Edward Nately

Edward Nately is a young bombardier fresh from a wealthy family, earnest and naive amid the chaos of his squadron. He's fallen hopelessly in love with a prostitute in Rome who barely notices him, and he clings to old-fashioned ideas about duty, patriotism, and honor that the war seems determined to mock.

Stowell plays Nately's sincerity so straight that it becomes almost unbearable to watch, a boy's decency dropped into an absurdist meat grinder. The show uses him as a foil for cynicism, most memorably in his debate with a shrewd old man who dismantles his ideals with cheerful logic. His innocence is the joke, and also the tragedy.