Chapter 21 19. Colonel Cathcart

Colonel Cathcart is clever and tactful, and has a successful career, but he is sloppy and full of worries.He was thirty-six years old, walked with heavy steps, and wanted to be a general.He has drive, but is easily discouraged; he handles things calmly, but is often frustrated; he is smug, but not sure about his own future; Your own schemes will be self-defeating.He's good-looking, but lacking in caliber; he's strong as a bull, but bluffing and pompous.He had begun to gain weight, and he was constantly worried about it, and couldn't shake it off, so he had been suffering from it for a long time.Colonel Cathcart was vain because at thirty-six he was a colonel officer leading a fighting force; but he was depressed because he was only a colonel at thirty-six.

Colonel Cathcart was not an absolutist.The only way he can measure his progress is by comparing himself with others.He believes that the so-called excellence is to do the same thing, at least as well as someone who is similar to his age but better at doing things. On the one hand, the fact that there were thousands of men his age and older who had not yet reached the rank of major made him complacent about his superhuman abilities and worth; Someone his age or even younger had become a general, which gave him a sense of failure, and made him grieve and bite his nails with an uncontrollable urgency even stronger than that of Hungry Joe. .

Colonel Cathcart was tall and hulking, with curly black hair cut short and beginning to gray at the tips, and he often held in his mouth the beautifully decorated cigarette holder he had bought the day before he came to Pianosa to command the Flying Group.He showed off the cigarette-holder at every opportunity, and he had learned to manipulate it with adroitness.He accidentally discovered that there was an innate ability to use a cigarette holder to smoke in his body.As far as he knew, his cigarette holder was unique in the entire Mediterranean theater.The thought made him both happy and uneasy.He was sure that a man as educated and knowledgeable as General Peckem, despite the fact that he had rarely seen General Peckem, would approve of him smoking in a holder.On the other hand, their rare encounters were not a bad thing, Colonel Cathcart was relieved to realize, since it was also possible that General Peckem disapproved of his use of cigarette holders at all.Colonel Cathcart stifled a sob when such troubles haunted him, and he wanted to throw the damned thing away.But he was never able to do so by his unshakable conviction that the mouthpiece would complement his masculine military physique and make him look sophisticated, majestic, superior, and distinctly superior to the U.S. military among all the other colonel officers who competed with him.But how sure is he?

Colonel Cathcart was such a tireless man, a hard-working, intense, devoted tactician who calculated for himself day and night.At the same time, he is his own gravedigger, a daring and infallible diplomat who is always berating himself for the many good opportunities he has missed or berating himself for all the mistakes he has made .He was nervous, impatient, sharp-tongued, and self-satisfied.He was a fearless opportunist, greedily pounced on every opportunity offered to him by Lieutenant Colonel Korn, but afterwards trembled and broke out in a cold sweat at the possible adverse consequences for himself.He loves to collect rumors and rumors very much, and he likes gossip very much.He believed everything he heard to be true, but he disbelieved every piece of news.He is hyper-vigilant, ready for every signal, and hypersensitive even to relationships and situations where none exist.He's the insider, always trying to find out what's going on, wretchedly.He is a violent, ferocious, bullying villain.It grieved him to think of the dreadful and indelible impression he had continually made on the great men who, in fact, hardly knew he existed.

Everyone is persecuting him.Colonel Cathcart lives by his intelligence in a society that is sometimes humiliated, sometimes honored, turbulent, and calculating.He imagined that in this society he sometimes achieved absolute victory and sometimes suffered a crushing defeat.He vacillates moment by moment between excruciating anguish and excruciating joy, exaggerating the magnificence of victories to unbelievable proportions and the gravity of defeats to disastrous proportions.He was never found to be negligent in anything.If he heard that General Dreedle or Peckem had been seen smiling or frowning, or neither, he would never calm himself until he found an acceptable explanation, and kept chattering. On and on, until Lieutenant Colonel Korn came to persuade him not to be so nervous, and persuaded him to think more about things.

Colonel Korn was a faithful and indispensable assistant, but he always upset Colonel Cathcart.Colonel Cathcart, who was grateful to Colonel Korn for some ingenious suggestions he swore to be eternal, later lost his temper with him when he felt they were not going to work.Colonel Cathcart was grateful for Colonel Korn's help, but didn't like him at all.These two people are just very close.Colonel Cathcart was jealous of Lieutenant Colonel Korn's ingenuity, so he had to remind himself that Colonel Korn was only a lieutenant colonel, nearly ten years older than himself, and a graduate of a state university. Colonel Cathcart lamented the injustice of fate, He needed a capable assistant, but fate gave him a mediocre person like Cohen.It's a disgrace to have to depend entirely on a guy who graduated from a state college.Colonel Cathcart sighed sadly: If someone is really going to be his indispensable assistant, he must be a rich, educated, well-born man, much more mature than Lieutenant Colonel Korn, and will not put His obsessive desire to be a general was regarded as a meaningless delusion.Colonel Cathcart secretly suspected that was how Colonel Korn thought of him privately.

Colonel Cathcart is so determined to be a general that he is willing to try any means, even using religion to get his way.Late one morning in the week he ordered the number of combat flights raised to sixty, he called the chaplain into his office and suddenly pointed down at the copy of the Saturday Evening Post on his desk. Newspaper.The colonel wore a khaki shirt with the neckline wide open. His short, stiff black stubble was reflected on his snow-white neck, and his elastic lower lip drooped.He was a man who had never been tanned and always kept out of the sun as much as possible to keep his skin from getting tanned.The colonel was more than a head taller and twice as wide as the chaplain, so that the chaplain felt weak and pale before his strutting official airs.

"Look at this, Chaplain," Colonel Cathcart ordered, stuffing a cigarette into the mouthpiece and sitting full in the swivel chair behind his desk. "Tell me what you think." The chaplain looked down obediently at the open magazine and saw a page full of editorials about the fact that the chaplain of an American bomber squadron in England had to be in the briefing room before every combat mission. Prayer: when the chaplain realized that the Colonel was not going to reprimand him, he was almost weeping with joy.They had hardly been together since that rowdy night when Colonel Cathcart, on General Dreedle's orders, had thrown Colonel Moodus out of the officers' club after Chief White Halfoat had punched him in the nose. have spoken.The Chaplain's first fear was that the Colonel would reprimand him for going to the Officers' Club without permission the night before.He was going with Yossarian and Dunbar.The two men came out of nowhere to his tent in the clearing that night and asked him to come with them, and though he was threatened by Colonel Cathcart, he felt that he would rather risk Colonel Cathcart's anger than I would like to decline the kind invitation of these two new friends.The two new friends had just met during a visit to the hospital a few weeks earlier.His duty is to live with more than 900 strange officers and soldiers and maintain the closest relationship with them, but these officers and soldiers think he is a weird guy, so he is bound to meet many people in interpersonal communication The unexpected, from which the two friends had effectively helped him out.

The pastor kept his eyes on the magazine, read each picture twice, and read the captions with all his attention. At the same time, he thought over how to answer the colonel's questions and organize correct and complete sentences in his mind. ; After reading it silently several times, I finally mustered up the courage to answer. "I think it's very moral and admirable to say a prayer before every mission, sir." He offered his opinion timidly, and waited. "Yes," said the Colonel, "but I wonder if you think prayers would do anything here." "It will, sir," replied the chaplain after a moment's pause, "I think it will work."

"Well, I'd like to try it." The colonel's gloomy starch-white cheeks suddenly flushed passionately.He stood up and walked up and down excitedly. "See how prayers do these men in England. There's a picture in the Saturday Evening Post of the colonel with his chaplain praying before every mission. If the prayer What worked for him, it should work for us. Maybe they'd put my picture in the Saturday Evening Post if we said our prayers too." The colonel sat down again, dreaming with a vacant smile on his face.The pastor felt at a loss as to what to say next.There was a melancholy expression on his rectangular, pale face, and his eyes gradually fell on the large basket full of red pear-shaped tomatoes.There were many basket houses like this, filled with red pear-shaped tomatoes, and arranged in row after row along the walls.He pretended to be thinking about something.It took him a moment to realize that he was staring at rows of red pear-shaped tomatoes in baskets, and his attention was completely diverted to the problem: this basket full of red pear-shaped tomatoes in the brigade What are you doing in the commander's office?He had completely forgotten the subject of prayer.At this time, Colonel Cathcart also left the subject and asked in a mild tone:

"Would you like some, Chaplain? They're fresh off Colonel Korn and I's farm up the hill. I'll sell you a basket at a discount." "Oh, no, sir. I don't want to buy it." "It doesn't matter if you don't buy it," said the Colonel graciously. "You don't have to. Milo will take whatever we charge. These tomatoes were just picked yesterday. You see how firm and plump they are, Same as big girl's breasts." The chaplain blushed, and the colonel realized at once that he had said the wrong thing.He lowered his head in shame, hot on his bloated face.His fingers became sluggish, clumsy, and useless.He hated the clergyman, and just because he was a clergyman made him fall into the blunder of vulgarity.He knew that in any other context his simile would have been taken as a witty, suave quip.He racked his brains for a way to get the two of them out of this extremely embarrassing situation.He couldn't think of a way, but remembered that the pastor was just a captain.So he straightened up at once, and he took a deep breath, both surprised and insulted.Thinking of the humiliation he suffered just now by a man who was about his own age and rank of only a captain, the colonel tensed his face with rage, and cast a vengeful glance at the pastor with murderous eyes, which made the pastor tremble with fright.The colonel punished the chaplain by staring at the chaplain for a long time in silence with anger, malice, and hatred. "We were talking about something else," he finally pointedly reminded the priest, "that we were not talking about the ripe, full breasts of a pretty girl, but about something else that had nothing to do with it. We talked about It's about holding religious ceremonies in the briefing room before every mission. Is there a reason we can't do that?" "No, sir," the chaplain muttered. "Well, let's start with the mission this afternoon." The colonel's hostility softened as he went into detail. "Now, I want you to think carefully about the prayers we're going to say. I don't like melancholic, sad words. I want you to say some lighthearted prayers that make those lads feel good when they go out flying. You understand me What do you mean? I don't want to hear that 'Kingdom of God' or 'Valley of Death' nonsense. It's so negative. Why are you looking so sad?" "Excuse me, sir," stammered the minister, "I was thinking of hymn twenty-third just as you were saying that." "What did the poem say?" "It's the one you mentioned, sir. 'Christ is my Shepherd, I—'" "That's the one I mentioned. Not this one. Do you have anything else?" "'O God, save me; the flood has come in—'". "Nor the flood," asserted the colonel, flicking the end of his cigarette into his fine brass ashtray, and whining into the mouthpiece. "Why don't we try a prayer that has something to do with music? How about the Harp on the Willows?" "The river of Babylon is mentioned in that poem, sir," replied the priest, "... I sat there and wept when I remembered Mount Sion.'" "Mount Sion? Let us forget the passage Well. I'd like to know how that poem got in. Don't you remember any interesting poem that didn't include the Flood, the Valley, and God? I'd like to avoid religion altogether, if possible." The pastor is sorry. "I'm sorry, sir, but all the prayers I know are pretty low-key and at least mention God in passing." "Then let's find some new prayers. Those guys complained enough about not preaching before I sent them on missions about God or death or heaven. Why can't we take a more positive method? Why can't we pray for something nice, say, to drop the bombs more closely? Can't we just pray for the bombs to be dropped more closely?" "Well, yes, sir, I think so," replied the chaplain hesitantly, "if that's all you want to do, you don't even need me. You can do it yourself." "I know I can do it," replied the Colonel sharply, "but what do you think you're doing here? I could buy food for myself too, but that's Milo's job, and that's why he's working for every day in the district." A flying group buys food, your job is to lead us in prayer. From now on, before every mission, you will lead us in prayer to drop the bombs more densely. Understand? I think the bombs should be dropped more densely It would indeed be something to pray for more densely. Then General Peckem will reward us all. General Peckem believes that when the bombs go off close together, the view from the air is better. Pretty." "General Peckem, sir?" "Yes, chaplain," replied the colonel, and he gave a fatherly giggle at the chaplain's bewildered expression. "I don't want to get this out of the way, but it looks like General Dreedle is finally going to move and General Peckem has been nominated to replace him. Frankly, I don't feel bad that happened. Peck General Tom was a very good man and I'm sure we would all be much better off under him. But on the other hand, that may never happen and we continue to serve under General Dreedle. Frankly speaking, I don't feel bad about it, because General Dreedle is a very good man, too. I think we'd all be better off under him. I hope you'll keep your mouth shut about all this, Chaplain. I don't want either of them to know that I'm rooting for the other." "Yes, sir." "That's all right," cried the colonel, and rose blithely. "But there's no way this chatter will get us into the Saturday Evening Post, will it, Reverend? Let's see what else we can come up with. By the way, Reverend, there's not a single word on the matter beforehand." Don't tell Colonel Korn. Understand?" "Understood, sir." Colonel Cathcart began walking, thinking, up and down the narrow passageway left between the baskets of red pear-shaped tomatoes and the desk and wooden chair in the center of the room. "I think we'll have to keep you out the door until the operational orders are given, because everything's kept secret; and then we'll let you in quietly when Major Danby checks the watches. I don't think there's anything to keep the checks secret. We can have a minute and a half on the schedule. Is a minute and a half enough?" "Enough, sir; if you don't include the time to get those atheists out of the room and let the soldiers in." Colonel Cathcart stopped in his tracks. "What atheist?" he yelled defensively, as if he was a different person in the blink of an eye, assuming a virtuous duel with an atheist. "There are no atheists in my unit! Atheism is illegal, isn't it?" "No, sir." "Isn't it illegal?" the colonel asked in surprise. "Then it's an un-American activity, isn't it?" "I don't know, sir," replied the chaplain. "Well, I know!" asserted the Colonel, "I will not destroy our religious services to accommodate a handful of shameless atheists; they cannot get any privileges from me. They can stay where they are with us." Pray. What's up with the soldiers again? What the hell are they doing at this event?" The pastor blushed. "I'm sorry, sir. I just thought that since the soldiers will be on combat missions together, you must want them to join in the prayer too." "Well, I don't think so. They have their own God and priest, don't they?" "No, sir." "What did you say? You mean they pray to the same God we do?" "Yes, sir." "And God listens, too?" "I think so, sir." "Bah, hell," remarked the Colonel.He thought it was ridiculous and snorted to himself. After a while, his mood suddenly fell.He brushed his short, dark, slightly gray curly hair with his hands uneasily, and asked with concern, "Do you really think it's a good idea to let soldiers in?" "I think that's the only way to do it, sir." "I want to keep them out," said the colonel.He crackled his knuckles as he walked back and forth. "Oh, don't get me wrong, Chaplain. It's not that I think soldiers are low, mediocre, or inferior, but we don't have room big enough. But, to tell you the truth, I don't really want officers and soldiers to fraternity in the briefing room. I think they see each other enough in the course of missions. You know, some of my best friends are soldiers, but there is a limit to how close I am to them Yes. Honestly, Reverend, you don't want your sister to marry a soldier?" "My sister was a soldier herself, sir," answered the chaplain. The colonel stopped again and stared sharply at the chaplain, trying to figure out if the chaplain was mocking him. "What do you mean by that, Reverend? Are you joking?" "Oh, no, sir," explained the chaplain hastily, with a look of extreme uneasiness, "she's a sergeant major in the Marine Corps." The colonel had never liked the chaplain, and now he disliked him even more and distrusted him.He suddenly had a strong premonition that he might be in danger.He suspected that the vicar was plotting against him too, that the vicar's taciturn, flat demeanor was really a sinister disguise for a cunning and unscrupulous ambition burning deep within.There was something absurd about the chaplain at this point, and the colonel soon discovered what the problem was. The pastor has been standing there straight at attention. It turns out that the colonel forgot to tell him to "take a rest".Just let him stand like that, the colonel decided with vindictiveness, let him see who the officer was, and admitting to him that he was negligent would not be without airs. Colonel Cathcart walked towards the window drowsily, his eyes were gloomy and dull, and he was introspection.Soldiers, he concluded, were always rebellious.He looked down sadly at the skeet range that had been built on his orders for his staff officers at headquarters, and thought of the afternoon that had brought him humiliation.That afternoon General Dreedle gave him a merciless reprimand in the presence of Lieutenant Colonels Korn and Major Danby and ordered him to keep the range open to all officers and men on combat duty.The skeet range was a scandal to him, Colonel Cathcart could not help but conclude.He was sure that General Dreedle had never forgotten it, but he was also sure that General Dreedle didn't even remember it at all.It was an unfair thing indeed, and Colonel Cathcart was distressed by it, because even though it disgraced him so much, the very idea of ​​building a trap range should be his honor.How much the accursed shooting range had done him, or how much he had lost, Colonel Cathcart could not accurately estimate.He hoped that Lieutenant Colonel Korn was in his office at this moment, and he could help him evaluate the whole pros and cons of this matter and alleviate his worries. It's all overwhelming and demoralizing.Colonel Cathcart took the cigarette-holder from his mouth, put it upright in his shirt pocket, and began to bite his nails sadly.Everyone was against him, and what broke his heart was that Colonel Korn wasn't there for him at this critical moment, helping him decide what to do about prayer.He had little trust in the priest, and the priest was only a captain. "Do you think," the colonel asked, "that excluding soldiers will affect our chances of getting results?" The pastor hesitated, feeling that this was another strange question for him. "Yes, sir," he replied at last, "I think that since you're praying for a denser bomb drop, that might affect your chances of getting an effect." "I haven't thought about it at all!" cried the colonel, his eyes gleaming like puddles. "You mean God might even decide to punish us by dropping bombs more sparingly?" "Yes, sir," said the chaplain, "it is possible that God will so decide." "To hell with it, then," asserted the colonel, furiously wanting to depend on no one. "I don't do these damn prayers to make things worse." He sneered, sat down behind his desk, put the empty cigarette holder back in his mouth, and sat without saying a word for a long time. Think hard there. "Now that I think about it," he said, as much to the chaplain as to himself, "it probably wasn't a good idea to ask officers and soldiers to pray to God, anyway. The editors of The Saturday Evening Post might not agree with us. cooperate." The Colonel ruefully abandoned his plan, which he had conceived alone, and which he had hoped to present as a striking example, that he had no real need of Colonel Korn.Now that the plan was dead, he was happy to abandon it, because he hadn't consulted with Colonel Korn before making the plan, so he was worried from the beginning that the plan was risky.He breathed a sigh of satisfaction; now that he had dropped the project, he thought much more of himself, because he felt he had made a very wise decision and, above all, that he had not made the same decision as Cohen. The school made this wise decision after consultation. "Is there anything else, sir?" asked the chaplain. "No," replied Colonel Cathcart, "unless you have other suggestions." "No, sir. It's just..." The colonel looked up, as if offended, and looked at the chaplain with a cold distrust. "Just what, Reverend?" "Sir," said the chaplain, "some of the officers and men are very disturbed because you increased the number of missions to sixty. They want me to report this to you." The colonel was silent.The priest waited, blushing to the roots of his sandy hair; The colonel's face was expressionless, and he stared at the pastor with cold eyes, which made the pastor twist his body restlessly for a long time. "Tell them there's a war going on now," he advised him in flat tones at last. "Thanks, sir, I'll do it," replied the chaplain with great gratitude, for at last the colonel spoke. "They wondered, why don't you bring in some reserve crew that are on standby in Africa to replace them and send them home." "That's an administrative matter," said the colonel. "It's none of their business." He pointed listlessly over the wall. "Eat a red pear tomato, Reverend. Eat it, and I'll pay for it." "Thank you sir. Sir—" "You're welcome. You like living out in the woods, Reverend? All right?" "Yes, sir." "That's good. If you need anything, come to us." "Yes, sir. Thank you sir. Sir—" "Thank you for being here, Reverend, I have some work to do right now. If you think of any good idea to get our name in the Saturday Evening Post, please let me know, will you?" "Yes, sir, I will," said the chaplain thickly, bracing himself with astonishing fortitude and courage, "I'm particularly concerned about a bombardier, sir, his name is Yossarian." The colonel felt that the name sounded familiar, and glanced up hastily in surprise. "Who?" he asked in horror. "Yossarian, sir." "Yossarian?" "Yes, sir. It's Yossarian. He's in very bad shape, sir. I'm afraid he won't stand it long enough to risk something out of the ordinary." "Is that true, priest?" "Yes, sir. I'm afraid so." The Colonel thought for a moment in silence. "Tell him he should trust God," he exhorted at last. "Thank you, sir," said the chaplain, "I'll do it."