Certainly Ernest Hemingway’s “In Another Country” is among Hemingway’s finest work.  The narrator, whom we could basically regard as Hemingway, has a placid attitude towards his situation as a wounded soldier holed up in an Italian hospital.  He likewise has a benevolent attitude towards his fellow Italian soldiers, who have also been injured. 

That being said, he feels somewhat removed from his fellow soldiers given that they performed great acts of bravery to earn their medals, whereas the narrator hilariously and self-effacingly suggests that he received his medals for being American: 

“The boys at first were very polite about my medals and asked me what I had done to get them. I showed them the papers, which were written in very beautiful language […]but which really said, with the adjectives removed, that I had been given the medals because I was an American.” (Hemingway p.67) 

But if the narrator doesn’t deserve his medals, as he humbly suggests, don’t confuse that with the merit of Ernest Hemingway’s battlefield valor in WWI, which was very real. Here is the citation for his Italian Silver Medal of Military Valor:

"...gave proof of courage and self-sacrifice. Gravely wounded by numerous pieces of shrapnel from an enemy shell, with an admirable spirit of brotherhood, before taking care of himself, he rendered generous assistance to the Italian soldiers more seriously wounded by the same explosion and did not allow himself to be carried elsewhere until they had been evacuated." (quted in Strathern p.10-11). 

After this heroism, Hemingway, such a man of honor, was loath to be seen in Italy until he got his “wound stripes and medal ribbon” (Strathern 13), for fear of being mistaken as a malingerer. The New York Star described the young Hemingway as having “more scars than any other man, in or out of uniform, who defied the shrapnel of the Central Powers” (quoted in Strathern 13).

To be clear, the narrator of “In Another Country,” if he is meant to be a stand-in for Hemingway, is very modest indeed. That is part of the soul and character of the short story.

Most impactfully, “In Another Country” contains that Hemingway trick of containing so much depth beneath the surface of rather prosaic dialogue and prose.  In other words, the short story contains multitudes.  I’m referring here specifically to the plight of the major, whose wife we learn has died.  This explains his stirring and seemingly nonsensical admonition to the narrator: 

“A man must not marry.  He cannot marry […] If he is to lose everything, he should not place himself in a position to lose that.  He should not place himself in a position to lose.  He should find things he cannot lose” (Hemingway p.69). 

The gallant major later apologies to the narrator, explaining the cause of his sudden rage.  For his part, the narrator in turn expresses his sympathy for the death of the major’s wife, a drop of grief among the multitude of death, heroism, and loss which surrounds the war.  

Works Cited 

Hemingway, Ernest. The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories. NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955. 

Strathern, Paul. Hemingway In 90 Minutes. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005.

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