Yossarian was warm when the cold weather came and whale-shaped clouds blew low through a dingy, slate-graysky, almost without end, like the droning, dark, iron flocks of B-17 and B-24 bombers from the long-range airbases in Italy the day of the invasion of southern France two months earlier. Everyone in the squadron knew thatKid Sampson’s skinny legs had washed up on the wet sand to lie there and rot like a purple twisted wishbone. Noone would go to retrieve them, not Gus or Wes or even the men in the mortuary at the hospital; everyone madebelieve that Kid Sampson’s legs were not there, that they had bobbed away south forever on the tide like all ofClevinger and Orr. Now that bad weather had come, almost no one ever sneaked away alone any more to peekthrough bushes like a pervert at the moldering stumps.
There were no more beautiful days. There were no more easy missions. There was stinging rain and dull, chillingfog, and the men flew at week-long intervals, whenever the weather cleared. At night the wind moaned. Thegnarled and stunted tree trunks creaked and groaned and forced Yossarian’s thoughts each morning, even beforehe was fully awake, back on Kid Sampson’s skinny legs bloating and decaying, as systematically as a tickingclock, in the icy rain and wet sand all through the blind, cold, gusty October nights. After Kid Sampson’s legs, hewould think of pitiful, whimpering Snowden freezing to death in the rear section of the plane, holding his eternal,immutable secret concealed inside his quilted, armor-plate flak suit until Yossarian had finished sterilizing andbandaging the wrong wound on his leg, and then spilling it out suddenly all over the floor. At night when he wastrying to sleep, Yossarian would call the roll of all the men, women and children he had ever known who werenow dead. He tried to remember all the soldiers, and he resurrected images of all the elderly people he hadknown when a child—all the aunts, uncles, neighbors, parents and grandparents, his own and everyone else’s,and all the pathetic, deluded shopkeepers who opened their small, dusty stores at dawn and worked in themfoolishly until midnight. They were all dead, too. The number of dead people just seemed to increase. And theGermans were still fighting. Death was irreversible, he suspected, and he began to think he was going to lose.
Yossarian was warm when the cold weather came because of Orr’s marvelous stove, and he might have existedin his warm tent quite comfortably if not for the memory of Orr, and if not for the gang of animated roommatesthat came swarming inside rapaciously one day from the two full combat crews Colonel Cathcart hadrequisitioned—and obtained in less than forty-eight hours—as replacements for Kid Sampson and McWatt.
Yossarian emitted a long, loud, croaking gasp of protest when he trudged in tiredly after a mission and foundthem already there.
There were four of them, and they were having a whale of a good time as they helped each other set up their cots.
They were horsing around. The moment he saw them, Yossarian knew they were impossible. They were frisky,eager and exuberant, and they had all been friends in the States. They were plainly unthinkable.
They were noisy, overconfident, empty-headed kids of twenty-one. They had gone to college and were engagedto pretty, clean girls whose pictures were already standing on the rough cement mantelpiece of Orr’s fireplace.
They had ridden in speedboats and played tennis. They had been horseback riding. One had once been to bedwith an older woman. They knew the same people in different parts of the country and had gone to school witheach other’s cousins. They had listened to the World Series and really cared who won football games. They wereobtuse; their morale was good. They were glad that the war had lasted long enough for them to find out whatcombat was really like. They were halfway through unpacking when Yossarian threw them out.
They were plainly out of the question, Yossarian explained adamantly to Sergeant Towser, whose sallow equineface was despondent as he informed Yossarian that the new officers would have to be admitted. Sergeant Towserwas not permitted to requisition another six-man tent from Group while Yossarian was living in one alone.
“I’m not living in this one alone,” Yossarian said with a sulk. “I’ve got a dead man in here with me. His name isMudd.”
“Please, sir,” begged Sergeant Towser, sighing wearily, with a sidelong glance at the four baffled new officerslistening in mystified silence just outside the entrance. “Mudd was killed on the mission to Orvieto. You knowthat. He was flying right beside you.”
“Then why don’t you move his things out?”
“Because he never even got here. Captain, please don’t bring that up again. You can move in with LieutenantNately if you like. I’ll even send some men from the orderly room to transfer your belongings.”
But to abandon Orr’s tent would be to abandon Orr, who would have been spurned and humiliated clannishly bythese four simple-minded officers waiting to move in. It did not seem just that these boisterous, immature youngmen should show up after all the work was done and be allowed to take possession of the most desirable tent onthe island. But that was the law, Sergeant Towser explained, and all Yossarian could do was glare at them inbaleful apology as he made room for them and volunteer helpful penitent hints as they moved inside his privacyand made themselves at home.
They were the most depressing group of people Yossarian had ever been with. They were always in high spirits.
They laughed at everything. They called him “Yo-Yo” jocularly and came in tipsy late at night and woke him upwith their clumsy, bumping, giggling efforts to be quiet, then bombarded him with asinine shouts of hilariousgood-fellowship when he sat up cursing to complain. He wanted to massacre them each time they did. Theyreminded him of Donald Duck’s nephews. They were afraid of Yossarian and persecuted him incessantly withnagging generosity and with their exasperating insistence on doing small favors for him. They were reckless,puerile, congenial, naive, presumptuous, deferential and rambunctious. They were dumb; they had nocomplaints. They admired Colonel Cathcart and they found Colonel Korn witty. They were ............