As noted elsewhere, the Nick Adams stories were not published in chronological order, paralleling Nick Adams' maturing from a small boy to a mature adult. This story, for instance, appeared in the 1927 issue of Scribner's magazine, some two to four years after "Indian Camp," the first of the Nick Adams stories to appear. Here, the narrator is unnamed, and early critics didn't associate this narrator with Nick Adams, but subsequent critics agree that the main character is indeed the Nick Adams of the other stories, the Nick Adams who will go to the Big Two-Hearted River to fish and forget his war experiences and try to heal his physical and psychological wounds.
When the story was first published, many readers were puzzled about what this story was about. Later critics have even wondered if this is the major's story or the narrator's story. Read within the context of the other Nick Adams stories, this question is easily solved. "In Another Country" is, of course, a Nick Adams story. From the other stories, we realize that Nick Adams is honest, virile, and, more important, a person of extreme sensitivity. By observing the particular state of mind of the young narrator at the beginning of the story, we see that what happens to the major makes a tremendous impact on the young, wounded soldier.
