Okay, Rapunzel, I'll let my hair down.

Ex-PFC Wintergreen was the most cynical of enlisted men, who saw the futility of the war but was caught up in it all anyway. So he alternately was the local savant - he knew what General Dreedle was going to do before General Dreedle did - and the bad soldier, getting made up to PFC, then going over the hill for a while, getting busted back to private and being sentenced to dig and fill in holes. When he was asked by Captain Yossarian why he did it, he replied "Somebody's got to."

It was never clear, quite deliberately, I'm sure, whether he was referring to the implied one-man protest movement (going over the hill) or digging and filling in the holes.

I didn't LIU so the detail may be slightly out, but that's the gist.


The idiot also known as Capfka ...