In April a livelier iris gleamed upon the burnished dove.
April was spring, and in the spring Milo Minderbinder’s fancy had lightly turned to thoughts of tangerines.
‘Tangerines?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘My men would love tangerines,’ admitted the colonel in Sardinia who commanded four squadrons of B-26s.
‘There’ll be all the tangerines they can eat that you’re able to pay for with money from your mess fund,’ Milo assured him.
‘Casaba melons?’
‘Are going for a song in Damascus.’
‘I have a weakness for casaba melons.
I’ve always had a weakness for casaba melons.’
‘Just lend me one plane from each squadron, just one plane, and you’ll have all the casabas you can eat that you’ve money to pay for.’
‘We buy from the syndicate?’
‘And everybody has a share.’
‘It’s amazing, positively amazing.
How can you do it?’
‘Mass purchasing power makes the big difference.
For example, breaded veal cutlets.’
‘I’m not so crazy about breaded veal cutlets,’ grumbled the skeptical B-25 commander in the north of Corsica.
‘Breaded veal cutlets are very nutritious,’ Milo admonished him piously.
‘They contain egg yolk and bread crumbs.
And so are lamb chops.’
‘Ah, lamb chops,’ echoed the B-25 commander.
‘Good lamb chops?’
‘The best,’ said Milo, ‘that the black market has to offer.’
‘Baby lamb chops?’
‘In the cutest little pink paper panties you ever saw.
Are going for a song in Portugal.’
‘I can’t send a plane to Portugal.
I haven’t the authority.’
‘I can, once you lend the plane to me.
With a pilot to fly it.
And don’t forget—you’ll get General Dreedle.’
‘Will General Dreedle eat in my mess hall again?’
‘Like a pig, once you start feeding him my best white fresh eggs fried in my pure creamery butter.
There’ll be tangerines too, and casaba melons, honeydews, filet of Dover sole, baked Alaska, and cockles and mussels.’
‘And everybody has a share?’
‘That,’ said Milo, ‘is the most beautiful part of it.’
‘I don’t like it,’ growled the unco-operative fighter-plane commander, who didn’t like Milo either.
‘There’s an unco-operative fighter-plane commander up north who’s got it in for me,’ Milo complained to General Dreedle.
‘It takes just one person to ruin the whole thing, and then you wouldn’t have your fresh eggs fried in my pure creamery butter any more.’
General Dreedle had the unco-operative fighter-plane commander transferred to the Solomon Islands to dig graves and replaced him with a senile colonel with bursitis and a craving for litchi nuts who introduced Milo to the B-17 general on the mainland with a yearning for Polish sausage.
‘Polish sausage is going for peanuts in Cracow,’ Milo informed him.
‘Polish sausage,’ sighed the general nostalgically.
‘You know, I’d give just about anything for a good hunk of Polish sausage.
Just about anything.’
‘You don’t have to give anything.
Just give me one plane for each mess hall and a pilot who will do what he’s told.
And a small down payment on your initial order as a token of good faith.’
‘But Cracow is hundreds of miles behind the enemy lines.
How will you get to the sausage?’