‘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.