“Next time you come with your mess-tin have a cigar or a chew of tobacco in your other hand. Get me?” Then he turns to us. “You get off scot free, of course.”

We couldn’t do without Katczinsky; he has a sixth sense. There are such people everywhere but one does not appreciate it at first. Every company has one or two. Katczinsky is the smartest I know. By trade he is a cobbler, I believe, but that hasn’t anything to do with it; he understands all trades. It’s a good thing to be friends with him, as Kropp and I are, and Haie Westhus too, more or less. But Haie is rather the executive arm, operating under Kat’s orders when things come to blows. For that he has his qualifications.

For example, we land at night in some entirely unknown spot, a sorry hole, that has been eaten out to the very walls. We are quartered in a small dark factory adapted to the purpose. There are beds in it, or rather bunks⁠—a couple of wooden beams over which wire netting is stretched.