Five, Four, Three, Two, One - Pfftt

by William C. Anderson

What's funny about the atomic test?
Nothing.
What's funny about a newlywed major who has to wait five months before he can sleep with his bride?
Plenty.
What's funny about a book about that major and the 12,000 other virile American males who had to cuddle up with Bikini bombs instead of Bikini babes?
Everything!
This is not a novel that will tell you a thing about the H-bomb but it will tell you howlingly plenty about the fellows that had to stick it out while the longhairs played potsy with the atoms. The adventures of the virginal bride, the frustrated major, the lecherous captain, and the eavesdropping lieutenant make a side-splitted experience in atom-spilling reading.

A Note from the Author: Belive it or not, this story is based on fact. However, in the best traditions of the journalistic world, the facts have not been allowed to interfere with a good story. The names have been changed only to keep me from getting bashed in the snoot.

157 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

William C. Anderson served in the U.S. Air Force during World War II up through the Vietnam War, retiring as a colonel. He began writing in the 1950s, with a series of columns for MATS Flyer, the magazine of the Air Force's Military Air Transport Service (later MAC Flyer, after MATS became the Military Airlift Command).

Several of his books were autobiographical accounts of the adventures of Anderson, his wife, Dortha, and their children, Ann, Scott and Holly.

Reviews

[Rex Fausett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like Neil Stanley, I bought this book back in the early sixties at a small book exchange and kept it because it was genuinely funny. I didn't reread it until this week while clearing out my bookshelves to make way for CDs and DVDs. Yes, I know.
It's still genuinely funny but it's also a genuine, vivid reporting of the nuclear tests at Bikini by someone who must have been there and who describes the tests with both wonder and fear. I was moved by the quality of the writing which still stands strong and clear in 2021. It also has the first instance I noted where 'and' was lazily removed from the text as in gin tonic, not gin and tonic. I thought that laziness was recent, noting that it is used time and again, mercilessly, in JD Robb novels in particular.

[Neil Stanley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this paperback when I was at school in the early ‘60s. This was the first book, published in 1960, by William C. Anderson whose best known book Bat*21 was made into a movie in 1988. Anderson draws on his 20 years experience in the USAAF for his writing. ‘Five, Four, Three, Two, One - Pfftt’ is an autobiographical novel of his time on Eniwetok atoll in the Marshall Islands during the nuclear bomb tests in the mid to late 1950s. This is a well written insight into the life of pilots on this remote atoll just a couple of hundred miles from Bikini. It is also an introduction to Major Cornelius Catastrophe Callahan III who also appears in other books by Anderson. The book gives an insight into the rather lax precautions for the nuclear tests : “All right men, when given the word, cover your eyes with your arms. After the blast it’s safe to look when you can no longer see the bone in your arm.” He also muses that: “There is nothing as awesome, as overpowering, as sublimely beautiful, as horribly frightening as a nuclear detonation. God had given man the key to His secret, and He undoubtedly meant for it to be used.” He also, during his time on the islands, flies down to remote Kapingamarangi: “You people don’t know how to live. No income taxes, no policemen, no standing armies, no smog, no juvenile delinquents, no tranquillisers, no ulcer pills, no TV commercials. In short, your chief worry is a young lad that likes to piddle in the drinking water. Man, you’ve got to get with it.” This book would now be difficult to get hold of, but it is an interesting easy read. The ‘Pfftt’ part refers to one test that was a fizzer!