Chapter 6: Hungry Joe
Hungry Joe has flown more combat tours of duty than anyone. Orders shipping him home are constantly unfulfilled and the ragged hero has consequently cracked up. Jumpy and irritable, Hungry Joe screams through his frequent nightmares and tackles his roommate Huple's cat. Hungry Joe's "maniacal howling" keeps most of the squadron awake at night, which suits Captain Flume just fine because he fears Chief White Halfoat will slit his throat in the night and wants to stay awake. Yossarian learns that the Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters defines a complete tour as forty missions, and having forty-eight, he is hopeful of discharge.
Doc Daneeka then reveals another clause of Catch-22:
"'Catch-22...says you've always got to do what your commanding officer tells you to.
"'But Twenty-seventh Air Force says I can go home with forty missions.'
"'But they don't say you have to go home. And regulations do say you have to obey every order. That's the catch. Even if the colonel were disobeying a Twenty-seventh Air Force order by making you fly more missions, you'd still have to fly them, or you'd be guilty of disobeying an order of his. And then the Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters would really jump on you.'" Chapter 6, pg. 68
Topic Tracking: Catch-22 3
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