While driving his ambulance, the narrator encounters a fellow American, an infantryman fighting with the Italians who wants to be excused from combat because of the pain caused by a hernia. The narrator concocts a scheme: The infantryman should intentionally injure himself in the head. The American does so. Later, while writing home from his quarters, the narrator muses about alternatives to his situation and fantasizes about sex with Catherine Barkley in a hotel room in Milan. In the officers’ mess on his way to see Catherine, the narrator gets drunk (it is at this point in the narrative that we finally learn his name: Frederic Henry) while the officers once again torment the priest. As a result, Henry shows too late to see Catherine; he goes home feeling “lonely and hollow.”
