Again Lieutenant Henry's desertion is foreshadowed, as he agrees with the soldier from Pittsburgh that they are engaged in a "rotten" war, then suggests (apparently without any guilt) a means by which the infantryman can opt out of the fighting. This episode is significant because it shows us that disillusionment with the war is not limited to Henry himself.
The narrator's name, incidentally, may allude to the protagonist of the American antiwar novel The Red Badge of Courage, whose war wound was as absurd as the Lieutenant's will be. Hemingway greatly admired that book's writer, Stephen Crane. The writer's refusal to reveal Henry's name until now is another strategy by which the protagonist's Everyman status is emphasized. It also stresses the faceless, interchangeable nature of soldiers in wartime; to those in charge, Hemingway seems to be saying, one ambulance driver is as good as any other, and all are merely bodies.
The naivete about the war exhibited by Henry in earlier scenes with Catherine Barkley is made explicit here: "Well, I knew I would not be killed," he thinks. "Not in this war. It did not have anything to do with me. It seemed no more dangerous to me myself than war in the movies." Again, Catherine knows that the war is very real as a result of having lost her fiancé to the fighting, but Henry has had no such experience — yet. She also knows what Henry will learn: His detachment and lack of fear do not mean that the realities and dangers of the war do not exist or that he is immune to them.
