General Dreedle
General Dreedle is the wing commander of the bomber group in which Yossarian serves, a blunt, chunky, barrel-chested man in his early fifties whose credo as a professional soldier is unified and concise: he believes that the young men who take orders from him should be willing to give up their lives for the ideals, aspirations and idiosyncrasies of the old men he takes orders from. He runs a fighting outfit and has no taste for sham, tact, or pretension. His nose is squat and red, and he has lumpy white, bunched-up eyelids circling his small gray eyes like haloes of bacon fat. He is prone to long, ponderous silences when he has not been drinking too much, and he drinks a great deal. At unguarded moments his hard and sullen face slips into a somber, preoccupied look of defeat and frustration. He is a general who has wasted too much of his time in the Army doing his job well, and now it is too late; new power alignments have coalesced without him and he is at a loss to cope with them.
Authority and Conflict with Colonel Cathcart
General Dreedle exercises his authority with arbitrary and unpredictable moods. He is intransigent when displeased, as Colonel Cathcart learns when Dreedle throws open Cathcart's private skeet-shooting range to every officer and enlisted man on combat duty, overriding Cathcart's attempt to keep it exclusive. Dreedle's response to Cathcart's maneuvering is contemptuous: when Cathcart tries to ingratiate himself by invoking General Peckem's memorandum on appropriate military attire, Dreedle ignores him completely, turning away in baleful scorn. Dreedle is also the one who, after Chief White Halfoat punches Colonel Moodus in the nose, orders Cathcart to throw the chaplain out of the officers' club, and then, moments later, orders Cathcart to let the chaplain back in. He is capable of ordering Major Danby taken out and shot for an inadvertent moan during a briefing, only to relent when Colonel Moodus whispers that regulations forbid it. His power is absolute but capricious, and he is increasingly outmaneuvered by the bureaucratic intrigues of General Peckem.
Relationship with Colonel Moodus and His Nurse
General Dreedle is always accompanied by both his son-in-law, Colonel Moodus, and his nurse, a chubby, short, blonde woman with plump dimpled cheeks and a lush bosom who drives everyone crazy but Dreedle. Dreedle detests the very sight of Moodus, whom he took into the military business at the insistence of his wife and against his own better judgment. He keeps Moodus in constant attendance as his aide, tormenting him by having the nurse wear a tight purple silk uniform that leaves nothing to the imagination, knowing Moodus has not been to bed with a woman since they shipped overseas. Dreedle boasts about this arrangement with croupy relish, and he threatens to bust Moodus down to private and put him on K.P. for a year if he ever makes a pass at the nurse or any other woman. The nurse herself is succulent, sweet, docile and dumb; she smiles at everyone and never speaks unless spoken to, and men edge away from her carefully.
The Bureaucratic War with General Peckem
General Dreedle is incensed by General Peckem's directive requiring all tents in the Mediterranean theater of operations to be pitched along parallel lines with entrances facing back toward the Washington Monument. To Dreedle, who runs a fighting outfit, it seems a lot of crap, and he regards it as none of Peckem's goddam business how the tents in his wing are pitched. The jurisdictional dispute is decided in Dreedle's favor by ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, the mail clerk at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters, who throws all communications from Peckem into the wastebasket, finding them too prolix. Dreedle is victorious by default. However, Peckem continues to scheme, and Dreedle is ultimately replaced when combat operations are transferred to Special Services under General Scheisskopf. Dreedle is out, and Peckem is in, but Peckem's victory is immediately hollowed when Scheisskopf, promoted to lieutenant general, becomes his superior.
Narrative Role and Thematic Significance
General Dreedle embodies the old-style military commander whose authority is based on direct command and personal force rather than bureaucratic manipulation. He is a figure of raw power who is nonetheless helpless against the institutional machinations of men like Peckem and the systemic absurdity of Catch-22. His credo—that young men should die for the ideals of old men—is the very logic Yossarian rebels against, and Dreedle's eventual ouster by the more polished but equally ruthless Peckem illustrates the novel's theme that the war is run not by warriors but by careerists. Dreedle's relationship with Moodus and his nurse also serves as a grotesque parody of family and loyalty, revealing the petty cruelties that underlie the military hierarchy.
