Chapter Five: What Gets Them Through

    Chapter five starts off with all of the men sitting around a fire and talking. First they talk about what they would do at home, if this brutal war wasn't happening. But then it moves on to Tjaden talking back to Himmelstoss, and therefor showing him up, and making a fool out of Himmelstoss. After this they start to make fun of Himmelstoss and also their old teacher, and there is a quote in the book that really seemed to stand out to me, "That is our sole ambition: to knock the conceit out of a postman."
   I was some what confused at what this meant, so I went to dictionary.com and I looked up each word, to phrase it differently. This is what I came up with: "This is our only earnest desire: to force the excessive pride in ones self out of Himmelstoss." So basically, what seems to get them through the war and really keep them going is the way they sit and make  fun of Himmelstoss, making him feel less superior and rather foolish. Before this is said in the book, the men also show a lot about their character. They are all mostly pessimistic about their situation. At one point, Kropp says, "You'll be dead one day, so what does it matter? I don't think we'll ever go back."  And it's not only Kropp who seems to think like this, they all have that sort of point of view on the war. I get that it's hard and discouraging but I would think that they would at least have a little hope still. But, maybe that's just me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVDUXPB_sTs  This is a video that I found on Youtube with great real footage from World War 1. It shows how people everywhere reacted to the start of the war, how proud many people were and eager to go fight, footage of many different troops marching, some much better equipped than others, along with real trenches, and the weapons used to help make this all seem so much more real.