Soldier's Home

“Soldier’s Home” is a short story first published in Ernest Hemingway’s 1925 debut collection In Our Time. The version discussed in this guide is from The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition (Scribner, 2003).

The story’s protagonist is Harold Krebs, a young man who returns home to Oklahoma after serving in World War I. It is one of many works by Hemingway, a WWI survivor, to show the impacts of the war on the Lost Generation.

Harold joins the Marines in 1917 while attending a Methodist College in Kansas. After serving in Belleau Wood, Soissons, the Champaign, St. Mihiel, and the Argonne, he returns to Oklahoma in the summer of 1919 after the war ends. Harold does not receive a hero’s welcome from the residents of his hometown, who are fatigued by the war and stories about its atrocities.

At first, Harold doesn’t want to talk about his experiences in the war. When he does feel the desire to talk, he discovers people don’t want to hear the truth about the war. When Harold meets fellow veterans, he is reminded of how sick and frightened he felt during the war.

Harold spends his days wandering around town.