A year passes, one in which there were “many victories.” As a result, the side of the narrator (still identified only as “we”) advances across a river and occupies a captured enemy town, Gorizia.
Evidently it is World War I, and the action in this chapter takes place in the Alps around the frontier between Italy and present-day Slovenia. Allied with Britain, France, and Russia against the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany, Italy is responsible for preventing the Austro-Hungarian forces from assisting the Germans in their fight against Britain and France on the war’s western front, and Russia in the east.
Now Hemingway begins to introduce his cast of characters. During dinner in the officers’ mess, on the night of winter’s first snowfall, the narrator’s fellow officers taunt the priest, their chaplain—though, significantly, the narrator himself does not join in the baiting. The Italian officers recommend that the narrator spend his forthcoming leave in a variety of low-lying Italian towns and cities, while the priest suggests he travel to the mountains.
