‘And it’s all your fault.
Why did you have to go around twice?
Why couldn’t you drop your bombs the first time like all the others?’
‘I would have missed the first time.’
‘It seems to me that we’re going around twice,’ Colonel Korn interrupted with a chuckle.
‘But what are we going to do?’ Colonel Cathcart exclaimed with distress.
‘The others are all waiting outside.’
‘Why don’t we give him a medal?’ Colonel Korn proposed.
‘For going around twice? What can we give him a medal for?’
‘For going around twice,’ Colonel Korn answered with a reflective, self-satisfied smile.
‘After all, I suppose it did take a lot of courage to go over that target a second time with no other planes around to divert the antiaircraft fire.
And he did hit the bridge.
You know, that might be the answer—to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of.
That’s a trick that never seems to fail.’
‘Do you think it will work?’
‘I’m sure it will.
And let’s promote him to captain, too, just to make certain.’
‘Don’t you think that’s going a bit farther than we have to?’
‘No, I don’t think so.
It’s best to play safe.
And a captain’s not much difference.’
‘All right,’ Colonel Cathcart decided. ‘We’ll give him a medal for being brave enough to go around over the target twice. And we’ll make him a captain, too.’
Colonel Korn reached for his hat.
‘Exit smiling,’ he joked, and put his arm around Yossarian’s shoulders as they stepped outside the door.
Kid Sampson By the time of the mission to Bologna, Yossarian was brave enough not to go around over the target even once, and when he found himself aloft finally in the nose of Kid Sampson’s plane, he pressed in the button of his throat mike and asked,
‘Well? What’s wrong with the plane?’
Kid Sampson let out a shriek. ‘Is something wrong with the plane?
What’s the matter?’ Kid Sampson’s cry turned Yossarian to ice.
‘Is something the matter?’ he yelled in horror.
‘Are we bailing out?’
‘I don’t know!’ Kid Sampson shot back in anguish, wailing excitedly.
‘Someone said we’re bailing out!
Who is this, anyway?
Who is this?’
‘This is Yossarian in the nose!
Yossarian in the nose.
I heard you say there was something the matter.
Didn’t you say there was something the matter?’
‘I thought you said there was something wrong.
Everything seems okay. Everything is all right.’
Yossarian’s heart sank.
Something was terribly wrong if everything was all right and they had no excuse for turning back.
He hesitated gravely.
‘I can’t hear you,’ he said.
‘I said everything is all right.’
The sun was blinding white on the porcelain-blue water below and on the flashing edges of the other airplanes.
Yossarian took hold of the colored wires leading into the jackbox of the intercom system and tore them loose.
‘I still can’t hear you,’ he said.
He heard nothing.
Slowly he collected his map case and his three flak suits and crawled back to the main compartment.