“Catch-22” By Joseph - Khamkoo

“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 64
the silent tent like claps of distant thunder.
Corporal Snark turned pale and began to tremble. He glanced toward Milo
pleadingly for guidance. For several terrible seconds there was not a sound. Then Milo
nodded.
‘Give him eat,’ he said.
Corporal Snark began giving Major—de Coverley eat. Major—de Coverley turned from
the counter with his tray full and came to a stop. His eyes fell on the groups of other
officers gazing at him in mute appeal, and, with righteous belligerence, he roared: ‘Give
everybody eat!’
‘Give everybody eat!’ Milo echoed with joyful relief, and the Glorious Loyalty Oath
Crusade came to an end.
Captain Black was deeply disillusioned by this treacherous stab in the back from
someone in high place upon whom he had relied so confidently for support. Major – de
Coverley had let him down.
‘Oh, it doesn’t bother me a bit,’ he responded cheerfully to everyone who came to him
with sympathy. ‘We completed our task. Our purpose was to make everyone we don’t
like afraid and to alert people to the danger of Major Major, and we certainly succeeded
at that. Since we weren’t going to let him sign loyalty oaths anyway, it doesn’t really
matter whether we have them or not.’ Seeing everyone in the squadron he didn’t like
afraid once again throughout the appalling, interminable Great Big Siege of Bologna
reminded Captain Black nostalgically of the good old days of his Glorious Loyalty Oath
Crusade when he had been a man of real consequence, and when even big shots like
Milo Minderbinder, Doc Daneeka and Piltchard and Wren had trembled at his approach
and groveled at his feet. To prove to newcomers that he really had been a man of
consequence once, he still had the letter of commendation he had received from
Colonel Cathcart.
Bologna
Actually, it was not Captain Black but Sergeant Knight who triggered the solemn panic
of Bologna, slipping silently off the truck for two extra flak suits as soon as he learned
the target and signaling the start of the grim procession back into the parachute tent that
degenerated into a frantic stampede finally before all the extra flak suits were gone.
‘Hey, what’s going on?’ Kid Sampson asked nervously. ‘ Bologna can’t be that rough,
can it?’ Nately, sitting trancelike on the floor of the truck, held his grave young face in
both hands and did not answer him.
It was Sergeant Knight and the cruel series of postponements, for just as they were
climbing up into their planes that first morning, along came a jeep with the news that it
was raining in Bologna and that the mission would be delayed. It was raining in Pianosa
too by the time they returned to the squadron, and they had the rest of that day to stare
woodenly at the bomb line on the map under the awning of the intelligence tent and
ruminate hypnotically on the fact that there was no escape. The evidence was there
vividly in the narrow red ribbon tacked across the mainland: the ground forces in Italy
were pinned down forty-two insurmountable miles south of the target and could not
possibly capture the city in time. Nothing could save the men in Pianosa from the
mission to Bologna. They were trapped.
Their only hope was that it would never stop raining, and they had no hope because
they all knew it would. When it did stop raining in Pianosa, it rained in Bologna. When it
stopped raining in Bologna, it began again in Pianosa. If there was no rain at all, there
were freakish, inexplicable phenomena like the epidemic of diarrhea or the bomb line
that moved. Four times during the first six days they were assembled and briefed and
then sent back. Once, they took off and were flying in formation when the control tower
summoned them down. The more it rained, the worse they suffered. The worse they
suffered, the more they prayed that it would continue raining. All through the night, men