In the process, we must have been subjected to every abuse the barrack-yard has ever seen, and we often howled with rage. Some of us got sick from it, too, Wolf even died of pneumonia. But we would’ve felt ridiculous if we’d given in. We became hard, mistrustful, pitiless, vindictive, coarse—and that was good; because those were just the qualities we’d been lacking. If we’d been sent to the trenches without that training period, most of us would’ve gone insane. But this way we were prepared for what lay in store for us.