There was no word about Orr the next day, and Sergeant Whitcomb, with commendable dispatch andconsiderable hope, dropped a reminder in his tickler file to send a form letter over Colonel Cathcart’s signatureto Orr’s next of kin when nine more days had elapsed. There was word from General Peckem’s headquarters,though, and Yossarian was drawn to the crowd of officers and enlisted men in shorts and bathing trunks buzzingin grumpy confusion around the bulletin board just outside the orderly room.

　　“What’s so different about this Sunday, I want to know?” Hungry Joe was demanding vociferously of ChiefWhite Halfoat. “Why won’t we have a parade this Sunday when we don’t have a parade every Sunday? Huh?”

　　Yossarian worked his way through to the front and let out a long, agonized groan when he read the terseannouncement there:

　　Due to circumstances beyond my control, there will be no big parade this Sunday afternoon.

　　Colonel Scheisskopf Dobbs was right. They were indeed sending everyone overseas, even Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who had resistedthe move with all the vigor and wisdom at his command and who reported for duty at General Peckem’s office ina mood of grave discontent.

　　General Peckem welcomed Colonel Scheisskopf with effusive charm and said he was delighted to have him. Anadditional colonel on his staff meant that he could now begin agitating for two additional majors, four additionalcaptains, sixteen additional lieutenants and untold quantities of additional enlisted men, typewriters, desks, filingcabinets, automobiles and other substantial equipment and supplies that would contribute to the prestige of hisposition and increase his striking power in the war he had declared against General Dreedle. He now had two fullcolonels; General Dreedle had only five, and four of those were combat commanders. With almost no intriguingat all, General Peckem had executed a maneuver that would eventually double his strength. And General Dreedlewas getting drunk more often. The future looked wonderful, and General Peckem contemplated his bright newcolonel enchantedly with an effulgent smile.

　　In all matters of consequence, General P. P. Peckem was, as he always remarked when he was about to criticizethe work of some close associate publicly, a realist. He was a handsome, pink-skinned man of fifty-three. Hismanner was always casual and relaxed, and his uniforms were custom-made. He had silver-gray hair, slightlymyopic eyes and thin, overhanging, sensual lips. He was a perceptive, graceful, sophisticated man who wassensitive to everyone’s weaknesses but his own and found everyone absurd but himself. General Peckem laidgreat, fastidious stress on small matters of taste and style. He was always augmenting things. Approaching eventswere never coming, but always upcoming. It was not true that he wrote memorandums praising himself andrecommending that his authority be enhanced to include all combat operations; he wrote memoranda. And theprose in the memoranda of other officers was always turgid, stilted, or ambiguous. The errors of others wereinevitably deplorable. Regulations were stringent, and his data never was obtained from a reliable source, butalways were obtained. General Peckem was frequently constrained. Things were often incumbent upon him, andhe frequently acted with greatest reluctance. It never escaped his memory that neither black nor white was acolor, and he never used verbal when he meant oral. He could quote glibly from Plato, Nietzsche, Montaigne,Theodore Roosevelt, the Marquis de Sade and Warren G. Harding. A virgin audience like Colonel Scheisskopfwas grist for General Peckem’s mill, a stimulating opportunity to throw open his whole dazzling erudite treasurehouse of puns, wisecracks, slanders, homilies, anecdotes, proverbs, epigrams, apophthegms, bon mots and otherpungent sayings. He beamed urbanely as he began orienting Colonel Scheisskopf to his new surroundings.

　　“My only fault,” he observed with practiced good humor, watching for the effect of his words, “is that I have nofaults.”

　　Colonel Scheisskopf didn’t laugh, and General Peckem was stunned. A heavy doubt crushed his enthusiasm. Hehad just opened with one of his most trusted paradoxes, and he was positively alarmed that not the slightestflicker of acknowledgment had moved across that impervious face, which began to remind him suddenly, in hueand texture, of an unused soap eraser. Perhaps Colonel Scheisskopf was tired, General Peckem granted tohimself charitably; he had come a long way, and everything was unfamiliar. General Peckem’s attitude towardall the personnel in his command, officers and enlisted men, was marked by the same easy spirit of tolerance andpermissiveness. He mentioned often that if the people who worked for him met him halfway, he would meetthem more than halfway, with the result, as he always added with an astute chuckle, that there was never any meeting of the minds at all. General Peckem thought of himself as aesthetic and intellectual. When peopledisagreed with him, he urged them to be objective.

　　And it was indeed an objective Peckem who gazed at Colonel Scheisskopf encouragingly and resumed hisindoctrination with an attitude of magnanimous forgiveness. “You’ve come to us just in time, Scheisskopf. Thesummer offensive has petered out, thanks to the incompetent leadership with which we supply our troops, and Ihave a crying need for a tough, experienced, competent officer like you to help produce the memoranda uponwhich we rely so heavily to let people know how good we are and how much work we’re turning out. I hope youare a prolific writer.”

　　“I don’t know anything about writing,” Colonel Scheisskopf retorted sullenly.

　　“Well, don’t let that trouble you,” General Peckem continued with a careless flick of his wrist. “Just pass thework I assign you along to somebody else and trust to luck. We call that delegation of responsibility. Somewheredown near the lowest level of this co-ordinated organization I run are people who do get the work done when itreaches them, and everything manages to run along smoothly without too much effort on my part. I supposethat’s because I am a good executive. Nothing we do in this large department of ours is really very important,and there’s never any rush. On the other hand, it is important that we let people know we do a great deal of it. Letme know if you find yourself shorthanded. I’ve already put in a requisition for two majors, four captains andsixteen lieutenants to give you a hand. While none of the work we do is very important, it is important that we doa great deal of it. Don’t you agree?”

　　“What about the parades?” Colonel Scheisskopf broke in.

　　“What parades?” inquired General Peckem with a feeling that his polish just wasn’t getting across.

　　“Won’t I be able to conduct parades every Sunday afternoon?” Colonel Scheisskopf demanded petulantly.

　　“No. Of course not. What ever gave you that idea?”

　　“But they said I could.”

　　“Who said you could?”

　　“The officers who sent me overseas. They told me I’d be able to march the men around in parades all I wantedto.”

　　“They lied to you.”

　　“That wasn’t fair, sir.”

　　“I’m sorry, Scheisskopf. I’m willing to do everything I can to make you happy here, but parades are out of thequestion. We don’t have enough men in our own organization to make up much of a parade, and the combat units would rise up in open rebellion if we tried to make them march. I’m afraid you’ll just have to hold backawhile until we get control. Then you can do what you want with the men.”

　　“What about my wife?” Colonel Scheisskopf demanded with disgruntled suspicion. “I’ll still be able to send forher, won’t I?”

　　“Your wife? Why in the world should you want to?”

　　“A husband and wife should be together.”

　　“That’s out of the question also.”

　　“But they said I could send for her!”

　　“They lied to you again.”

　　“They had no right to lie to me!” Colonel Scheisskopf protested, his eyes wetting with indignation.

　　“Of course they had a right,” General Peckem snapped with cold and calculated severity, resolving right then andthere to test the mettle of his new colonel under fire. “Don’t be such an ass, Scheisskopf. People have a right todo anything that’s not forbidden by law, and there’s no law against lying to you. Now, don’t ever waste my timewith such sentimental platitudes again. Do you hear?”

　　“Yes, sir,” murmured Colonel ScheisskopfColonel Scheisskopf wilted pathetically, and General Peckem blessed the fates that had sent him a weakling for asubordinate. A man of spunk would have been unthinkable. Having won, General Peckem relented. He did notenjoy humiliating his men. “If your wife were a Wac, I could probably have her transferred here. But that’s themost I can do.”

　　“She has a friend who’s a Wac,” Colonel Scheisskopf offered hopefully.

　　“I’m afraid that isn’t good enough. Have Mrs. Scheisskopf join the Wacs if she wants to, and I’ll bring her overhere. But in the meantime, my dear Colonel, let’s get back to our little war, if we may. Here, briefly, is themilitary situation that confronts us.” General Peckem rose and moved toward a rotary rack of enormous coloredmaps.

　　Colonel Scheisskopf blanched. “We’re not going into combat, are we?” he blurted out in horror.

　　“Oh, no, of course not,” General Peckem assured him indulgently, with a companionable laugh. “Please give mesome credit, won’t you? That’s why we’re still down here in Rome. Certainly, I’d like to be up in Florence, too,where I could keep in closer touch with ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen. But Florence is still a bit too near the actualfighting to suit me.” General Peckem lifted a wooden pointer and swept the rubber tip cheerfully across Italy from one coast to the other. “These, Scheisskopf, are the Germans. They’re dug into these mountains very solidlyin the Gothic Line and won’t be pushed out till late next spring, although that isn’t going to stop those clods wehave in charge from trying. That gives us in Special Services almost nine months to achieve our objective. Andthat objective is to capture every bomber group in the U.S. Air Force. After all,” said General Peckem with hislow, well-modulated chuckle, “if dropping bombs on the enemy isn’t a special service, I wonder what in theworld is. Don’t you agree?” Colonel Scheisskopf gave no indication that he did agree, but General Peckem wasalready too entranced with his own loquacity to notice. “Our position right now is excellent. Reinforcements likeyourself keep arriving, and we have more than enough time to plan our entire strategy carefully. Our immediategoal,” he said, “is right here.” And General Peckem swung his pointer south to the island of Pianosa and tappedit significantly upon a large word that had been lettered on there with black grease pencil. The word wasDREEDLE.

　　Colonel Scheisskopf, squinting, moved very close to the map, and for the first time since he entered the room alight of comprehension shed a dim glow over his stolid face. “I think I understand,” he exclaimed. “Yes, I know Iunderstand. Our first job is to capture Dreedle away from the enemy. Right?”

　　General Peckem laughed benignly. “No, Scheisskopf. Dreedle’s on our side, and Dreedle is the enemy. GeneralDreedle commands four bomb groups that we simply must capture in order to continue our offensive.

　　Conquering General Dreedle will give us the aircraft and vital bases we need to carry our operations into otherareas. And that battle, by the way, is just about won.” General Peckem drifted toward the window, laughingquietly again, and settled back against the sill with his arms folded, greatly satisfied by his own wit and by hisknowledgeable, blase impudence. The skilled choice of words he was exercising was exquisitely titillating.

　　General Peckem liked listening to himself talk, like most of all listening to himself talk about himself. “GeneralDreedle simply doesn’t know how to cope with me,” he gloated. “I keep invading his jurisdiction with commentsand criticisms that are really none of my business, and he doesn’t know what to do about it. When he accuses meof seeking to undermine him, I merely answer that my only purpose in calling attention to his errors is tostrengthen our war effort by eliminating inefficiency. Then I ask him innocently if he’s opposed to improvingour war effort. Oh, he grumbles and he bristles and he bellows, but he’s really quite helpless. He’s simply out ofstyle. He’s turning into quite a souse, you know. The poor blockhead shouldn’t even be a general. He has notone, no tone at all. Thank God he isn’t going to last.” General Peckem chuckled with jaunty relish and sailedsmoothly along toward a favorite learned allusion. “I sometimes think of myself as Fortinbras—ha, ha—in theplay Hamlet by William Shakespeare, who just keeps circling and circling around the action until everything elsefalls apart, and then strolls in at the end to pick up all the pieces for himself. Shakespeare is—““I don’t know anything about plays,” Colonel Scheisskopf broke in bluntly.

　　General Peckem looked at him with amazement. Never before had a reference of his to Shakespeare’s hallowedHamlet been ignored and trampled upon with such rude indifference. He began to wonder with genuine concernjust what sort of shithead the Pentagon had foisted on him. “What do you know about?” he asked acidly.

　　“Parades,” answered Colonel Scheisskopf eagerly. “Will I be able to send out memos about parades?”

　　“As long as you don’t schedule any.” General Peckem returned to his chair still wearing a frown. “And as long as they don’t interfere with your main assignment of recommending that the authority of Special Services beexpanded to include combat activities.”

　　“Can I schedule parades and then call them off?”

　　General Peckem brightened instantly. “Why, that’s a wonderful idea! But just send out weekly announcementspostponing the parades. Don’t even bother t............