Along with everyone else in the squadron, he lived in profound awe and reverence of the majestic, white-haired major with craggy face and Jehovean bearing, who came back from Rome finally with an injured eye inside a new celluloid eye patch and smashed his whole Glorious Crusade to bits with a single stroke.
Milo carefully said nothing when Major—de Coverley stepped into the mess hall with his fierce and austere dignity the day he returned and found his way blocked by a wall of officers waiting in line to sign loyalty oaths.
At the far end of the food counter, a group of men who had arrived earlier were pledging allegiance to the flag, with trays of food balanced in one hand, in order to be allowed to take seats at the table.
Already at the tables, a group that had arrived still earlier was singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ in order that they might use the salt and pepper and ketchup there.
The hubbub began to subside slowly as Major—de Coverley paused in the doorway with a frown of puzzled disapproval, as though viewing something bizarre.
He started forward in a straight line, and the wall of officers before him parted like the Red Sea.
Glancing neither left nor right, he strode indomitably up to the steam counter and, in a clear, full-bodied voice that was gruff with age and resonant with ancient eminence and authority, said:
‘Gimme eat.’
Instead of eat, Corporal Snark gave Major—de Coverley a loyalty oath to sign.
Major—de Coverley swept it away with mighty displeasure the moment he recognized what it was, his good eye flaring up blindingly with fiery disdain and his enormous old corrugated face darkening in mountainous wrath.
‘Gimme eat, I said,’ he ordered loudly in harsh tones that rumbled ominously through the silent tent like claps of distant thunder.
Corporal Snark turned pale and began to tremble.
He glanced toward Milo
pleadingly for guidance.
For several terrible seconds there was not a sound. Then Milo nodded.
‘Give him eat,’ he said.
Corporal Snark began giving Major—de Coverley eat.
Major—de Coverley turned from the counter with his tray full and came to a stop. His eyes fell on the groups of other officers gazing at him in mute appeal, and, with righteous belligerence, he roared:
‘Give everybody eat!’
‘Give everybody eat!’ Milo echoed with joyful relief, and the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade came to an end.
Captain Black was deeply disillusioned by this treacherous stab in the back from someone in high place upon whom he had relied so confidently for support.
Major – de Coverley had let him down.
‘Oh, it doesn’t bother me a bit,’ he responded cheerfully to everyone who came to him with sympathy.
‘We completed our task.
Our purpose was to make everyone we don’t like afraid and to alert people to the danger of Major Major, and we certainly succeeded at that.
Since we weren’t going to let him sign loyalty oaths anyway, it doesn’t really matter whether we have them or not.’
Seeing everyone in the squadron he didn’t like afraid once again throughout the appalling, interminable Great Big Siege of Bologna reminded Captain Black nostalgically of the good old days of his Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade when he had been a man of real consequence, and when even big shots like Milo Minderbinder, Doc Daneeka and Piltchard and Wren had trembled at his approach and groveled at his feet.
To prove to newcomers that he really had been a man of consequence once, he still had the letter of commendation he had received from Colonel Cathcart.
Bologna Actually, it was not Captain Black but Sergeant Knight who triggered the solemn panic of Bologna, slipping silently off the truck for two extra flak suits as soon as he learned the target and signaling the start of the grim procession back into the parachute tent that degenerated into a frantic stampede finally before all the extra flak suits were gone.
‘Hey, what’s going on?’ Kid Sampson asked nervously. ‘ Bologna can’t be that rough, can it?’
Nately, sitting trancelike on the floor of the truck, held his grave young face in both hands and did not answer him.
It was Sergeant Knight and the cruel series of postponements, for just as they were climbing up into their planes that first morning, along came a jeep with the news that it was raining in Bologna and that the mission would be delayed.
It was raining in Pianosa too by the time they returned to the squadron, and they had the rest of that day to stare woodenly at the bomb line on the map under the awning of the intelligence tent and ruminate hypnotically on the fact that there was no escape.
The evidence was there vividly in the narrow red ribbon tacked across the mainland: the ground forces in Italy were pinned down forty-two insurmountable miles south of the target and could not possibly capture the city in time.
Nothing could save the men in Pianosa from the mission to Bologna.
They were trapped.
Their only hope was that it would never stop raining, and they had no hope because they all knew it would.
When it did stop raining in Pianosa, it rained in Bologna.
When it stopped raining in Bologna, it began again in Pianosa.
If there was no rain at all, there were freakish, inexplicable phenomena like the epidemic of diarrhea or the bomb line that moved.
Four times during the first six days they were assembled and briefed and then sent back.
Once, they took off and were flying in formation when the control tower summoned them down.
The more it rained, the worse they suffered.
The worse they suffered, the more they prayed that it would continue raining.
All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars.
All through the day, they looked at the bomb line on the big, wobbling easel map of Italy that blew over in the wind and was dragged in under the awning of the intelligence tent every time the rain began.
The bomb line was a scarlet band of narrow satin ribbon that delineated the forwardmost position of the Allied ground forces in every sector of the Italian mainland.
The morning after Hungry Joe’s fist fight with Huple’s cat, the rain stopped falling in both places.
The landing strip began to dry.
It would take a full twenty-four hours to harden; but the sky remained cloudless.