Summary: Chapter VI
After spending two days at “the posts,” Henry visits Catherine again.
She asks him if he loves her and he says yes. She tells him to call
her by her first name. They walk through the garden, and Catherine
expresses how much she loves him and says how awful the past few
days have been without him. Henry kisses her, thinking that she is
“probably a little crazy,” but not caring. Aware that he does not love
Catherine, Henry feels that he is involved in a complicated game,
like bridge. To his surprise, she acknowledges their charade, asking,
“This is a rotten game we play, isn’t it?” She assures him that she’s
not crazy, and, though they are no longer playing, he persuades her
to kiss him. She breaks from the kiss suddenly and sends him away
for the night. At home, Rinaldi senses Henry’s romantic confusion
and admits to feeling relieved that he himself did not become involved
with a British nurse.
Summary: Chapter VII
Driving back from his post the next afternoon, Henry picks
up a soldier with a hernia. The man admits that he threw away his
truss (a support for a hernia) on purpose so that he would not have
to return to the front. He fears being turned over to his commanding
officers, aware that they are familiar with this trick. Henry instructs
the man to give himself a bump on the head, which he does, thereby
earning his way into the hospital. Henry thinks about the upcoming
offensive, which is scheduled to start in two days. He wishes that
he were with Catherine, enjoying a hot night and good wine in Milan.
At dinner, the men drink and tease the priest. Rinaldi escorts the drunken
Henry to the British hospital, feeding him coffee beans to sober
him up. At the nurses’ villa, Helen Ferguson tells Henry that Catherine
is sick and will not see him. Henry feels surprisingly “lonely and
hollow.”
Summary: Chapter VIII
The next day, Henry hears of an attack scheduled for that
night. As the cars pass the British hospital on their way to the
front, Henry tells the driver of his car to stop. He hurries in
and asks to see Catherine. He tells her that he is off for “a show”
and that she shouldn’t be worried. She gives him a St. Anthony medal
to protect him. Henry returns to the car and the caravan continues
toward Pavla, where the fighting will take place.
Chapter IX
At Pavla, Henry sees roadside trenches filled with artillery
and Austrian observation balloons hanging ominously above the distant hills.
A major greets Henry and his drivers and installs them in a dugout.
The men talk disparagingly about the various ranks of soldiers and
engage Henry in a discussion about ending the war. Henry maintains
that they would all be worse off if the Italian army decided to
stop fighting, but Passini, one of the ambulance drivers, respectfully
disagrees, maintaining that the war will go on forever unless one
side decides to stop. The men are hungry, so Henry and Gordini,
another driver, fetch some cold macaroni and a slab of cheese from
the main wound-dressing station. As they return to the dugout, shelling
begins and bombs burst around them. As the men eat the food, there
is “a flash, as when a blast-furnace door is swung open.” Henry
finds himself unable to breathe and thinks himself about to die.
A trench mortar has exploded through the dugout, killing Passini
and injuring Gordini. The two remaining drivers, Gavuzzi and Manera,
carry Henry to a wound-dressing station, where a British doctor
treats Henry’s ruined leg. An ambulance is loaded with the wounded
and sent off to the hospital.
Analysis: Chapters VI–IX
Henry’s small personal stake in the war, toward which
he displays a supreme indifference, becomes increasingly clear in
these chapters. As an American soldier fighting in the Italian army—an
army that Catherine and the other British nurses don’t take seriously—Henry feels
as detached from the war as he feels from everything else in his life.
He claims that the war does “not have anything to do with me,” and
he feels no real commitment to it. His behavior with the soldier who
admits to tossing away his truss in order to worsen his hernia and thereby
evade service is telling; Henry exhibits none of the integrity that the
reader might expect of the young man’s commanding officer. Rather
than chastise him for his self-serving, irresponsible attitude, Henry
helps him plot his way into the hospital, thereby contributing,
in a small way, to the overall deterioration of the Italian army.
Henry’s behavior with the ambulance drivers further establishes his
detachment from the war. The men feel comfortable voicing their
contempt for the soldiers and their belief that Italy should withdraw
from the war in front of Henry, though they know better than to
“talk so other officers can hear.” Although Henry defends the Italian
army and the war effort, he does so from a calm, philosophical standpoint
rather than anger at the men’s disrespect. Also noteworthy is that
Henry risks his life for something as inglorious as a slab of cheese.
The scene in which he braves falling mortar shells in order to dress
his pasta upends the popular literary convention of the protagonist
facing great adversity to accomplish a noble end. Henry’s objective
is ridiculous, pathetic, and decidedly not heroic. That this scene
follows on the heels of a conversation in which the men maintain
that “war is not won by victory” amplifies the doubt cast upon romantic
ideals such as glory and honor.
