‘You really want to go into combat?’ ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen inquired.
‘Combat?’ Colonel Cargill was aghast.
‘Oh, no—you misunderstand me.
Of course, I wouldn’t actually mind going into combat, but my best abilities are mainly administrative ones.
I too have a happy facility for getting different people to agree.’
‘He too has a happy facility for getting different people to agree what a prick he is,’ ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen confided with a laugh to Yossarian, after he had come to Pianosa to learn if it was really true about Milo and the Egyptian cotton.
‘If anyone deserves a promotion, I do.’
Actually, he had risen already to ex-corporal, having shot through the ranks shortly after his transfer to Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters as a mail clerk and been busted right down to private for making odious audible comparisons about the commissioned officers for whom he worked.
The heady taste of success had infused him further with morality and fired him with ambition for loftier attainments.
‘Do you want to buy some Zippo lighters?’ he asked Yossarian.
‘They were stolen right from quartermaster.’
‘Does Milo know you’re selling cigarette lighters?’
‘What’s it his business?
Milo’s not carrying cigarette lighters too now, is he?’
‘He sure is,’ Yossarian told him.
‘And his aren’t stolen.’
‘That’s what you think,’ ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen answered with a laconic snort.
‘I’m selling mine for a buck apiece. What’s he getting for his?’
‘A dollar and a penny.’
Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen snickered triumphantly.
‘I beat him every time,’ he gloated.
‘Say, what about all that Egyptian cotton he’s stuck with?
How much did he buy?’
‘All.’
‘In the whole world? Well, I’ll be danmed!’ ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen crowed with malicious glee.
‘What a dope!
You were in Cairo with him.
Why’d you let him do it?’
‘Me?’
Yossarian answered with a shrug.
‘I have no influence on him.
It was those teletype machines they have in all the good restaurants there.
Milo had never seen a stock ticker before, and the quotation for Egyptian cotton happened to be coming in just as he asked the headwaiter to explain it to him.
"Egyptian cotton?" Milo said with that look of his.
"How much is Egyptian cotton selling for?"
The next thing I knew he had bought the whole goddam harvest.
And now he can’t unload any of it.’
‘He has no imagination.
I can unload plenty of it in the black market if he’ll make a deal.’ ‘ Milo knows the black market.
There’s no demand for cotton.’
‘But there is a demand for medical supplies.
I can roll the cotton up on wooden toothpicks and peddle them as sterile swabs.
Will he sell to me at a good price?’
‘He won’t sell to you at any price,’ Yossarian answered.
‘He’s pretty sore at you for going into competition with him.
In fact, he’s pretty sore at everybody for getting diarrhea last weekend and giving his mess hall a bad name.
Say, you can help us.’ Yossarian suddenly seized his arm.
‘Couldn’t you forge some official orders on that mimeograph machine of yours and get us out of flying to Bologna?’
Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen pulled away slowly with a look of scorn.
‘Sure I could,’ he explained with pride. ‘But I would never dream of doing anything like that.’