Nately’s death almost killed the chaplain. Chaplain Shipman was seated in his tent, laboring over his paperworkin his reading spectacles, when his phone rang and news of the mid-air collision was given to him from the field.

　　His insides turned at once to dry clay. His hand was trembling as he put the phone down. His other hand begantrembling. The disaster was too immense to contemplate. Twelve men killed—how ghastly, how very, veryawful! His feeling of terror grew. He prayed instinctively that Yossarian, Nately, Hungry Joe and his otherfriends would not be listed among the victims, then berated himself repentantly, for to pray for their safety was topray for the death of other young men he did not even know. It was too late to pray; yet that was all he knew howto do. His heart was pounding with a noise that seemed to be coming from somewhere outside, and he knew hewould never sit in a dentist’s chair again, never glance at a surgical tool, never witness an automobile accident orhear a voice shout at night, without experiencing the same violent thumping in his chest and dreading that he wasgoing to die. He would never watch another fist fight without fearing he was going to faint and crack his skullopen on the pavement or suffer a fatal heart attack or cerebral hemorrhage. He wondered if he would ever see hiswife again or his three small children. He wondered if he ever should see his wife again, now that Captain Blackhad planted in his mind such strong doubts about the fidelity and character of all women. There were so manyother men, he felt, who could prove more satisfying to her sexually. When he thought of death now, he alwaysthought of his wife, and when he thought of his wife he always thought of losing her.

　　In another minute the chaplain felt strong enough to rise and walk with glum reluctance to the tent next door forSergeant Whitcomb. They drove in Sergeant Whitcomb’s jeep. The chaplain made fists of his hands to keepthem from shaking as they lay in his lap. He ground his teeth together and tried not to hear as SergeantWhitcomb chirruped exultantly over the tragic event. Twelve men killed meant twelve more form letters ofcondolence that could be mailed in one bunch to the next of kin over Colonel Cathcart’s signature, givingSergeant Whitcomb hope of getting an article on Colonel Cathcart into The Saturday Evening Post in time forEaster.

　　At the field a heavy silence prevailed, overpowering motion like a ruthless, insensate spell holding in thrall the only beings who might break it. The chaplain was in awe. He had never beheld such a great, appalling stillnessbefore. Almost two hundred tired, gaunt, downcast men stood holding their parachute packs in a somber andunstirring crowd outside the briefing room, their faces staring blankly in different angles of stunned dejection.

　　They seemed unwilling to go, unable to move. The chaplain was acutely conscious of the faint noise hisfootsteps made as he approached. His eyes searched hurriedly, frantically, through the immobile maze of limpfigures. He spied Yossarian finally with a feeling of immense joy, and then his mouth gaped open slowly inunbearable horror as he noted Yossarian’s vivid, beaten, grimy look of deep, drugged despair. He understood atonce, recoiling in pain from the realization and shaking his head with a protesting and imploring grimace, thatNately was dead. The knowledge struck him with a numbing shock. A sob broke from him. The blood drainedfrom his legs, and he thought he was going to drop. Nately was dead. All hope that he was mistaken was washedaway by the sound of Nately’s name emerging with recurring clarity now from the almost inaudible babble ofmurmuring voices that he was suddenly aware of for the first time. Nately was dead: the boy had been killed. Awhimpering sound rose in the chaplain’s throat, and his jaw began to quiver. His eyes filled with tears, and hewas crying. He started toward Yossarian on tiptoe to mourn beside him and share his wordless grief. At thatmoment a hand grabbed him roughly around the arm and a brusque voice demanded,“Chaplain Shipman?”

　　He turned with surprise to face a stout, pugnacious colonel with a large head and mustache and a smooth, floridskin. He had never seen the man before. “Yes. What is it?” The fingers grasping the chaplain’s arm were hurtinghim, and he tried in vain to squirm loose.

　　“Come along.”

　　The chaplain pulled back in frightened confusion. “Where? Why? Who are you, anyway?”

　　“You’d better come along with us, Father,” a lean, hawk-faced major on the chaplain’s other side intoned withreverential sorrow. “We’re from the government. We want to ask you some questions.”

　　“What kind of questions? What’s the matter?”

　　“Aren’t you Chaplain Shipman?” demanded the obese colonel.

　　“He’s the one,” Sergeant Whitcomb answered.

　　“Go on along with them,” Captain Black called out to the chaplain with a hostile and contemptuous sneer. “Goon into the car if you know what’s good for you.”

　　Hands were drawing the chaplain away irresistibly. He wanted to shout for help to Yossarian, who seemed toofar away to hear. Some of the men nearby were beginning to look at him with awakening curiosity. The chaplainbent his face away with burning shame and allowed himself to be led into the rear of a staff car and seatedbetween the fat colonel with the large, pink face and the skinny, unctuous, despondent major. He automaticallyheld a wrist out to each, wondering for a moment if they wanted to handcuff him. Another officer was already in the front seat. A tall M.P. with a whistle and a white helmet got in behind the wheel. The chaplain did not dareraise his eyes until the closed car had lurched from the area and the speeding wheels were whining on the bumpyblacktop road.

　　“Where are you taking me?” he asked in a voice soft with timidity and guilt, his gaze still averted. The notioncame to him that they were holding him to blame for the mid-air crash and the death of Nately. “What have Idone?”

　　“Why don’t you keep your trap shut and let us ask the questions?” said the colonel.

　　“Don’t talk to him that way,” said the major. “It isn’t necessary to be so disrespectful.”

　　“Then tell him to keep his trap shut and let us ask the questions.”

　　“Father, please keep your trap shut and let us ask the questions,” urged the major sympathetically. “It will bebetter for you.”

　　“It isn’t necessary to call me Father,” said the chaplain. “I’m not a Catholic.”

　　“Neither am I, Father,” said the major. “It’s just that I’m a very devout person, and I like to call all men of GodFather.”

　　“He doesn’t even believe there are atheists in foxholes,” the colonel mocked, and nudged the chaplain in the ribsfamiliarly. “Go on, Chaplain, tell him. Are there atheists in foxholes?”

　　“I don’t know, sir,” the chaplain replied. “I’ve never been in a foxhole.”

　　The officer in front swung his head around swiftly with a quarrelsome expression. “You’ve never been in heaveneither, have you? But you know there’s a heaven, don’t you?”

　　“Or do you?” said the colonel.

　　“That’s a very serious crime you’ve committed, Father,” said the major.

　　“What crime?”

　　“We don’t know yet,” said the colonel. “But we’re going to find out. And we sure know it’s very serious.”

　　The car swung off the road at Group Headquarters with a squeal of tires, slackening speed only slightly, andcontinued around past the parking lot to the back of the building. The three officers and the chaplain got out. Insingle file, they ushered him down a wobbly flight of wooden stairs leading to the basement and led him into adamp, gloomy room with a low cement ceiling and unfinished stone walls. There were cobwebs in all thecorners. A huge centipede blew across the floor to the shelter of a water pipe. They sat the chaplain in a hard, straight-backed chair that stood behind a small, bare table.

　　“Please make yourself comfortable, Chaplain,” invited the colonel cordially, switching on a blinding spotlightand shooting it squarely into the chaplain’s face. He placed a set of brass knuckles and box of wooden matcheson the table. “We want you to relax.”

　　The chaplain’s eyes bulged out incredulously. His teeth chattered and his limbs felt utterly without strength. Hewas powerless. They might do whatever they wished to him, he realized; these brutal men might beat him todeath right there in the basement, and no one would intervene to save him, no one, perhaps, but the devout andsympathetic major with the sharp face, who set a water tap dripping loudly into a sink and returned to the table tolay a length of heavy rubber hose down beside the brass knuckles.

　　“Everything’s going to be all right, Chaplain,” the major said encouragingly. “You’ve got nothing to be afraid ofif you’re not guilty. What are you so afraid of? You’re not guilty, are you?”

　　“Sure he’s guilty,” said the colonel. “Guilty as hell.”

　　“Guilty of what?” implored the chaplain, feeling more and more bewildered and not knowing which of the mento appeal to for mercy. The third officer wore no insignia and lurked in silence off to the side. “What did I do?”

　　“That’s just what we’re going to find out,” answered the colonel, and he shoved a pad and pencil across the tableto the chaplain. “Write your name for us, will you? In your own handwriting.”

　　“My own handwriting?”

　　“That’s right. Anywhere on the page.” When the chaplain had finished, the colonel took the pad back and held itup alongside a sheet of paper he removed from a folder. “See?” he said to the major, who had come to his sideand was peering solemnly over his shoulder.

　　“They’re not the same, are they?” the major admitted.

　　“I told you he did it.”

　　“Did what?” asked the chaplain.

　　“Chaplain, this comes as a great shock to me,” the major accused in a tone of heavy lamentation.

　　“What does?”

　　“I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in you.”

　　“For what?” persisted the chaplain more fiantically. “What have I done?”

　　“For this,” replied the major, and, with an air of disillusioned disgust, tossed down on the table the pad on whichthe chaplain had signed his name. “This isn’t your handwriting.”

　　The chaplain blinked rapidly with amazement. “But of course it’s my handwriting.”

　　“No it isn’t, Chaplain. You’re lying again.”

　　“But I just wrote it!” the chaplain cried in exasperation. “You saw me write it.”

　　“That’s just it,” the major answered bitterly. “I saw you write it. You can’t deny that you did write it. A personwho’ll lie about his own handwriting will lie about anything.”

　　“But who lied about my own handwriting?” demanded the chaplain, forgetting his fear in the wave of anger andindignation that welled up inside him suddenly. “Are you crazy or something? What are you both talking about?”

　　“We asked you to write your name in your own handwriting. And you didn’t do it.”

　　“But of course I did. In whose handwriting did I write it if not my own?”

　　“In somebody else’s.”

　　“Whose?”

　　“That’s just what we’re going to find out,” threatened the colonel.

　　“Talk, Chaplain.”

　　The chaplain looked from one to the other of the two men with rising doubt and hysteria. “That handwriting ismine,” he maintained passionately. “Where else is my handwriting, if that isn’t it?”

　　“Right here,” answered the colonel. And looking very superior, he tossed down on the table a photostatic copy ofa piece of V mail in which everything but the salutation “Dear Mary” had been blocked out and on which thecensoring officer had written, “I long for you tragically. R. O. Shipman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.” The colonelsmiled scornfully as he watched the chaplain’s face turn crimson. “Well, Chaplain? Do you know who wrotethat?”

　　The chaplain took a long moment to reply; he had recognized Yossarian’s handwriting. “No.”

　　“You can read, though, can’t you?” the colonel persevered sarcastically. “The author signed his name.”

　　“That’s my name there.”

　　“Then you wrote it. Q.E.D.”

　　“But I didn’t write it. That isn’t my handwriting, either.”

　　“Then you signed your name in somebody else’s handwriting again,” the colonel retorted with a shrug. “That’sall that means.”

　　“Oh, this is ridiculous!” the chaplain shouted, suddenly losing all patience. He jumped to his feet in a blazingfury, both fists clenched. “I’m not going to stand for this any longer! Do you hear? Twelve men were just killed,and I have no time for these silly questions. You’ve no right to keep me here, and I’m just not going to stand forit.”

　　Without saying a word, the colonel pushed the chaplain’s chest hard and knocked him back down into the chair,and the chaplain was suddenly weak and very much afraid again. The major picked up the length of rubber hoseand began tapping it menacingly against his open palm. The colonel lifted the box of matches, took one out andheld it poised against the striking surface, watching with glowering eyes for the chaplain’s next sign of defiance.

　　The chaplain was pale and almost too petrified to move. The bright glare of the spotlight made him turn awayfinally; the dripping water was louder and almost unbearably irritating. He wished they would tell him what theywanted so that he would know what to confess. He waited tensely as the third officer, at a signal from thecolonel, ambled over from the wall and seated himself on the table just a few inches away from the chaplain. Hisface was expressionless, his eyes penetrating and cold.

　　“Turn off the light,” he said over his shoulder in a low, calm voice. “It’s very annoying.”

　　The chaplain gave him a small smile of gratitude. “Thank you, sir. And the drip too, please.”

　　“Leave the drip,” said the officer. “That doesn’t bother me.” He tugged up the legs of his trousers a bit, as thoughto preserve their natty crease. “Chaplain,” he asked casually, “of what religious persuasion are you?”

　　“I’m an Anabaptist, sir.”

　　“That’s a pretty suspicious religion, isn’t it?”

　　“Suspicious?” inquired the chaplain in a kind of innocent daze. “Why, sir?”

　　“Well, I don’t know a thing about it. You’ll have to admit that, won’t you? Doesn’t that make it prettysuspicious?”

　　“I don’t know, sir,” the chaplain answered diplomatically, with an uneasy stammer. He found the man’s lack ofinsignia ............