In the book All Quiet on the Western Front, the character Corporal Himmelstoss is portrayed as a disciplinarian, brutal and understanding type of person in the training camps. Although before his position as a trainer he was a postman. Corporal Himmelstoss is in charge of Platoon No. 9. His small frame and shiny mustache are not intimidating at first, until he shows his stern side towards the young soldiers. The brutal severity of discipline the Corporal is known for changes once he gets a taste of the front lines. From then on a new tender and tender person is born in need of companionship. Himmelstoss, "had the reputation of being the strictest disciplinarian in the camp, and he was proud of it." (Page 26) It is clear that he enjoyed what he did, which was disciplining soldiers. Himmelstoss trained soldiers in the fields so they could be ready for whatever awaited them on the front lines. A disciplined training activity was to step forward and lie down upon order of the corporal. The soldiers were trained until they became "a lump of mud and [they] finally collapsed." (Page 26) The reason for this practice was to make the soldier fit and have high endurance on the battlefield. Soldiers under Himmelstoss' discipline learned to become "harsh, suspicious, ruthless, vicious, harsh and this was good; for these attributes were precisely what we (soldiers) lacked." (Page 29) No matter how sharp and severe the disciplinary training was for the soldiers, at least they are satisfied with what they learned and also I am intrigued by this quality that the corporal had because in the army the soldiers should be trained through discipline and if I were in this environment, I think strict discipline would only discipline me. Furthermore, the Corporal's brutal trait is revealed when he makes his student soldiers do tasks that are simply savage. For example, he makes Paul "make his bed fourteen times in one morning. Every time he had some flaw to find." (Page 26) It shows how brutal a man can be that a bed has to be made fourteen times and every time there is something wrong. Additionally, Himmelstoss had Paul knead, "a pair of prehistoric boots that remained hard as iron for twenty hours".