The Old Man and War

Ernest Hemingway’s wartime service

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was one of the most influential authors of the 20th century, whose adventurous lifestyle and world-famous literary oeuvre both captured the public’s imagination as much as his literary work. His fans probably know that he was involved in not one but three major European conflicts, but might not realize that his involvement once even went beyond the limits of law. Today’s article is about Hemingway’s action in World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II.
 
In early 1918, young Hemingway volunteered at the Red Cross to drive ambulance trucks in World War I. He was not the only well-known literary figure to do so: others included American novelist, poet and playwright Gertrude Stein, modernist poet E. E. Cummings, and novelist John Dos Passos. On the non-literary side, Walt Disney also served as a Red Cross ambulance driver during WWI.

Paris was being shelled by the Germans when Hemingway arrived to Europe. On his first day in Milan, Italy, he helped a rescue team retrieve the remains of female workers after an explosion in a munitions factory. Hemingway’s experiences as an ambulance driver acquainted him with the horrors of war, and gave him the inspiration for his novel A Farewell to Arms. On July 8, 1918, he was bringing cigarettes and chocolate from the canteen to men on the front when he was seriously wounded by mortar fire. His legs were hit by shrapnel, but he insisted on finishing helping others on the scene before undergoing surgery to save his legs. He later commented on the experience: "When you go to war as a boy you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed; not you ... Then when you are badly wounded the first time you lose that illusion and you know it can happen to you."
 
Hemingway spent half a year in hospital before he could return to the United States. He met and fell in love with an American nurse during his convalescence. He returned home in January 1919 believing that she would follow him in a few months and they would get married. Instead, she sent a letter informing him that she became engaged to an Italian officer. Hemingway was crushed, and the young man’s heartbreak informed his love life for the rest of his life: from that point on, he was always the one to abandon his partner before she could do the same to him.

Hemingway spent most of the 1920s in Paris, socializing with numerous other expatriates. He had wild drinking sessions with James Joyce, the Irish author of the novels Ulysses and the experimental, notoriously impenetrable Finnegans Wake. He received career help from American poet Ezra Pound, who would become a fascist and a propaganda radio broadcaster for Mussolini’s regime in World War II. He also developed a friendship “of admiration and hostility” with F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose stories chronicled the Jazz Age of the 1920s and 30s. Hemingway covered the Greco-Turkish War of 1921-22 and interviewed Benito Mussolini, but was not impressed. At a time when many commentators praised the Italian dictator for revitalizing the country, Hemingway already saw the man for who he was: “the biggest bluff in Europe.”

In a little-known episode of Hemingway’s life, his experiences in Spain led him into an unlikely cooperation with the NKVD, the Soviet secret police and the predecessor of the KGB. Hemingway fought alongside numerous members of the revolutionary left in Spain, and it’s no surprise that he found rapport with them – not because he necessarily supported the Soviet cause, but due to having a shared enemy.
 
According to a 2009 book by a former KGB officer, a Soviet spy named Jacob Golos approached Hemingway in New York in 1940, and the author agreed to act as a spy under the code name “Argo.” As far as historians can tell, Hemingway most likely never did anything that could have harmed the United States or benefited the NKVD. He never worked in a position where he could have accessed sensitive information, and it’s possible the NKVD only wanted him for his widespread network of high-profile friends. On his part, Hemingway was probably just excited by the idea of being a spy (and happy to do something to harm fascism), but ended up being completely useless to the Soviets.
 
In January 1941, Hemingway traveled to China with his third wife, Martha Gellhorn, to report on the Sino-Japanese war. The United States entered World War II at the end of the same year. Hemingway was back in Cuba at time and jumped at the chance to grab some action even though he was too old to serve. He assembled a bizarre circle of artists, bartenders, prostitutes, hunters, sailors and government officials into a private spy ring he called “the Crook Factory,” financially supported by the FBI. The ring’s purpose was to ferret out Axis sympathizers in Havana, a task they took to with great enthusiasm but absolutely no skill or success.

Hemingway’s next idea to be of service was to convince the U.S. ambassador to Cuba to outfit his private boat, the Pilar, with a direction finder, a few rifles and machine guns, some grenades, and a lot of fuel. He then gathered some of his friends (including a cousin of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill) and went off on a Caribbean cruise to hunt German U-boats. His plan was to wait for a submarine to surface and try to raid the Pilar for fish (German U-boats apparently did that to sailing boats on occasion), then turn the table on the German sailors and capture the submarine. The year-long mission was a complete dud: they once saw a U-boat from far away, but never managed to make contact with one. This one probably a good thing, as the plan of taking over an enemy submarine with a small handful of civilians was extremely harebrained and almost certainly suicidal.

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