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“Catch-22” <strong>By</strong> <strong>Joseph</strong> Heller 206<br />
get the medal.’<br />
‘Who dies if he gets killed?’<br />
‘Why, he dies, of course. After all, Milo, what’s fair is fair. There’s just one thing.’<br />
‘You’ll have to raise the number of missions.’<br />
‘I might have to raise the number of missions again, and I’m not sure the men will fly<br />
them. They’re still pretty sore because I jumped them to seventy. If I can get just one of<br />
the regular officers to fly more, the rest will probably follow.’<br />
‘Nately will fly more missions, sir,’ Milo said. ‘I was told in strictest confidence just a<br />
little while ago that he’ll do anything he has to in order to remain overseas with a girl<br />
he’s fallen in love with.’<br />
‘But Nately will fly more!’ Colonel Cathcart declared, and he brought his hands<br />
together in a resounding clap of victory. ‘Yes, Nately will fly more. And this time I’m<br />
really going to jump the missions, right up to eighty, and really knock General Dreedle’s<br />
eye out. And this is a good way to get that lousy rat Yossarian back into combat where<br />
he might get killed.’<br />
‘Yossarian?’ A tremor of deep concern passed over Milo’s simple, homespun features,<br />
and he scratched the corner of his reddish-brown mustache thoughtfully.<br />
‘Yeah, Yossarian. I hear he’s going around saying that he’s finished his missions and<br />
the war’s over for him. Well, maybe he has finished his missions. But he hasn’t finished<br />
your missions, has he? Ha! Ha! Has he got a surprise coming to him!’<br />
‘Sir, Yossarian is a friend of mine,’ Milo objected. ‘I’d hate to be responsible for doing<br />
anything that would put him back in combat. I owe a lot to Yossarian. Isn’t there any way<br />
we could make an exception of him?’<br />
‘Oh, no, Milo.’ Colonel Cathcart clucked sententiously, shocked by the suggestion.<br />
‘We must never play favorites. We must always treat every man alike.’<br />
‘I’d give everything I own to Yossarian,’ Milo persevered gamely on Yossarian’s<br />
behalf. ‘But since I don’t own anything, I can’t give everything to him, can I? So he’ll just<br />
have to take his chances with the rest of the men, won’t he?’<br />
‘What’s fair is fair, Milo.’<br />
‘Yes, sir, what’s fair is fair,’ Milo agreed. ‘Yossarian is no better than the other men,<br />
and he has no right to expect any special privileges, has he?’<br />
‘No, Milo. What’s fair is fair.’ And there was no time for Yossarian to save himself from<br />
combat once Colonel Cathcart issued his announcement raising the missions to eighty<br />
late that same afternoon, no time to dissuade Nately from flying them or even to<br />
conspire again with Dobbs to murder Colonel Cathcart, for the alert sounded suddenly<br />
at dawn the next day and the men were rushed into the trucks before a decent breakfast<br />
could be prepared, and they were driven at top speed to the briefing room and then out<br />
to the airfield, where the clitterclattering fuel trucks were still pumping gasoline into the<br />
tanks of the planes and the scampering crews of armorers were toiling as swiftly as they<br />
could at hoisting the thousand-pound demolition bombs into the bomb bays. Everybody<br />
was running, and engines were turned on and warmed up as soon as the fuel trucks had<br />
finished.<br />
Intelligence had reported that a disabled Italian cruiser in drydock at La Spezia would<br />
be towed by the Germans that same morning to a channel at the entrance of the harbor<br />
and scuttled there to deprive the Allied armies of deep-water port facilities when they<br />
captured the city. For once, a military intelligence report proved accurate. The long<br />
vessel was halfway across the harbor when they flew in from the west, and broke it<br />
apart with direct hits from every flight that filled them all with waves of enormously<br />
satisfying group pride until they found themselves engulfed in great barrages of flak that<br />
rose from guns in every bend of the huge horseshoe of mountainous land below. Even<br />
Havermeyer resorted to the wildest evasive action he could command when he saw<br />
what a vast distance he had still to travel to escape, and Dobbs, at the pilot’s controls in<br />
his formation, zigged when he should have zagged, skidding his plane into the plane<br />
alongside, and chewed off its tail. His wing broke off at the base, and his plane dropped<br />
like a rock and was almost out of sight in an instant. There was no fire, no smoke, not