After Second Company is reduced by nearly half, replacement troops arrive, seeming much younger than Paul and his friends. The replacements are actually only two years younger, but their lack of experience makes the age difference seem greater. Kat, the master scrounger, invites the newcomers to share beans, which he garnered in a trade with Ginger for three pieces of parachute silk. Later, Kat finds two loaves of bread, horse meat, a frying pan, salt, and fat. When they need a softer place to sleep than wire netting, Kat finds straw. As planes continue to drop explosives and battle for air superiority, Paul, who is quartered in a factory, sits below and observes the sky battle dispassionately.
Paul ponders how insignificant men like Corporal Himmelstoss, a former mail carrier, develop into bullies who abuse their authority with such meaningless games as “Change at Löhne,” during which he forces men of lower rank to crawl under bunks. Keeping soldiers busy seems to be important so they won’t have time to think or complain. The four friends recall how they plotted their revenge on Himmelstoss before they left for the front. Tjaden and Kindervater, whom the drill instructor humiliated for bed-wetting, have especially fond memories of their revenge. Following their former tormentor along a road from a pub on a dark night, the four soldiers joyfully wrapped Himmelstoss in a bedspread and, with Haie leading the attack, beat him mercilessly with kicks and punches and a whip, smothering his outcries with a pillow. Himmelstoss crawled away, and a veteran, impressed by the spirited young soldiers, proclaimed them “young heroes.” Paul comments very simply, “We had become successful students of [his] method.”
