nce Kat was such a father figure to him. “My lips tremble as I try to think. But I smile- Kat is saved. After a while I begin to sort out the confusion of voices that falls on my ears. ‘You might have spared yourself that,’ says an orderly. I look at him without comprehending. He points to Kat. ‘He is stone dead.’... I shake my head: ‘Not possible. Only ten minutes ago I was talking to him. He has fainted’” (Remarque 290). This quote is quite meaningful because Paul was in extreme shock that Kat died without him knowing it and he was also quite upset that he was the cause of his best friend’s death. It also showed that death is not the worst part of warfare, but bonds being broken between one another is the reason why war is so cruel. “There are different men here, men I cannot properly understand, whom I envy and despise. I must think of Kat and Albert and Muller and Tjaden, what will they be doing? No doubt they are sitting in the canteen, or perhaps swimming-soon they will have to go up to the front-line again” (Remarque 169). Friends were an important part of Paul’s life in war- he has spend more time with them than with his family. They were often referred as ‘war family’ since they spend so much time with each other, to rely on one another for survival. Another example can be seen within A Long Way Gone, where Ishmael, along with his friends who went with him to Mattru Jong, never get to see their families again because the ...