately cringed and hunted about futilely for some hole in which to hide and take Yossarian with him. A sprinkling of people were smothering laughter. An elfin impulse possessed Nately and he moaned intentionally the next time there was a lull. Another new voice answered. The flavor of disobedience was titillating, and Nately moaned deliberately again, the next time he could squeeze one in edgewise. Still another new voice echoed him. The room was boiling irrepressibly into bedlam. An eerie hubbub of voices was rising. Feet were scuffled, and things began to drop from people’s fingers—pencils, computers, map cases, clattering steel flak helmets. A number of men who were not moaning were now giggling openly, and there was no telling how far the unorganized insurrection of moaning might have gone if General Dreedle himself had not come forward to quell it, stepping out determinedly in the center of the platform directly in front of Major Danby, who, with his earnest, persevering head down, was still concentrating on his wrist watch and saying, “. . . twenty-five seconds . . . twenty . . . fifteen . . .” General Dreedle’s great, red domineering face was gnarled with perplexity and oaken with awesome resolution.
“That will be all, men,” he ordered tersely, his eyes glaring with disapproval and his square jaw firm, and that’s all there was. “I run a fighting outfit,” he told them sternly, when the room had grown absolutely quiet and the men on the benches were all cowering sheepishly, “and there’ll be no more moaning in this group as long as I’m in command. Is that clear?”
It was clear to everybody but Major Danby, who was still concentrating on his wrist watch and counting down the seconds aloud. “. . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . time!” called out Major Danby, and raised his eyes triumphantly to discover that no one had been listening to him and that he would have to begin all over again. “Ooooh,” he moaned in frustration.
“What was that?” roared General Dreedle incredulously, and whirled around in a murderous rage upon Major Danby, who staggered back in terrified confusion and began to quail and perspire. “Who is this man?”
“M-major Danby, sir,” Colonel Cathcart stammered. “My group operations officer.”
“Take him out and shoot him,” ordered General Dreedle.
“S-sir?”
“I said take him out and shoot him. Can’t you hear?”
“Yes, sir!” Colonel Cathcart responded smartly, swallowing hard, and turned in a brisk manner to his chauffeur and his meteorologist. “Take Major Danby out and shoot him.”