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ON THE WESTERN FRONT
 

because of the way he educated him in the barracks. Tjaden wets his bed, he does it at night in his sleep. Himmelstoss maintained that it was sheer laziness and invented a method worthy of himself for curing Tjaden.

He hunted up another wet-a-bed, named Kindervater, from a neighbouring hut, and quartered him with Tjaden. In the huts there were the usual bunks, one above the other in pairs, with mattresses of wire-netting. Himmelstoss put these two so that one occupied the upper and the other the lower bunk. The man underneath was of course disgusted. The next night they were changed over and the lower one put on top so that he could retaliate. That was Himmelstoss’s system of self-education.

The idea was low but not ill-conceived. Unfor­tunately it accomplished nothing because the first assumption was wrong: it was not laziness in either of them. Anyone who looked at their sallow skin could see that. The matter ended in one of them always sleeping on the floor, where he frequently caught cold.

Meanwhile Hale sits down beside us. He winks at me and rubs his paws thoughtfully. We once spent the finest day of our army-life together—the day before we left for the front. We had been allotted

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