A Hemingway code hero, Krebs wants to "live alone without consequences" because he has felt the "nausea in regard to experience that is the result of untruth or exaggeration." In short, he does not want to live without truth.
When Howard Krebs returns home from the war, he discovers that people do not want to hear the truth about what has occurred; instead, they desire stories of heroism and exaggerated incidents. Because they are not thrilled by the reality, Krebs finds himself telling people lies, and as a result Krebs begins to feel disinterested in everything and ashamed of himself.
Krebs also decides that he does not want to have a girlfriend because in a relationship there are usually lies, as well.
Like the code hero that he is, Krebs decides that he must leave home and act alone in order to be able to face life honestly and with courage. His final scene with his mother convinces Krebs he can no longer stay with his parents when he has to act as though he is still a boy and promise them that he will try to be good. Only by leaving can he be free-willed and true to himself.
Krebs is reacting to the less than warm welcome he received after returning to his hometown after serving in the Army during World War I.
Most of his fellow soldiers had returned home long before he was able to do so. The town had already heard all the horror stories and had grown weary of the tales of pain and suffering. Krebs soon learns to not tell any of his own experiences to anyone. His inability to express himself causes what we now know as depression.
The line that you are inquiring about, wanting to "live without consequences" comes when Krebs is contemplating becoming involved with a woman. He decides that he "did not want to get into the intrigue and politics." The whole idea of having to form another human relationship is too painful. The horrors of war combined with the callousness he percieves in his hometown causes Krebs to lose hope in life.
What does Krebs mean by wanting "to live along without any consequences"? Why might he feel that way?
Krebs, who suffers from his experiences in the war that do not match up with the perceptions of his family and the residents of his town, simply desires a quiet life of no commitments, a life without the dangers of intimacy and responsibility.
Krebs's return to the states is an anti-climactic one since his return follows long after that of many other soldiers, and "the greeting of heroes was over." In fact, Krebs finds himself compromised by his return as he discovers that people do not want him to relate the truth of the war. Consequently,
...a distaste for everything that had happened to him in the war set in because of the lies he had told.
Rather than lie about the war and lie to his mother that he will "try and be a good boy" for her, Krebs leaves home...
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as it, ironically, is not a "soldier's home," but is, instead, a tragic reminder of what he has lost and of that to which he can never return. For Krebs, the situation is the same as that described by the narrator of Thomas Wolfe's novel,You Can't Go Home Again:
You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ...back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time....
There is no escape from Time and Memory at home for Krebs where he must pretend that he has not been irrevocably changed by his experiences in the war. If he leaves home, he will be able to live honestly, at least, and not have to suffer the consequences of pretense.