Pedantry, military logic, and romance contrast with the horrors of death in these chapters. The first two can be amusing; the romance is touching; but death is never far away.
Peckem likes to think of himself as a superior intellect, and he does have some education, which should not be confused with wisdom. He likes to be precise with words. Words are to Peckem what parades are to Scheisskopf. Peckem never writes "memorandums," for example, because "memoranda" should be the proper plural. He likes to "augment," not just "increase." Events in his command are "upcoming," never just "coming" or "approaching." He is fastidious about insignificant matters, quick to see fault in others, and blind to his own failings. He finds the prose of other officers to be laughably "turgid, stilted, or ambiguous." They are likely to say "verbal" when, of course, they mean "oral"; Peckem is never so sloppy. He quotes glibly from Nietzche, Montaigne, or Warren G. Harding and is especially pleased with himself for inventing the term tight bomb pattern.
Heller satirizes military logic once more, this time regarding a raid on a small Italian village, which happens to be uphill from a road that the Germans supposedly will use to transport two armored divisions from Austria to Italy. The plan is to have debris from the village slide down on the road, blocking it. The villagers pose no threat and are all civilians. Dunbar argues that they won't even take cover; they will run into the streets to wave at the pilots. The bombs will just be killing "children and dogs and old people." The village will be reduced to rubble, but the road will be cleared in a couple of days anyway. The raid would be more efficient if the bombs were spread out along the hills, away from the village, blocking more of the road; but that will not do. Colonel Cathcart, always trying to impress General Peckem, calls for a tight bomb pattern "for me, for your country, for God, and for that great American, General P. P. Peckem."
