Here, Hemingway has written what is essentially an account — sometimes realistic, sometimes impressionistic, and sometimes plainly confusing — of Nick Adams' coping with post-traumatic trauma and possibly a concussion suffered in battle during World War I.
As he is riding his bicycle along the Austro-Italian front in northern Italy, Nick sees scattered evidence of the ravages of war, described in a surrealistic manner: Pornographic cards are scattered among the dead bodies of Italian soldiers that have never been buried. The heat-swollen, rotting bodies have been stripped of anything of value, as have the corpses of the Austrian soldiers.
This setting — the Austro-Italian border — is an area that Hemingway knew well. As a volunteer Red Cross ambulance driver, he was often bored because there were no battles in which he could prove his heroism. As a result, he volunteered to help staff one of several supply centers, from which he'd take chocolate, cigarettes, and postcards to men on the front lines.
