In the story "In Another Country," why does the boy with the handkerchief on his face have no medals?

The story is based on Hemingway's experiences in Italian hospitals after he was wounded in the leg while driving an ambulance in World War I. In the second World War, Italy was on the side of Germany and Japan, but in the first World War, Italy was allied with Britain, France and America. The narrator of "In Another Country" is rather cynical about the medals the Italian government was handing out so profusely. Some are meaningful and deserved, while others are mere tokens. The boy who wears a black silk bandage over his face did not receive any medals because he had been wounded after serving only one hour at the front, not long enough to qualify for a medal. He had lost his nose and was having his face rebuilt by some early form of plastic surgery. The reader can imagine that the unfortunate young boy will be disfigured for life.

Another boy who walked with us sometimes and made us five wore a black silk handkerchief across his face because he had no nose then and his face was to be rebuilt. He had gone out to the front from the military academy and been wounded within an hour after he had gone into the front line for the first time.

Hemingway was highly regarded for his ability to write dialogue that conveyed information and characterized the speaker. In this story, as elsewhere, he manages to convey the idea that the men are all speaking in Italian although the dialogue is in English. He does the same thing in his story "The Old Man at the Bridge," in which the narrator and the old Spaniard are presumably speaking in Spanish. And he does this exceptionally well in his best novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, in which the dialogue is all in English but understood, mainly because of the syntax and basic vocabulary, to be spoken mostly in Spanish.

A good example of how Hemingway writes dialogue in English that is to be taken as Italian is the following from the Italian major:

"He cannot marry. He cannot marry," he said angrily. "If he is to lose everything, he should not place himself in a position to lose that. He should not place himself in a position to lose. He should find things he cannot lose."

The Maggiore is using simple words and repetitions of important words because he knows the narrator's understanding of Italian is very limited.