Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren, the inoffensive joint squadron operations officers, were both mild, soft-spoken men of less than middle height who enjoyed flying combat missions and begged nothing more of life andColonel Cathcart than the opportunity to continue flying them. They had flown hundreds of combat missions andwanted to fly hundreds more. They assigned themselves to every one. Nothing so wonderful as war had everhappened to them before; and they were afraid it might never happen to them again. They conducted their dutieshumbly and reticently, with a minimum of fuss, and went to great lengths not to antagonize anyone. They smiledquickly at everyone they passed. When they spoke, they mumbled. They were shifty, cheerful, subservient menwho were comfortable only with each other and never met anyone else’s eye, not even Yossarian’s eye at theopen-air meeting they called to reprimand him publicly for making Kid Sampson turn back from the mission toBologna.
“Fellas,” said Captain Piltchard, who had thinning dark hair and smiled awkwardly. “When you turn back from amission, try to make sure it’s for something important, will you? Not for something unimportant... like adefective intercom... or something like that. Okay? Captain Wren has more he wants to say to you on thatsubject.”
“Captain Piltchard’s right, fellas,” said Captain Wren. “And that’s all I’m going to say to you on that subject.
Well, we finally got to Bologna today, and we found out it’s a milk run. We were all a little nervous, I guess, anddidn’t do too much damage. Well, listen to this. Colonel Cathcart got permission for us to go back. Andtomorrow we’re really going to paste those ammunition dumps. Now, what do you think about that?”
And to prove to Yossarian that they bore him no animosity, they even assigned him to fly lead bombardier withMcWatt in the first formation when they went back to Bologna the next day. He came in on the target like aHavermeyer, confidently taking no evasive action at all, and suddenly they were shooting the living shit out ofhim!
Heavy flak was everywhere! He had been lulled, lured and trapped, and there was nothing he could do but sitthere like an idiot and watch the ugly black puffs smashing up to kill him. There was nothing he could do untilhis bombs dropped but look back into the bombsight, where the fine cross-hairs in the lens were gluedmagnetically over the target exactly where he had placed them, intersecting perfectly deep inside the yard of hisblock of camouflaged warehouses before the base of the first building. He was trembling steadily as the planecrept ahead. He could hear the hollow boom-boom-boom-boom of the flak pounding all around him inoverlapping measures of four, the sharp, piercing crack! of a single shell exploding suddenly very close by. Hishead was bursting with a thousand dissonant impulses as he prayed for the bombs to drop. He wanted to sob. Theengines droned on monotonously like a fat, lazy fly. At last the indices on the bombsight crossed, tripping awaythe eight 500-pounders one after the other. The plane lurched upward buoyantly with the lightened load.
Yossarian bent away from the bombsight crookedly to watch the indicator on his left. When the pointer touchedzero, he closed the bomb bay doors and, over the intercom, at the very top of his voice, shrieked:
“Turn right hard!”
McWatt responded instantly. With a grinding howl of engines, he flipped the plane over on one wing and wrungit around remorselessly in a screaming turn away from the twin spires of flak Yossarian had spied stabbingtoward them. Then Yossarian had McWatt climb and keep climbing higher and higher until they tore free finallyinto a calm, diamond-blue sky that was sunny and pure everywhere and laced in the distance with long whiteveils of tenuous fluff. The wind strummed soothingly against the cylindrical panes of his windows, and herelaxed exultantly only until they picked up speed again and then turned McWatt left and plunged him right backdown, noticing with a transitory spasm of elation the mushrooming clusters of flak leaping open high above himand back over his shoulder to the right, exactly where he could have been if he had not turned left and dived. Heleveled McWatt out with another harsh cry and whipped him upward and around again into a ragged blue patchof unpolluted air just as the bombs he had dropped began to strike. The first one fell in the yard, exactly where hehad aimed, and then the rest of the bombs from his own plane and from the other planes in his flight burst openon the ground in a charge of rapid orange flashes across the tops of the buildings, which collapsed instantly in avast, churning wave of pink and gray and coal-black smoke that went rolling out turbulently in all directions andquaked convulsively in its bowels as though from great blasts of red and white and golden sheet lightning.
“Well, will you look at that,” Aarfy marveled sonorously right beside Yossarian, his plump, orbicular facesparkling with a look of bright enchantment. “There must have been an ammunition dump down there.”
Yossarian had forgotten about Aarfy. “Get out!” he shouted at him. “Get out of the nose!”
Aarfy smiled politely and pointed down toward the target in a generous invitation for Yossarian to look.
Yossarian began slapping at him insistently and signaled wildly toward the entrance of the crawlway.
“Get back in the ship!” he cried frantically. “Get back in the ship!”
Aarfy shrugged amiably. “I can’t hear you,” he explained.
Yossarian seized him by the straps of his parachute harness and pushed him backward toward the crawlway justas the plane was hit with a jarring concussion that rattled his bones and made his heart stop. He knew at oncethey were all dead.
“Climb!” he screamed into the intercom at McWatt when he saw he was still alive. “Climb, you bastard! Climb,climb, climb, climb!”
The plane zoomed upward again in a climb that was swift and straining, until he leveled it out with another harshshout at McWatt and wrenched it around once more in a roaring, merciless forty-five-degree turn that sucked hisinsides out in one enervating sniff and left him floating fleshless in mid-air until he leveled McWatt out againjust long enough to hurl him back around toward the right and then down into a screeching dive. Throughendless blobs of ghostly black smoke he sped, the hanging smut wafting against the smooth plexiglass nose ofthe ship like an evil, damp, sooty vapor against his cheeks. His heart was hammering again in aching terror as he hurtled upward and downward through the blind gangs of flak charging murderously into the sky at him, thensagging inertly. Sweat gushed from his neck in torrents and poured down over his chest and waist with thefeeling of warm slime. He was vaguely aware for an instant that the planes in his formation were no longer there,and then he was aware of only himself. His throat hurt like a raw slash from the strangling intensity with whichhe shrieked each command to McWatt. The engines rose to a deafening, agonized, ululating bellow each timeMcWatt changed direction. And far out in front the bursts of flak were still swarming into the sky from newbatteries of guns poking around for accurate altitude as they waited sadistically for him to fly into range.
The plane was slammed again suddenly with another loud, jarring explosion that almost rocked it over on itsback, and the nose filled immediately with sweet clouds of blue smoke. Something was on fire! Yossarianwhirled to escape and smacked into Aarfy, who had struck a match and was placidly lighting his pipe. Yossariangaped at his grinning, moon-faced navigator in utter shock and confusion. It occurred to him that one of themwas mad.
“Jesus Christ!” he screamed at Aarfy in tortured amazement. “Get the hell out of the nose! Are you crazy? Getout!”
“What?” said Aarfy.
“Get out!” Yossarian yelled hysterically, and began clubbing Aarfy backhanded with both fists to drive himaway. “Get out!”
“I still can’t hear you,” Aarfy called back innocently with an expression of mild and reproving perplexity.
“You’ll have to talk a little louder.”
“Get out of the nose!” Yossarian shrieked in frustration. “They’re trying to kill us! Don’t you understand?
They’re trying to kill us!”
“Which way should I go, goddam it?” McWatt shouted furiously over the intercom in a suffering, high-pitchedvoice. “Which way should I go?”
“Turn left! Left, you goddam dirty son of a bitch! Turn left hard!”
Aarfy crept up close behind Yossarian and jabbed him sharply in the ribs with the stem of his pipe. Yossarianflew up toward the ceiling with a whinnying cry, then jumped completely around on his knees, white as a sheetand quivering with rage. Aarfy winked encouragingly and jerked his thumb back toward McWatt with ahumorous mou............