Nurse Duckett plucked Yossarian’s arm and whispered to him furtively to meet her in the broom closet outside in the corridor. Yossarian rejoiced when he heard her. He thought Nurse Duckett finally wanted to get laid and pulled her skirt up the second they were alone in the broom closet, but she pushed him away. She had urgent news about Dunbar.

“They’re going to disappear him,” she said.

Yossarian squinted at her uncomprehendingly. “They’re what?” he asked in surprise, and laughed uneasily. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. I heard them talking behind a door.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t see them. I just heard them say they were going to disappear Dunbar.”

“Why are they going to disappear him?”

“I don’t know.”

“It doesn’t make sense. It isn’t even good grammar. What the hell does it mean when they disappear somebody?”

“I don’t know.”

“Jesus, you’re a great help!”

“Why are you picking on me?” Nurse Duckett protested with hurt feelings, and began sniffing back tears. “I’m only trying to help. It isn’t my fault they’re going to disappear him, is it? I shouldn’t even be telling you.”

Yossarian took her in his arms and hugged her with gentle, contrite affection. “I’m sorry,” he apologized, kissing her cheek respectfully, and hurried away to warn Dunbar, who was nowhere to be found.

35 MILO THE MILITANT

For the first time in his life, Yossarian prayed. He got down on his knees and prayed to Nately not to volunteer to fly more than seventy missions after Chief White Halfoat did die of pneumonia in the hospital and Nately had applied for his job. But Nately just wouldn’t listen.

“I’ve got to fly more missions,” Nately insisted lamely with a crooked smile. “Otherwise they’ll send me home.”

“So?”

“I don’t want to go home until I can take her back with me.”

“She means that much to you?”

Nately nodded dejectedly. “I might never see her again.”

“Then get yourself grounded,” Yossarian urged. “You’ve finished your missions and you don’t need the flight pay. Why don’t you ask for Chief White Halfoat’s job, if you can stand working for Captain Black?”

Nately shook his head, his cheeks darkening with shy and regretful mortification. “They won’t give it to me. I spoke to Colonel Korn, and he told me I’d have to fly more missions or be sent home.”

Yossarian cursed savagely. “That’s just plain meanness.”

“I don’t mind, I guess. I’ve flown seventy missions without getting hurt. I guess I can fly a few more.”

“Don’t do anything at all about it until I talk to someone,” Yossarian decided, and went looking for help from Milo, who went immediately afterward to Colonel Cathcart for help in having himself assigned to more combat missions.

Milo had been earning many distinctions for himself. He had flown fearlessly into danger and criticism by selling petroleum and ball bearings to Germany at good prices in order to make a good profit and help maintain a balance of power between the contending forces. His nerve under fire was graceful and infinite. With a devotion to purpose above and beyond the line of duty, he had then raised the price of food in his mess halls so high that all officers and enlisted men had to turn over all their pay to him in order to eat. Their alternative-there was an alternative, of course, since Milo detested coercion and was a vocal champion of freedom of choice-was to starve. When he encountered a wave of enemy resistance to this attack, he stuck to his position without regard for his safety or reputation and gallantly invoked the law of supply and demand. And when someone somewhere said no, Milo gave ground grudgingly, valiantly defending, even in retreat, the historic right of free men to pay as much as they had to for the things they needed in order to survive.

Milo had been caught red-handed in the act of plundering his countrymen, and, as a result, his stock had never been higher. He proved good as his word when a rawboned major from Minnesota curled his lip in rebellious disavowal and demanded his share of the syndicate Milo kept saying everybody owned. Milo met the challenge by writing the words “A Share” on the nearest scrap of paper and handing it away with a virtuous disdain that won the envy and admiration of almost everyone who knew him. His glory was at a peak, and Colonel Cathcart, who knew and admired his war record, was astonished by the deferential humility with which Milo presented himself at Group Headquarters and made his fantastic appeal for more hazardous assignments.

“You want to fly more combat missions?” Colonel Cathcart gasped. “What in the world for?”

Milo answered in a demure voice with his face lowered meekly. “I want to do my duty, sir. The country is at war, and I want to fight to defend it like the rest of the fellows.”

“But, Milo, you are doing your duty,” Colonel Cathcart exclaimed with a laugh that thundered jovially. “I can’t think of a single person who’s done more for the men than you have. Who gave them chocolate-covered cotton?”

Milo shook his head slowly and sadly. “But being a good mess officer in wartime just isn’t enough, Colonel Cathcart.”

“Certainly it is, Milo. I don’t know what’s come over you.”

“Certainly it isn’t, Colonel,” Milo disagreed in a somewhat firm tone, raising his subservient eyes significantly just far enough to arrest Colonel Cathcart’s. “Some of the men are beginning to talk.”

“Oh, is that it? Give me their names, Milo. Give me their names and I’ll see to it that they go on every dangerous mission the group flies.”

“No, Colonel, I’m afraid they’re right,” Milo said, with his head drooping again. “I was sent overseas as a pilot, and I should be flying more combat missions and spending less time on my duties as a mess officer.”

Colonel Cathcart was surprised but co-operative. “Well, Milo, if you really feel that way, I’m sure we can make whatever arrangements you want. How long have you been overseas now?”

“Eleven months, sir.”

“And how many missions have you flown?”

“Five.”

“Five?” asked Colonel Cathcart.

“Five, sir.”

“Five, eh?” Colonel Cathcart rubbed his cheek pensively. “That isn’t very good, is it?”

“Isn’t it?” asked Milo in a sharply edged voice, glancing up again.

Colonel Cathcart quailed. “On the contrary, that’s very good, Milo,” he corrected himself hastily. “It isn’t bad at all.”

“No, Colonel,” Milo said, with a long, languishing, wistful sigh, “it isn’t very good. Although it’s very generous of you to say so.”

“But it’s really not bad, Milo. Not bad at all, when you consider all your other valuable contributions. Five missions, you say? Just five?”

“Just five, sir.”

“Just five.” Colonel Cathcart grew awfully depressed for a moment as he wondered what Milo was really thinking, and whether he had already got a black eye with him. “Five is very good, Milo,” he observed with enthusiasm, spying a ray of hope. “That averages out to almost one combat mission every two months. And I’ll bet your total doesn’t include the time you bombed us.”

“Yes, sir. It does.”

“It does?” inquired Colonel Cathcart with mild wonder. “You didn’t actually fly along on that mission, did you? If I remember correctly, you were in the control tower with me, weren’t you?”

“But it was my mission,” Milo contended. “I organized it, and we used my planes and supplies. I planned and supervised the whole thing.”

“Oh, certainly, Milo, certainly. I’m not disputing you. I’m only checking the figures to make sure you’re claiming all you’re entitled to. Did you also include the time we contracted with you to bomb the bridge at Orvieto?”

“Oh, no, sir. I didn’t think I should, since I was in Orvieto at the time directing the antiaircraft fire.”