“Catch-22” By Joseph - Khamkoo

“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 110
records back in his tent. The chaplain was the only officer attached to Group
Headquarters who did not reside in the moldering red-stone Group Headquarters
building itself or in any of the smaller satellite structures that rose about the grounds in
disjuncted relationship. The chaplain lived in a clearing in the woods about four miles
away between the officers’ club and the first of the four squadron areas that stretched
away from Group Headquarters in a distant line. The chaplain lived alone in a spacious,
square tent that was also his office. Sounds of revelry traveled to him at night from the
officers’ club and kept him awake often as he turned and tossed on his cot in passive,
half-voluntary exile. He was not able to gauge the effect of the mild pills he took
occasionally to help him sleep and felt guilty about it for days afterward.
The only one who lived with the chaplain in his clearing in the woods was Corporal
Whitcomb, his assistant. Corporal Whitcomb, an atheist, was a disgruntled subordinate
who felt he could do the chaplain’s job much better than the chaplain was doing it and
viewed himself, therefore, as an underprivileged victim of social inequity. He lived in a
tent of his own as spacious and square as the chaplain’s. He was openly rude and
contemptuous to the chaplain once he discovered that the chaplain would let him get
away with it. The borders of the two tents in the clearing stood no more than four or five
feet apart.
It was Colonel Korn who had mapped out this way of life for the chaplain. One good
reason for making the chaplain live outside the Group Headquarters building was
Colonel Korn’s theory that dwelling in a tent as most of his parishioners did would bring
him into closer communication with them. Another good reason was the fact that having
the chaplain around Headquarters all the time made the other officers uncomfortable. It
was one thing to maintain liaison with the Lord, and they were all in favor of that; it was
something else, though, to have Him hanging around twenty-four hours a day. All in all,
as Colonel Korn described it to Major Danby, the jittery and goggle-eyed group
operations officer, the chaplain had it pretty soft; he had little more to do than listen to
the troubles of others, bury the dead, visit the bedridden and conduct religious services.
And there were not so many dead for him to bury any more, Colonel Korn pointed out,
since opposition from German fighter planes had virtually ceased and since close to
ninety per cent of what fatalities there still were, he estimated, perished behind the
enemy lines or disappeared inside the clouds, where the chaplain had nothing to do with
disposing of the remains. The religious services were certainly no great strain, either,
since they were conducted only once a week at the Group Headquarters building and
were attended by very few of the men.
Actually, the chaplain was learning to love it in his clearing in the woods. Both he and
Corporal Whitcomb had been provided with every convenience so that neither might
ever plead discomfort as a basis for seeking permission to return to the Headquarters
building. The chaplain rotated his breakfasts, lunches and dinners in separate sets
among the eight squadron mess halls and ate every fifth meal in the enlisted men’s
mess at Group Headquarters and every tenth meal at the officers’ mess there. Back
home in Wisconsin the chaplain had been very fond of gardening, and his heart welled
with a glorious impression of fertility and fruition each time he contemplated the low,
prickly boughs of the stunted trees and the waist-high weeds and thickets by which he
was almost walled in. In the spring he had longed to plant begonias and zinnias in a
narrow bed around his tent but had been deterred by his fear of Corporal Whitcomb’s
rancor. The chaplain relished the privacy and isolation of his verdant surroundings and
the reverie and meditation that living there fostered. Fewer people came to him with
their troubles than formerly, and he allowed himself a measure of gratitude for that too.
The chaplain did not mix freely and was not comfortable in conversation. He missed his
wife and his three small children, and she missed him.
What displeased Corporal Whitcomb most about the chaplain, apart from the fact that
the chaplain believed in God, was his lack of initiative and aggressiveness. Corporal
Whitcomb regarded the low attendance at religious services as a sad reflection of his
own status. His mind germinated feverishly with challenging new ideas for sparking the