Can't picture the scene

[HaraKiriBlade]

I may end up having posted here half the context of the book I'm reading, Catch-22, by the time I finish reading, because I'm asking one or two questions per page and I sometimes have to post a whole paragraph.

It seems to be the case for this post. Hopefully I'm not violating the copyrights. At any rate, here it is:

In a bed in the small private section at the end of the ward, always working ceaselessly behind the green plyboard partition, was the solemn middle-aged colonel who was visited every day by a gentle, sweet-faced woman with curly ash-blond hair who was not a nurse and not a Wac and not a Red Cross girl but who nevertheless appeared faithfully at the hospital in Pianosa each afternoon wearing pretty pastel summer dresses that were very smart and white leather pumps with heels half high at the base of nylon seams that were inevitably straight. The colonel was in Communications, and he was kept busy day and night transmitting glutinous messages from the interior into square pads of gauze which he sealed meticulously and delivered to a covered white pail that stood on the night table beside his bed.

I get the description of the woman that pays regular visits to the colonel. But as for what kind of messages he transmits and to where he transmits it, I haven't the slightest idea. I just lost it after 'transmitting...' part. I looked up the words I didn't know and still the whole scene is in dark.

Can you help me with this?

[Tdol]

Hmm, it sounds as if he's having a liason with the ash-blonde, so are the messages body fluids?

With copyright, you are allowed to quote from a text for legitimate purposes, including reviewing, study, etc, which is the case here, so a paragraph of the text for clarification would come under the fair use allowance of copyright. You're trying to sneak copies of the text onto the net or sell it, or deprive Heller's estate of money, but to understand the book.