A LITERARY MYSTERY

Joseph Heller as “Pete, a replacement bombardier” in “Training for Combat”

Questions have abounded since Joseph Heller’s novel, “Catch-22" was first published 60 years ago. The author always claimed that the most famous American war novel of the Twentieth Century was fiction, but members of the unit Heller flew in during World War II, were quick to identify events and characters in the novel that were recognizable.

Asked about his wartime career, Heller said he flew 60 missions he characterized as “milk runs.” He also claimed that he was never photographed during the war.

The only truth in that statement is that he did fly 60 missions. 40 of them could hardly be called “milk runs,” but the final 20 were flown once a week over five months at a time when the average aircrew in the unit were flying three or four missions a week in a campaign to destroy the railroad through the Brenner Pass supplying the German forces in northern Italy; no one ever remembered any missions as a “milk runs.” Heller left the unit in January 1945, having flown 60 missions at a time when the minimum tour had been extended from 70 missions to “the duration of the war” due to a shortage of replacements.

How did this happen? Did Joseph Heller say yes to the deal his alter ego Yossarian refused? Was his motivation to write the novel a desire to rewrite his own history?

What follows is what I discovered about the writing of “Catch-22" while researching my book “The Bridgebusters: The True Story of the Catch-22 Bomb Wing.”

The night of May 22, 1944 was pleasant on Corsica. Alesani Airfield was home to four squadrons of the 340th Bombardment Group (Medium). At 2200 hours, pilot Captain Bill Thomas and three of his friends in the 488th Bomb Squadron interrupted their bridge game when they heard distant explosions to the north. They quickly realized it was a “show,” an air raid, though none realized it was just the opening act.

Ninety Junkers Ju-88A-4 bombers of Lehrgeschwader I, led by Oberst Joachim Helbig, had crossed out of northern Italy at sea level, avoiding Allied radar on Corsica. Their target was Borgo Poreta Airfield. They dropped fragmentation bombs and incendiaries from 6,000 feet, resulting in widespread destruction among the Allied units there..

With the excitement over, the bridge players returned to their game, finally slipping into their cots shortly after midnight. They and everyone else at Alesani were roused at 0230 hours by explosions on the field. The Germans had returned, along with 60 Ju-88s of Kampfgeschwader 76. Surprise was complete. A pilot of the 488th squadron remembered, “We had all these nice new shiny silver ships, and they reflected the light from the fires so well that the Germans had no trouble spotting where to drop their bombs.” These were the last attacks by the Luftwaffe in the Mediterranean Theatre.

On May 20, everyone was busy painting the upper surfaces of the surviving bombers and the new replacement aircraft with green paint cadged from the French at Ghisonaccia. No one paid attention to the C-47 that landed with replacement airmen. The next day, three 2nd lieutenants, a warrant officer, and three sergeants were assigned to the 340th’s 488th squadron. The warrant officer bombardier was Flight Officer Francis Yohannon. One of the lieutenants was a skinny Jewish kid from Brooklyn who dreamed of being a writer and had just celebrated his 21st birthday on May 1. Second Lieutenant Joseph Heller hadn’t graduated high enough to qualify for training with a specific crew and arrived as a replacement bombardier.

A week before, Heller had written in his diary that he was ready to see action. He wanted to see “skies full of flak, and fighters screaming past in life and death duels high in the clouds.” The first thing he heard about on arrival was of their airfieldbeing bombed. Four days later he flew his first mission. Missions came fast and furious during the summer of 1944. The three groups each flew two major missions a day, with two squadrons in each taking the morning mission and the other two that in the afternoon. Flak was deadly; losses were frequently high. The tour was 50 missions.

Heller flew his first mission on May 23, 1944, bombing the railroad bridge at Poggibonsi. He later wrote, “Poor little Poggibonsi. Its only crime was that it happened to lie outside Florence along one of the few passageways running south through the Appenine Mountains to Rome. As a wing bombardier, my job was to keep my eyes on the first plane in our formation, which contained the lead bombardier. When I saw his bomb-bay doors open, I was to open mine. The instant I saw his bombs begin to fall, I would press a button to release my own. That was the theory.” Distracted by what he saw below, Heller froze when he saw the bombs fall from the lead Mitchell and was a few moments late dropping his load, blasting a hole in a mountain several miles from the bridge.

On August 15, Heller flew his 37th mission, which he called his “most terrifying.” The target was three bridges over the Rhone River outside Avignon, France. The crews called them “The Dreaded Avignon Bridges.” Heller was particularly afraid of these bridges. A week earlier, they had gone after the same target; the B-25 directly ahead of his had been hit in the bomb bay and was obliterated in the explosion. The pilot and co-pilot were his two closest friends in the squadron. “I finally admitted to myself on the way home that they really were trying to kill me. That they were trying to kill all of us was no consolation. They were trying to kill me!”

As they flew toward the bridges, the bombers turned on final approach; when the lead bomber opened its bomb doors, Heller opened his. When the lead plane dropped, he did. Suddenly, they were bracketed by three flak bursts so close and loud he could hear them over the engines. More flak exploded and the right wingtip was blown off. The co-pilot, transfixed in terror, heard a voice shriek “Help me! I’m hit” He grabbed his controls and whipped over hard to the right and pushed forward. The plane banked in a wild dive. “Help him! Help him!” the co-pilot cried over the intercom.

The maneuver threw Heller around in his greenhouse in the nose and he was pinned by his head to the rear bulkhead by the G-force, his feet thrashing the air. The pilot fought the co-pilot for control while he slowed the dive. The navigator’s lucky punch knocked the co-pilot back in his seat.

The pilot pulled out of the wild dive, squashing everyone with the G-force. The terrified co-pilot fought until the flight engineer held him tight. The bomber bucked and reared as the pilot fought to prevent a catastrophe. Finally, it pulled level. Heller plugged his headset back in. “Help who?”

“Help him! Help the bombardier! He doesn’t answer!” Heller checked - he was unhurt. “I’m the bombardier! I’m OK! I’m OK!” “Help him! Help him!” the voice cried.

Heller shoved through the narrow tunnel to the cockpit then squeezed over the bomb bay to the rear where he found the radioman on the floor, a large oval wound in his thigh. Fighting nausea at the sight, Heller ripped open a package of sulfa, and spread it over the wound, then bandaged the leg and gave the radioman a shot of morphine. He returned to the cockpit. Flying home, the co-pilot regained his composure. No one thought less of him; they’d all been there, paralyzed by the fear of death. The event, which seemed to last for hours, had actually taken place in a matter of two or three minutes.

Those who have read the novel or seen the movie will remember this as one of the crucial scenes.

On August 23, 1944 they flew the kind of mission none of the crews ever felt good about. They thought nothing of bombing railroads, rail bridges, highway bridges, military bases, or any target “war related.” What they didn’t like was creating “road blocks,” bombing to knock down buildings and leave the wreckage to slow the enemy. The target was Ponte San Martino, a town that existed because of the Settimo Road Bridge, built by Julius Caesar’s legionaries in 55 B.C. on their way to invade Gaul. In 1800, Napoleon crossed it on his way to the Battle of Marengo.

On August 23, the bridge was to be destroyed to prevent two panzer divisions using it to enter France to oppose the invasion. Eighteen B-25s attacked - the lead bombardier was off in his calculation; the bombs missed the bridge and hit the town. B-25 “8-K” turned aside at the last moment and bombed an empty field. Back at Corsica, pilot 2nd Lieutenant Cliff Grossfield stated he made an evasive maneuver due to flak - but there was no flak; such a maneuver on the bomb run was against all the rules. The group command reported that a German panzer division was believed to have set up its headquarters in the village. Despite Grosskopf having violated the rules with his “evasive maneuver,” no one ever questioned his act. Several officers did question the order to attack, among them Heller, who had flown the mission; the dissidents were placed “in hack” for their questioning of group authority.

Settimo Bridge was Heller’s 40th mission ovr two and a half months. To that point, the group’s war diary shows him flying a mission every 2-3 days like everyone else. He left for home in January, 1945, five months after Settimo. In that period, he flew 20 missions - one a week - all of which he later said were “milk runs.” That period covers Operation Bingo, the “Battle of the Brenner Pass” to destroy the railway through the Alps and cut off the German armies in northern Italy, a campaign that lasted until April 1945. No one in the group recalled any of those missions as “milk runs.” When Heller left with 60 missions in his logbook, the “tour” had been extended from 70 missions to “the duration of the war.” How was it Heller left when men were willing to un-volunteer themselves for flight duty even if it meant a transfer to the infantry - and weren’t allowed to do so? (“I have to be crazy to fly like this, but if I ask to be relieved that means I’m not crazy, so I have to keep flying? That’s some catch, that Catch-22.”)

What happened?

Wilbur Blume (center) directing “Training For Combat”

During my research, I met William Blume, son of Heller’s good friend, 1st Lieutenant Wilbur Blume, a fellow bombardier who was also Group Public Relations Officer and officer in charge of the “9th Photo Unit,” an unofficial organization created by group commander Colonel Chapman to make documentary films, who was ordered by the colonel to make a film about the training program he had established to bring new replacements “up to speed” before they began flying missions. It was titled “Training In Combat;” Chapman hoped it would serve as a model for other groups and lead to a promotion. Blume, his photographers, and a group of aircrew “actors” worked on the movie for five months, starting in early September. In his diary, Blume called the project “a boondoggle for the Colonel.” Though it was never completed, Blume kept several parts that were found by his son Michael following his death in 2009.

Heller (2nd from right standing) and the “replacement crew” in “Training for Combat”

One of the actors in the film is Joseph Heller; he plays “Pete, a replacement bombardier.” Was this - which took him away from combat - the payoff for shutting up about the events of August 23, 1944?

Heller once stated that a main theme of the novel was the difficulty for an individual to make a moral choice in an institution where he has no voice or power.

In Chapter 29, the men are ordered to bomb a village. Major Danby tells them two panzer divisions will use the road. The men protest that the village is innocent. At that point, Colonel Korn comes in:

“‘Would you rather go back to Bologna?’ The question, asked quietly, rang out like a shot and created a silence in the room that was awkward and menacing. Yossarian prayed intensely, with shame, that Dunbar would keep his mouth shut. Dunbar dropped his gaze and Colonel Korn knew he had won. ‘No, I thought not,’ he continued with undisguised scorn. ‘You know, Colonel Cathcart and I have to go to a lot of trouble to get you a milk run like this. If you'd sooner fly missions to Bologna, Spezia and Ferrara, we can get those targets with no trouble at all.’”

The helplessness of the men as they silently acquiesce, that they are willing to bomb a defenseless village rather than attack heavily-defended targets, their own revulsion at themselves for making such a choice, is palpable in the scene.

Did Joseph Heller say “yes” to the offer his alter ego Yossarian said “no” to? (“‘Like us,’ Colonel Cathcart said. ‘Come on along. We can make things easy.’”)

The late screenwriter Buck Henry, who adapted the novel into the screenplay for the movie, recalled Heller as “the angriest guy I ever knew.” Was he angry at himself for being what he considered a moral coward? Did he create an alternative story as a result? The circumstantial facts support such a theory.

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