For all those months Task Force had continually pressured the Americans to halt the bombardment long enough for a ground based assault, but the Americans refused. It was too dangerous. The attacks kept Charlie pinned down, awake at night, kept them frustrated. If the pressure was eased, the entire province would be overrun. The American Commanders simply could not take the responsibility for such an action. They could not allow the Australians to undertake so suicidal a mission. The rumours and legends changed. You began to believe that those mountains harboured some greater, more dreadful secret, and that the bombardment was not intended to keep Charlie in, but instead to keep you out. It all went on so long and tediously that in the end you were perfectly happy to face the consequences, however terrifying, if only to be rid of all that endless procrastination and suspense.

…Without warning, the patient sat up in bed and shouted, “I see everything twice.”
    A nurse screamed and an orderly fainted. Doctors came running up from every direction with needles, lights. Tubes, rubber mallets and oscillating metal tines. They rolled up complicated instruments on wheels. There was not enough patient to go around, and specialists pushed forward in line with raw tempers and snapped at their colleagues in front to hurry up and give someone else a chance...
…    In the end, the doctors were all in accord. They agreed they had no idea what was wrong with the soldier who saw everything twice, and they rolled him away into a room in the corridor and quarantined everyone else in the ward for fourteen days….
    Yossarian discovers this quarantine to be a good thing, for after he is diagnosed as completely well, he remains in the hospital, away from the missions, and is treated well. Then the quarantine is lifted and the halcyon days are over.
Yossarian sat up in bed when he heard the bad news and shouted. “I see everything twice!”
    Pandemonium broke loose in the ward again. The specialists came running up from all directions and ringed him in a circle of scrutiny…. The leader of this team of doctors was a dignified, solicitous gentleman who held one finger up directly in front of Yossarian and demanded, “How many fingers do you see?”
    “Two,” said Yossarian.
    “How many fingers do you see now?” asked the doctor, holding up two.
    “Two,” said Yossarian.
    “And how many now?” asked the doctor, holding up none.
    “Two,” said Yossarian.
    The doctor’s face wreathed with a smile. “By Jove, he’s right,” he declared jubilantly. “He does see everything twice.”
    They rolled Yossarian away on a stretcher into the room with the other soldier who saw everything twice and quarantined everyone else in the ward for another fourteen days.
    “I see everything twice!” the soldier who saw everything twice shouted as they rolled Yossarian in.
    “I see everything twice!” Yossarian shouted back at him just as loudly, with a secret wink.
    “The walls! The walls!” the other soldier cried. “Move back the walls!”
    “The walls! The walls!” Yossarian cried. “Move back the walls!”
    One of the doctors pretended to shove the wall back. “Is that far enough?”
    The soldier who saw everything twice nodded weakly and sank back on his bed. Yossarian nodded weakly too, eyeing his talented roommate with great humility and admiration. He knew he was in the presence of a master. His talented roommate was obviously a person to be studied and emulated. During the night, his talented roommate died, and Yossarian decided that he had followed him far enough.
    “I see everything once” he cried quickly.
    A new group of specialists came pounding up to his bedside with their instruments to see if it was true.
    “How many fingers do you see?” asked the leader, holding up one.
    “One.”
    “The doctor held up two fingers. “How many fingers do you see now?”
    “One.”
    The doctor held up ten fingers. “How many now?”
    “One.”
    The doctor turned to the other doctors in amazement. “He does see everything once!” he exclaimed. “We made him all better.”
   Catch-22, Joseph Heller’s book of nonsense and horrors amongst USAF WW2 bomber pilots is a classic of warfare because, in line with its own weird logic, everyone who ever fought in a war was able to relate to the hopeless logical circles and delays and foolishness of officers and great idiocy of the military. It captured the way soldiers feel about the military, even though it was all bullshit. Catch-22, defined several different ways in the book, is that situation where the only way to avoid doing something is to do it—a fine paradox. The only way to avoid flying bombing missions is to prove insanity. No sane man would fly bombing missions so the only way to prove yourself insane was to fly the missions.
    There are many joys in this silly but profound book. The wheeler dealer Milo Minderbender, the ridiculous Major Major Major Major, but the gold-bricking genius Yossarian is best—we sympathise wholly with this unashamed coward from beginning to end. And, of course, one of the greatest truths of all time: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not still out to get you. And why not, for the horrors that counterpoint the humour are terrifying indeed.
… Kid Sampson, his naked sides scrawny even from so far away, leaped clownishly up to touch it at the exact moment some arbitrary gust of wind or minor miscalculation of McWatt’s senses dropped the speeding plane down just low enough for a propeller to slice him half away.
    Even people who were not there remembered vividly exactly what happened next. There was the briefest, softest tsst! Filtering audibly through the shattering, overwhelming howl of the plane’s engines, and then there were just Kid Sampson’s two pale, skinny legs, still jointed by strings somehow to the body’s truncated hips, standing stock-still on the raft for what seemed a full minute or two before they toppled over backward into the water finally with a faint, echoing splash and turned completely upside down so that only the grotesque toes and plaster-white soles of Kid Sampson’s feet remained in view…  
     Amazing. It was no wonder Heller was reluctant to offer the world another book—it was too hard an act to follow.