English Literatur

Ernest Hemingway Biography

At Bordeaux, France, Hemingway and Brumback boarded a train headed to Milan, Italy. Shortly after they settled in, a munitions factory exploded, and Hemingway was stunned to discover that "the dead are more women than men." After a few weeks of making routine ambulance runs and transporting dying and wounded men to hospitals, Hemingway grew impatient. Wanting to see more action, he traveled to the Austro-Italian border, where he finally had a sense of being at the wartime front.


During this time near the Austro-Italian border, Hemingway was severely wounded. An Austrian projectile exploded in the trenches and sent shrapnel ripping into his legs. Trying to carry an Italian soldier to safety, Hemingway caught a machine-gun bullet behind his kneecap and one in his foot. A few days later, he found himself on a train, returning to Milan. Later, writing about being wounded, he recalled that he felt life slipping from him. Some literary critics believe that it was this near death experience that obsessed Hemingway with a continual fear of death and a need to test his courage that lasted the rest of his life.

A few months later, the war was over and Hemingway returned to the States with a limp and a fleeting moment of celebrity. At home in Oak Park, Illinois, Hemingway immediately felt homesick for Italy. All of his friends were gone, and he received a letter from a nurse with whom he'd fallen in love while he was hospitalized. The news was not good: She had fallen in love with an Italian lieutenant. Ten years later, this nurse would become the model for the valiant Catherine Barkeley in A Farewell to Arms.

Label: Ernest Hemingway