This statement is false.
According to NIH (National Institutes of Health), it is both strongly suggested AND required that the informed consent process be delivered in a language that is understandable to the subject. If the subject doesn't completely understand this process, it will be void as they have to be familiar with everything.
The narrator is Strickland, as to his role: well it is his story.
They go to Cafe Cova where the waitresses are very patriotic in this wartime Italy. While there they appear to reminisce about WWI and think about the value or meaning of their medals in which Nick's medals he feels are not earned nearly as much as the medals of the others. A fellow soldier warns him never to get married.
