Something necessary or indeipensable: food shelter, and other necessities of life. The fact of being necessary or indispensable; indispensability: the necessity of adequate housing.
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.
