Answer:
A group of new recruits arrives to reinforce the decimated company, making Paul and his friends feel like grizzled veterans. More than twenty of the reinforcements for the Second Company are only about seventeen years old. Kat gives one of the new recruits some beans that he acquired by bribing the company’s cook. He warns the boy to bring tobacco next time as payment for the food. Kat’s ability to scrounge extra food and provisions amazes Paul. Kat is a cobbler by trade, but he has an uncanny knack for making the most of life on the front.
Kat believes that if every soldier got the same food and the same pay, the war would end quickly. Kropp proposes that the declaration of wars should be conducted like a festival. He thinks that the generals and national leaders should battle one another with clubs in an open arena—the country with the last survivor wins the war.