Milo is glad to snap up all we can produce.
These were picked only yesterday.
Notice how firm and ripe they are, like a young girl’s breasts.’
The chaplain blushed, and the colonel understood at once that he had made a mistake.
He lowered his head in shame, his cumbersome face burning. His fingers felt gross and unwieldy.
He hated the chaplain venomously for being a chaplain and making a coarse blunder out of an observation that in any other circumstances, he knew, would have been considered witty and urbane.
He tried miserably to recall some means of extricating them both from their devastating embarrassment.
He recalled instead that the chaplain was only a captain, and he straightened at once with a shocked and outraged gasp.
His cheeks grew tight with fury at the thought that he had just been duped into humiliation by a man who was almost the same age as he was and still only a captain, and he swung upon the chaplain avengingly with a look of such murderous antagonism that the chaplain began to tremble. The colonel punished him sadistically with a long, glowering, malignant, hateful, silent stare.
‘We were speaking about something else,’ he reminded the chaplain cuttingly at last.
‘We were not speaking about the firm, ripe breasts of beautiful young girls but about something else entirely.
We were speaking about conducting religious services in the briefing room before each mission.
Is there any reason why we can’t?’
‘No, sir,’ the chaplain mumbled.
‘Then we’ll begin with this afternoon’s mission.’
The colonel’s hostility softened gradually as he applied himself to details.
‘Now, I want you to give a lot of thought to the kind of prayers we’re going to say.
I don’t want anything heavy or sad.
I’d like you to keep it light and snappy, something that will send the boys out feeling pretty good.
Do you know what I mean?
I don’t want any of this Kingdom of God or Valley of Death stuff.
That’s all too negative.
What are you making such a sour face for?’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the chaplain stammered.
‘I happened to be thinking of the Twenty-third Psalm just as you said that.’
‘How does that one go?’
‘That’s the one you were just referring to, sir.
"The Lord is my shepherd; I —" ‘
‘That’s the one I was just referring to.
It’s out.
What else have you got?’ ‘
"Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto &mash;" ‘
‘No waters,’ the colonel decided, blowing ruggedly into his cigarette holder after flipping the butt down into his combed-brass ash tray.
‘Why don’t we try something musical?
How about the harps on the willows?’ ‘That has the rivers of Babylon in it, sir,’ the chaplain replied. ‘ "…there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion." ‘ ‘ Zion?
Let’s forget about that one right now.
I’d like to know how that one even got in there.
Haven’t you got anything humorous that stays away from waters and valleys and God?
I’d like to keep away from the subject of religion altogether if we can.’
The chaplain was apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but just about all the prayers I know are rather somber in tone and make at least some passing reference to God.’
‘Then let’s get some new ones.
The men are already doing enough bitching about the missions I send them on without our rubbing it in with any sermons about God or death or Paradise.
Why can’t we take a more positive approach?
Why can’t we all pray for something good, like a tighter bomb pattern, for example? Couldn’t we pray for a tighter bomb pattern?’
‘Well, yes, sir, I suppose so,’ the chaplain answered hesitantly.
‘You wouldn’t even need me if that’s all you wanted to do.
You could do that yourself.’
‘I know I could,’ the colonel responded tartly. ‘But what do you think you’re here for?
I could shop for my own food, too, but that’s Milo’s job, and that’s why he’s doing it for every group in the area.
Your job is to lead us in prayer, and from now on you’re going to lead us in a prayer for a tighter bomb pattern before every mission.