In Another Country

A short story by Ernest Hemingway, "In Another Country" is about an ambulance corps member in Milan during WWI. Although unnamed, he is assumed to be "Nick" a character Hemingway made to represent himself. He has an injured knee and visits a hospital daily for rehabilitation. There the "machines" are used to speed the healing. As he walks through the streets with fellow soldiers, the townspeople hate them openly because they are officers. Their oasis from this treatment is Cafe Cova, where the waitress are very patriotic. When the fellow soldiers admire the protagonist's medal, they learn that he is American, ipso facto not having to face the same struggles in order to achieve the medal, and no longer view him as an equal, but still recognize him as a friend against the outsiders. The protagonist accepts this, since he feels that they have done far more to earn their medals than he has. Later on, a major, Signor Maggiore, tells him that he should never get married because he is only setting himself up to get hurt when he loses his wife. Incidentally, right after he explains this he learns that his wife has died of pneumonia.