'That sounds like a lot of crap to me,' General Dreedle declared.
'It is a lot of crap, sir,' Yossarian said.
'Don't you worry, sir,' Colonel Cathcart promised General Dreedle with a threatening look at Yossarian. 'You have my personal word for it that this man will be severely punished.'
'What the hell do I care if he's punished or not?' General Dreedle replied with surprise and irritation. 'He's just won a medal. If he wants to receive it without any clothes on, what the hell business is it of yours?'
'Those are my sentiments exactly, sir!' Colonel Cathcart echoed with resounding enthusiasm and mopped his brow with a damp white handkerchief. 'But would you say that, sir, even in the light of General Peckem's recent memorandum on the subject of appropriate military attire in combat areas?'
'Peckem?' General Dreedle's face clouded.
'Yes, sir, sir,' said Colonel Cathcart obsequiously. 'General Peckem even recommends that we send our men into combat in full-dress uniform so they'll make a good impression on the enemy when they're shot down.'
'Peckem?' repeated General Dreedle, still squinting with bewilderment. 'Just what the hell does Peckem have to do with it?' Colonel Korn jabbed Colonel Cathcart sharply again in the back with his elbow.
'Absolutely nothing, sir!' Colonel Cathcart responded sprucely, wincing in extreme pain and gingerly rubbing the spot where Colonel Korn had just jabbed him again. 'And that's exactly why I decided to take absolutely no action at all until I first had an opportunity to discuss it with you. Shall we ignore it completely, sir?' General Dreedle ignored him completely, turning away from him in baleful scorn to hand Yossarian his medal in its case.
'Get my girl back from the car,' he commanded Colonel Moodus crabbily, and waited in one spot with his scowling face down until his nurse had rejoined him.
'Get word to the office right away to kill that directive I just issued ordering the men to wear neckties on the combat missions,' Colonel Cathcart whispered to Colonel Korn urgently out of the corner of his mouth.
'I told you not to do it,' Colonel Korn snickered. 'But you just wouldn't listen to me.'
'Shhhh!' Colonel Cathcart cautioned. 'Goddammit, Korn, what did you do to my back?' Colonel Korn snickered again.
General Dreedle's nurse always followed General Dreedle everywhere he went, even into the briefing room just before the mission to Avignon, where she stood with her asinine smile at the side of the platform and bloomed like a fertile oasis at General Dreedle's shoulder in her pink-and-green uniform. Yossarian looked at her and fell in love, desperately. His spirits sank, leaving him empty inside and numb. He sat gazing in clammy want at her full red lips and dimpled cheeks as he listened to Major Danby describe in a monotonous, didactic male drone the heavy concentrations of flak awaiting them at Avignon, and he moaned in deep despair suddenly at the thought that he might never see again this lovely woman to whom he had never spoken a word and whom he now loved so pathetically. He throbbed and ached with sorrow, fear and desire as he stared at her; she was so beautiful. He worshiped the ground she stood on. He licked his parched, thirsting lips with a sticky tongue and moaned in misery again, loudly enough this time to attract the startled, searching glances of the men sitting around him on the rows of crude wooden benches in their chocolate-colored coveralls and stitched white parachute harnesses.
Nately turned to him quickly with alarm. 'What is it?' he whispered. 'What's the matter?' Yossarian did not hear him. He was sick with lust and mesmerized with regret. General Dreedle's nurse was only a little chubby, and his senses were stuffed to congestion with the yellow radiance of her hair and the unfelt pressure of her soft short fingers, with the rounded, untasted wealth of her nubile breasts in her Army-pink shirt that was opened wide at the throat and with the rolling, ripened, triangular confluences of her belly and thighs in her tight, slick forest-green gabardine officer's pants. He drank her in insatiably from head to painted toenail. He never wanted to lose her. 'Oooooooooooooh,' he moaned again, and this time the whole room rippled at his quavering, drawn-out cry. A wave of startled uneasiness broke over the officers on the dais, and even Major Danby, who had begun synchronizing the watches, was distracted momentarily as he counted out the seconds and almost had to begin again. Nately followed Yossarian's transfixed gaze down the long frame auditorium until he came to General Dreedle's nurse. He blanched with trepidation when he guessed what was troubling Yossarian.
'Cut it out, will you?' Nately warned in a fierce whisper.
'Ooooooooooooooooooooh,' Yossarian moaned a fourth time, this time loudly enough for everyone to hear him distinctly.
'Are you crazy?' Nately hissed vehemently. 'You'll get into trouble.'
'Ooooooooooooooooooooh,' Dunbar answered Yossarian from the opposite end of the room.
Nately recognized Dunbar's voice. The situation was now out of control, and he turned away with a small moan. 'Ooh.'
'Ooooooooooooooooooooh,' Dunbar moaned back at him.
'Ooooooooooooooooooooh,' Nately moaned out loud in exasperation when he realized that he had just moaned.
'Ooooooooooooooooooooh,' Dunbar moaned back at him again.
'Ooooooooooooooooooooh,' someone entirely new chimed in from another section of the room, and Nately's hair stood on end.
Yossarian and Dunbar both replied while Nately cringed and hunted about futilely for some hole in which to hide and take Yossarian with him. A sprinkling of people were smothering laughter. An elfin impulse possessed Nately and he moaned intentionally the next time there was a lull. Another new voice answered. The flavor of disobedience was titillating, and Nately moaned deliberately again, the next time he could squeeze one in edgewise. Still another new voice echoed him. The room was boiling irrepressibly into bedlam. An eerie hubbub of voices was rising. Feet were scuffled, and things began to drop from people's fingers--pencils, computers, map cases, clattering steel flak helmets. A number of men who were not moaning were now giggling openly, and there was no telling how far the unorganized insurrection of moaning might have gone if General Dreedle himself had not come forward to quell it, stepping out determinedly in the center of the platform directly in front of Major Danby, who, with his earnest, persevering head down, was still concentrating on his wrist watch and saying, '...twenty-five seconds... twenty... fifteen...' General Dreedle's great, red domineering face was gnarled with perplexity and oaken with awesome resolution.
'That will be all, men,' he ordered tersely, his eyes glaring with disapproval and his square jaw firm, and that's all there was. 'I run a fighting outfit,' he told them sternly, when the room had grown absolutely quiet and the men on the benches were all cowering sheepishly, 'and there'll be no more moaning in this group as long as I'm in command. Is that clear?' It was clear to everybody but Major Danby, who was still concentrating on his wrist watch and counting down the seconds aloud. '...four... three... two... one... time!' called out Major Danby, and raised his eyes triumphantly to discover that no one had been listening to him and that he would have to begin all over again. 'Ooooh,' he moaned in frustration.
'What was that?' roared General Dreedle incredulously, and whirled around in a murderous rage upon Major Danby, who staggered back in terrified confusion and began to quail and perspire. 'Who is this man?'
'M-major Danby, sir,' Colonel Cathcart stammered. 'My group operations officer.'
'Take him out and shoot him,' ordered General Dreedle.
'S-sir?'