"A Farewell to Arms": Book I Vocabulary

The river was low and there were stretches of sand and pebbles with a narrow channel of water and sometimes the water spread like a sheen over the pebbly bed.

The plain was rich with crops; there were many orchards of fruit trees and beyond the plain the mountains were brown and bare.

There was much traffic at night and many mules on the roads with boxes of ammunition on each side of their pack-saddles and gray motor trucks that carried men, and other trucks with loads covered with canvas that moved slower in the traffic.

There was much traffic at night and many mules on the roads with boxes of ammunition on each side of their pack-saddles and gray motor trucks that carried men, and other trucks with loads covered with canvas that moved slower in the traffic.

The mountain that was beyond the valley and the hillside where the chestnut forest grew was captured and there were victories beyond the plain on the plateau to the south and we crossed the river in August and lived in a house in Gorizia that had a fountain and many thick shady trees in a walled garden and a wistaria vine purple on the side of the house.

People lived on in it and there were hospitals and cafés and artillery up side streets and two bawdy houses, one for troops and one for officers, and with the end of the summer, the cool nights, the fighting in the mountains beyond the town, the shell-marked iron of the railway bridge, the smashed tunnel by the river where the fighting had been, the trees around the square and the long avenue of trees that led to the square; these with there being girls in the town, the King passing in his motor

People lived on in it and there were hospitals and cafés and artillery up side streets and two bawdy houses, one for troops and one for officers, and with the end of the summer, the cool nights, the fighting in the mountains beyond the town, the shell-marked iron of the railway bridge, the smashed tunnel by the river where the fighting had been, the trees around the square and the long avenue of trees that led to the square; these with there being girls in the town, the King passing in his motor

The road went up the valley a long way and then we turned off and commenced to climb into the hills again.

This captain baited him often.

“It is a filthy and vile book,” said the priest.

“Don’t you wish you could bellow like him?”

“Since you are gone we have nothing but frostbites, chilblains, jaundice, gonorrhea, self-inflicted wounds, pneumonia and hard and soft chancres.

“Absolutely,” I said and poured the basin full of water.

The battery in the next garden woke me in the morning and I saw the sun coming through the window and got out of the bed.

I had imagined that the condition of the cars, whether or not things were obtainable, the smooth functioning of the business of removing wounded and sick from the dressing stations, hauling them back from the mountains to the clearing station and then distributing them to the hospitals named on their papers, depended to a considerable extent on myself.

The attack would cross the river up above the narrow gorge and spread up the hillside.

“It was a ghastly show.”

“This is the picturesque front,” I said.

Rinaldi carried a holster stuffed with toilet paper.

It was an Astra 7.65 caliber with a short barrel and it jumped so sharply when you let it off that there was no question of hitting anything.

I sat now in the chair and an orderly of some sort looked at me disapprovingly from behind a desk while I looked at the marble floor, the pillars with the marble busts, and the frescoes on the wall and waited for Miss Barkley.

A regiment went by in the road and I watched them pass.

I helped the soldier with the rupture up on the seat with us.

I wished we had a Napoleon, but instead we had Ii Generale Cadorna, fat and prosperous and Vittorio Emmanuele, the tiny man with the long thin neck and the goat beard.

Rinaldi said that the French had mutinied and troops marched on Paris.

Then the major told the story of the eleven Czecho-slovaks and the Hungarian corporal.

“He has a rendezvous.

Driving in convoy is not unpleasant if you are the first car and I settled back in the seat and watched the country.

We went along the rough new military road that followed the crest of the ridge and I looked to the north at the two ranges of mountains, green and dark to the snow-line and then white and lovely in the sun.

They were going to put over another bridge when the bombardment started and some troops were to cross at the shallows up above at the bend of the river.

“You’re an orator.”

“We will convert him.”

I took out my knife, opened it, wiped off the blade and pared off the dirty outside surface of the cheese.

“That was a big trench mortar.”

He said there was so much dirt blown into the wound that there had not been much hemorrhage.

Gordini winced and smiled.

The Englishman broke into voluble and perfect Italian.

“I’ll look up their adjutant to do your papers and it will all go much faster.”

Lacerations of the scalp (he probed—Does that hurt?—Christ, yes!) with possible fracture of the skull.

Lacerations of the scalp (he probed—Does that hurt?—Christ, yes!) with possible fracture of the skull.

Your blood coagulates beautifully.”

The captain, doing things that hurt sharply and severing tissue—“Are you sure?”

He bandaged, his hands moving very fast and the bandage coming taut and sure.

They aren’t girls; they are old war comrades.”

I held up one of the sheaf of English papers.

“So long,” I said in dialect.

When the young men serenaded only the flute was forbidden.

But, they said, Japan is an ally of England.

This becomes sentimental.

I sucked on that and spit out the pith and watched the soldier pass up and down past a freight-car outside and after a while the train gave a jerk and started.