The mission to Avignon

The mission to Avignon is the catastrophic bombing run during which the radio-gunner Snowden is mortally wounded, an event that becomes the psychological and moral fulcrum of the novel. It is the moment Yossarian loses his nerve, abandons his uniform, and confronts the visceral truth that man is matter—a secret that shatters his capacity for denial and drives his subsequent rebellion against the military system.

Background and Participants

The mission to Avignon was flown from Pianosa against a bridge target defended by heavy concentrations of flak. The briefing was conducted by Major Danby, who described the flak in a monotonous, didactic drone. The flight was led by Havermeyer and Appleby, with Yossarian flying as a wing bombardier in a plane piloted by Huple, a fifteen-year-old pilot, and co-piloted by Dobbs, a nervous and unstable officer. The navigator was Aarfy, whose incompetence and obliviousness would compound the disaster. The crew included Snowden, the radio-gunner, and a young tail-gunner. General Dreedle attended the briefing with his nurse, whose presence triggered a wave of moaning from Yossarian and Dunbar that nearly derailed the mission.

The Mid-Air Crisis and Snowden's Wounding

Over the target, Dobbs went berserk in mid-air, wresting the controls from Huple and plunging the plane into a terrifying dive that tore Yossarian's headset loose and hung him helplessly from the ceiling of the nose by the top of his head. Huple managed to seize the controls back and level the plane out, but they were now back inside the dense flak from which they had almost escaped. Almost immediately, a chunk of flak more than three inches big shot into Snowden's side just underneath his arm, blasting all the way through his body and drawing his entrails out through a gigantic hole in his ribs. Dobbs, weeping pathetically over the intercom, begged for help for the bombardier, not realizing Yossarian was the bombardier. Then Snowden's voice broke in, whimpering, "I'm cold. I'm cold."

Yossarian's Failed Attempt to Save Snowden

Yossarian crawled out of the nose, through the crawlway, and over the bomb bay into the rear section of the plane. He found Snowden lying on his back on the floor, still burdened by his flak suit, flak helmet, parachute harness, and Mae West. The young tail-gunner lay beside him in a dead faint. Yossarian saw a wound in the outside of Snowden's thigh, as large and deep as a football. He searched the first-aid kit for morphine but found only a note from Milo Minderbinder: "What's good for M & M Enterprises is good for the country." The twelve syrettes of morphine had been stolen. Yossarian applied a tourniquet, then loosened it to prevent gangrene. He cut away Snowden's coveralls, sprinkled sulfanilamide into the leg wound, and bandaged it competently. He felt a surge of pride in his work. But Snowden kept shaking his head and pointed with his chin toward his armpit. Yossarian ripped open the snaps of Snowden's flak suit and saw the true wound: a chunk of flak had blasted through his other side, drawing whole mottled quarts of his insides—liver, lungs, kidneys, ribs, stomach, and bits of stewed tomatoes—out onto the floor. Yossarian screamed and vomited.

The Aftermath and Yossarian's Transformation

After the plane landed, Yossarian climbed down the few steps naked, in a state of utter shock, with Snowden's blood and tissue smeared abundantly all over his bare heels, toes, knees, arms, and fingers. He pointed inside wordlessly toward where Snowden lay. Doc Daneeka draped a blanket around Yossarian's shoulders and led him to the medical tent, where McWatt and Doc Daneeka washed Snowden off him with cold wet balls of absorbent cotton. Doc Daneeka gave him pills and shots that put him to sleep for twelve hours, then another twelve. When Yossarian woke, he refused to wear a uniform again, walking around naked until General Dreedle came to pin a medal on him for his heroism over Ferrara and found him standing in formation stark naked. The secret Snowden had spilled—that man is matter, that the spirit gone, man is garbage—became the ineradicable knowledge that drove Yossarian's subsequent refusal to fly more missions and his desperate attempts to save himself.

Thematic Significance

The mission to Avignon is the novel's central trauma, the event that shatters Yossarian's illusions and forces him to see the war—and the system that perpetuates it—as a machinery of meaningless death. Snowden's secret, "Man was matter," is the nihilistic core against which Yossarian's entire struggle for survival is waged. The theft of the morphine by Milo's syndicate literalizes the novel's critique of capitalism: profit is extracted even from the dying. The mission also reveals the structural incompetence and moral vacancy of the military hierarchy: Dobbs's panic, Aarfy's obliviousness, Huple's youth, and the stolen morphine all conspire to kill Snowden. Yossarian's subsequent nakedness is not madness but a radical refusal to participate in a system that has shown him its true face. The memory of Snowden freezing to death, whimpering "I'm cold," recurs throughout the novel, a haunting that Yossarian can never escape, and it is this memory that ultimately drives him to run away to Sweden, following Orr's example of defiant survival.