‘But twice?’ Colonel Cathcart repeated, in vivid disbelief.
‘I would have missed it the first time,’ Yossarian repeated.
‘But Kraft would be alive.’
‘And the bridge would still be up.’
‘A trained bombardier is supposed to drop his bombs the first time,’ Colonel Cathcart reminded him.
‘The other five bombardiers dropped their bombs the first time.’
‘And missed the target,’ Yossarian said.
‘We’d have had to go back there again.’
‘And maybe you would have gotten it the first time then.’
‘And maybe I wouldn’t have gotten it at all.’
‘But maybe there wouldn’t have been any losses.’
‘And maybe there would have been more losses, with the bridge still left standing.
I thought you wanted the bridge destroyed.’ ‘Don’t contradict me,’ Colonel Cathcart said.
‘We’re all in enough trouble.’
‘I’m not contradicting you, sir.’
‘Yes you are. Even that’s a contradiction.’
‘Yes, sir.
I’m sorry.’
Colonel Cathcart cracked his knuckles violently.
Colonel Korn, a stocky, dark, flaccid man with a shapeless paunch, sat completely relaxed on one of the benches in the front row, his hands clasped comfortably over the top of his bald and swarthy head.
His eyes were amused behind his glinting rimless spectacles.
‘We’re trying to be perfectly objective about this,’ he prompted Colonel Cathcart.
‘We’re trying to be perfectly objective about this,’ Colonel Cathcart said to Yossarian with the zeal of sudden inspiration.
‘It’s not that I’m being sentimental or anything.
I don’t give a damn about the men or the airplane.
It’s just that it looks so lousy on the report.
How am I going to cover up something like this in the report?’
‘Why don’t you give me a medal?’ Yossarian suggested timidly.
‘For going around twice?’
‘You gave one to Hungry Joe when he cracked up that airplane by mistake.’
Colonel Cathcart snickered ruefully.
‘You’ll be lucky if we don’t give you a court-martial.’
‘But I got the bridge the second time around,’ Yossarian protested.
‘I thought you wanted the bridge destroyed.’
‘Oh, I don’t know what I wanted,’ Colonel Cathcart cried out in exasperation.
‘Look, of course I wanted the bridge destroyed.
That bridge has been a source of trouble to me ever since I decided to send you men out to get it.
But why couldn’t you do it the first time?’
‘I didn’t have enough time.
My navigator wasn’t sure we had the right city.’
‘The right city?’ Colonel Cathcart was baffled.
‘Are you trying to blame it all on Aarfy now?’
‘No, sir.
It was my mistake for letting him distract me.
All I’m trying to say is that I’m not infallible.’
‘Nobody is infallible,’ Colonel Cathcart said sharply, and then continued vaguely, with an afterthought: ‘Nobody is indispensable, either.’
There was no rebuttal.
Colonel Korn stretched sluggishly.
‘We’ve got to reach a decision,’ he observed casually to Colonel Cathcart.
‘We’ve got to reach a decision,’ Colonel Cathcart said to Yossarian.