POST WAR RECOVERY

Dear Hem,

As you share in your letter to Bill Horne, dated December 13, 1918, "And so I'm coming home and start the battle for buns or the skirmish for stew or the tussle for turnovers as soon as I can." You are back stateside and ready to hit the bricks and make up for lost time in your writing and reporting. This is good news.

My heart goes out to you, dear friend, as you are "homesick" for Italy now and yearning to get back to the lady you love, "Don't for the Lord's sake come to this country as long as you can help it. That is from one who knoweth. I'm patriotic and willing to die for this great and glorious nation. But I hate like the deuce to live in it." This you wrote in your letter to Jim Gamble, dated March 3, 1919.

It must be quiet a change to be on the speaking circuit sharing your stories of the war. From what you share, I get that you are not comfortable with the way those around you perceive you, "They've tried to make a hero out of me here. But you know and I know that all the real heroes are dead. If I had been a really game guy I would have gotten myself killed off." 

Dear Hem, your guilt about surviving the war and your sense of not being worthy having been rejected during the draft, and having to go as a part of the Red Cross has you feeling like an impostor compared to the "real" soldiers who fought, were wounded, and who died. That sense of being an impostor will follow you and goad you throughout your life. 

You returned home sooner than you wanted to only to find that you needn't have, "Coming home with high resolves to start in at once on the battle for buns and expecting to find all finances very low I'm greeted with this from the Dad, 'Never better. Everything going great. Why didn't you ask me for some kale and stay over if you wanted to!' That was the last straw. I had everything sized up wrong."

This isn't the homecoming you had expected or dreamed of, and it marks the beginning of a really difficult time for you. Hem, I wouldn't have wished this on you for anything. I had hoped you'd get back to feeling good and feeling good about yourself and your life, but that's not the way it is, and that's not to be.

Hem, sometimes absence makes the heart grow fonder, and sometimes not. I'm afraid that Ag may not be weathering your separation well. You write in your letter to Bill Horne dated March 5, 1919, "(My) Ag does not know when she is coming home. She doesn't want to come home at all. I can't blame her cause I didn't either. But either one has to cross the ocean. I can't cross and have anything when I hit the other side. So I guess it will end in the little C. around the C." You go on to further share, "I'm still as much in love as ever Bill. Hope Ag stays that way. 'Cause if she shouldn't life wouldn't be worth living."

I hope it works out for you and Ag as I'd hate to see heartbreak added to your burden. 

Sending you hugs and best wishes.

Your friend,
Betsy

IN ITALY AND IN LOVE

Ernest Hemingway and Ag in Italy and in Love

Dear Ernest,

It's good to hear that you are "on the mend" from your wounds. It may be that leg of yours will continue to challenge you throughout your life. Wounds like that leave lasting scars and damage. In your letter dated 20 November, 1918 you wrote your family, "My blame leg is worse than a barometer, it aches with every change in temperature and I can feel snow two days in advance." I don't blame you for wanting to extend your stay in Italy where you have the opportunity to heal and convalesce in much more hospitable conditions than winter in Chicago might offer.

In this same letter you write of your expectations for rest and relaxation, "The Bellias want me to stay a couple of weeks at Turino. And I've promised Nick to go shooting with him in Abruzzi and there is a chance to go pig sticking in Sardinia. They have boars there you ride them down with a spear on horse back. It is regarded as quelque sport. Captain Gamble wants me to go to Madeira with him for two months. It is tropical there and very cheap living and a wonderful place... In the south of Italy the weather is great though they say."

Hem, I am concerned for you, my friend. In your heart of hearts I feel you know what will serve you best and yet you seem to continually subjugate your own best interests for the expectations of friends and family that may not be in your best interest. After making all these wonderful plans to "winter" in Italy you finally give in to your families sentiments that you need to get back to the states and pick up the yoke of your responsibilities. 

I have to say that I believe in what your heart of hearts is telling you. Sometimes, Hem, the choices others would make for us, even though they may feel they are advising us "in our best interests," in the end simply aren't. You have the woman you love within reach. You are on the mend in a country that you love and that loves you. Staying however long you feel serves you is not a bad thing. How different your life might have been if you had chosen to stay? I can't help but wonder.

In your letter dated December 11, 1918 you write your family that you've booked passage to the states. Your choice will forever change and shape your life in ways you could not foresee. This choice will haunt you. You write, "For a while I was going to go down to Madeira and the Canaries with Capt. Gamble but I realize that if I blow down there and bum I never will get home. This climate and this country get you, and the Lord ordained differently for me and I was made to be one of those beastly writing chaps y'know. You know I was born to enjoy life but the Lord neglected to have me born with money - so I've got to make it and the sooner the better."

Your love for your dearest girl, Ag, is evident in what you write to your friend, Bill Smith, "Bill this is some girl and I thank God I got crucked so I met her. Damn it I really honestly can't see what the devil she can see in the brutal Stein but by some very lucky astigmatism she loves me Bill. So I'm going to hit the States and start working for the firm. Ag says we can have a wonderful time being poor together and having been poor alone for some years and always more or less happy I think it can be managed... Why man I've only got about 50 more years to live and I don't want to waste any of them and every minute that I'm away from that Kid is wasted."

You, my dear Hem, are head-over-heels in love! You close your letter to Bill with, "And so I'm coming home and start the battle for buns or the skirmish for stew, or the tussle for turnovers as soon as I can... Bill I am undoubtedly the most lucky bum in the world. The temptation comes to rave - but I won't."

Ah, dear Hem, hold to your hearts desire but know that life is a fickle mistress and just when you're on top of the world is when you have to watch out for the slippery spots. I love your idealism and your passion but my fear for you is that the game of life plays no favorites and sometimes it's when we think we have the world by the tail that things can get out of hand. When happiness is within our reach why do we so often think we need to walk away in order to make it better?

Give my best to the family. I look forward to reading more about your adjusting to life back stateside.

Your friend,
Betsy

WW1: THE FINAL DAYS

Ernest Hemingway Recovering for WW1 Wounds

Dear Ernest,

Your letter dated October 18, 1918 speaks of missing home and your appreciation of your continued correspondence and sharing of photos with home in order to stay connected, "If you only realized how much we appreciate pictures, Pop you would send em often. Of yourselves and the kids and the place and the Bay. They are the greatest cheer producers of all, and everybody likes to see everybody elses pictures." You are still on the long road to recover from being wounded at the front, and I'm sure that, at times, spirits can wane and homesickness set in. 

What your Dad wrote about "coming home," and your reply sheds light on your feelings of being part of of a brotherhood and something that's important. At the same time your reply reflects your hurt at being rejected during the draft process when you initially tried to enlist, "It would be foolish for us to come home because the Red X is a necessary organization and they would just have to get more men from the states to keep it going. Besides we never came over here until we were all disqualified for military service you know. It would be criminal for me to come back to the states now. I was disqualified before I left the states because of my eye. I now have a bum leg and foot and there isn't an army in the world that would take me. But I can be of service over here and I will stay here just as long as I can hobble and there is a war to hobble to. And the ambulance is no slackers job. We lost one man killed and one wounded in the last two weeks. And when you are holding down a front line canteen job, you know you have just the same chances as the other men in the trenches and so my conscience doesn't bother me about staying."

And hobble back to the font you did, only to come down with a raving case of jaundice. There is an up side as you say, "I had the satisfaction of being in the offensive any way and now I can rest up in the hospital and get cured and finish the treatments on my leg." Your plans, as you share them, are to heal up and then take the two weeks leave that you have coming to see some of Italy: Rome, Naples, Sicily, and Florence.

The time you spend exploring Italy will mark the beginning of a lifelong love affair with this country. It's people have already endeared themselves to you, "The Italians have shown the world what they could do. They are the bravest troops in the Allied Armies. The mountain country is almost impassible to skilled Alpine climbers and yet they fight and conquer in it and by the time you get this they'll have the Austrians all the way out of Italy."

On November 11, 1918 you wrote your family, "Well it's all over! And I guess everybody is plenty joyous. I would have liked to see the celebration in the States, but the Italian Army showed the wonderful stuff it is made of in that last offensive. They are great troops and I love them!"

You also wrote that you plan to stay in Italy for awhile as you are still going through treatments on your leg and you have invitations to visit with friends there, do some fishing and decompressing, and have chosen to put off passage to the States because, as you put it, "I don't like the Atlantic in the Winter!" I don't hold it against you one bit, Hem. You've just come through some rough times and the thought of days of dark water and a stormy passage would put off anybody. Particularly when you compare that to the sunny, warm embrace of the Italian countryside and a country and people who are grateful to their hero. Yes, by all means, bask in that, and take the time to heal, for as long as you need.

You write of your opportunity, "After my treatments are finished I've been invited by an Italian officer to take two weeks shooting and trout fishing in the province of Abruzzi. He wants me to spend Christmas and New Years at his country home and guarantees fine quail, pheasant and rabbit shooting. Abruzzi is very mountainous and is in the south of Italy and will be beautiful in December. There are also several good trout rivers and Nick claims the fishing is good. So I'll take my permission there. After that I'll come back to Milan and out to the X front and when I'm not needed I'll come home."

Hem, dearest, there is so much healing that has to happen because of this awful war and I hope you take all the time you need to make that happen for you. 

Wishing you the best on your journey of recovery.

Warmest Regards,
Betsy

CAUGHT IN THE CROSS-HAIRS

Ernest Hemingway in Hospital in Milan Summer of 1918

Dear Ernest,

Sometimes the conditions of the world that surround our birth and life sweep us along in such a way that our future seems out of our control. Sometimes the power of events comes together in a "super cell" event (like a class 5 tornado) where conditions seem to rip through our lives leaving us struggling to make meaning of it, and trying to hold ground and to determine what the path forward is in the raw revelation of the drastically changed landscape of our life.

What I know about you, Hem, is that you are a romantic, an adventurer, a soul who embraces a passion for life that holds stories, and dreams, and "great pals." You are someone who loves the great out of doors in an intimate, playful and comfortable way. You have made yourself an observer of the human condition and a forger of your way through this cultural maze, progressing towards your happiness. Already you have started to misunderstand the objectives and intents of others as you "see" the world differently than most.

The world of Ernest Hemingway, as framed in your letters, is a world where men are men, and women are women. Men are expected to be fighters, and lovers of passion and destiny; and women are a mystery, a conundrum of conflicting thoughts, words, and deeds, whose scent and presence is like a beautiful rose in bloom - pulling you inexorably towards it even as it as it warns you off with it's sharp thorns.

You were born before your time, Ernest, and at the same time you were born too late. You see the world in technicolor and high definition, and yet your world is also a world with traditional boundaries and honor, and camaraderie that belies distance and time. Yes, Ernest, as I think on your early letters, honor and camaraderie are so very important in your life and stories.

So now you lie in a hospital bed in Italy. You are on the slow road to recovery after being wounded in a shell explosion at the Italian front that left over 200 fragments embedded in your body. You lie in a hospital bed in Italy as the war rages in Europe, as your country struggles to support the war effort and morns it's dead, receives back it's wounded, and sends it's sons. The raw events that unfold around you have to weigh on you as you immerse yourself in where you are and what you are about. What you share in your letters from the front poignantly points to the erosive effects of current events on your sense of how the world should be, but the strength of your beliefs continues to shine through, even among your dark moments of disclosure and your brief lapses of faith.

What I am detecting, Hem, at this stage in your life, is that you have made a commitment to a way of seeing and engaging in the world that I suspect will follow you through to the end. As I connect with your choice and come to understand that you have chosen "a path less traveled," I wonder how you will cope with that choice and the related consequences. A life choice such as yours can play out in a number of different ways over time and given the test of reality. How will you deal with the challenges that arise? How will you face those who are critical, judgmental, and doubting of your view and choices? And, ultimately, how will you come to terms with yourself in the light of how the world sees you?

I am looking forward to exploring the answers to these questions in your letters and life to come. 

Wishing you well on your road to recovery.

Your friend,
Betsy

THE ADVENTURE AND REALITY OF WAR

Dearest Hem,

Well, as they say back home, "In for a dime, in for a dollar."

You write of your arrival in Paris, "We heard our first shell arrive soon after Breakfast. Nothing but a dull boom (like blasting at Summit). We had no means of knowing where it hit but it was a long way away."

Paris was starting to feel the pressure of the enemy shelling, but there was still room for levity and fun for those newly arrived and unaware of the pending danger, "Have seen all the sights. The Champs Elysee. Tuilleries, Louvre Invalides Arc D'Triomphe etc... Ted Jenks and I are having Le Grande Time. Tonight we went to the Follies Bergert. Hot puppums... We leave for Milan tomorrow - Tuesday - night. Travel first class all way. Tis Ye gay life."

You follow with a brief note to your father, "Everything Lovely. We go to the Front tomorrow. I'm in the mountains. Ted and I were split up. Everything quiet now they say. We've been treated like Kings. Been two days here. Wonderful in Alps." Dated that same day as the note to your father was a note to a friend in Kansas City, "Having a wonderful time!!! Had my baptism of fire my first day here, when an entire munition plant exploded. We carried them in like at the General Hospital, Kansas City. I go to the front tomorrow. Oh Boy!!! I'm glad I'm in it. They love us down here in the mountains."

Later in July you wrote your friend, Ruth in Oak Park, Illinois, "It all seems about a million miles away and to think that this time last year we had just finished graduating. If anybody had told me when I was reading that damn fool prophecy last year that a year from date I would be sitting out in front of a dug out in a nice trench 20 yards from the Piave River and 40 yards from the Austrian lines listening to the little ones whimper way up in the air and the big ones go scheeeeeeeek Boom and every once in a while a machine gun go tick a tack a tock I would have said, 'Take another sip.'"

You go on to tell Ruth about a shell that came right through the roof of the house where you were staying, but it's the description of what you are doing in the war effort, and for whom that I find most interesting,"What I am supposed to be doing is running a posto Di ricovero. That is I dispense chocolate and cigarettes to the wounded and the soldiers in the front line. Each aft and morning I load up a haversack and take my tin lid and gas mask and beat it up to the trenches. I sure have a good time but miss their being no Americans. Gee I have darn near forgot the English language."

Dear Hem, what a mess you are in. The local paper in Oak Park, Illinois was ablaze with your story, "Ernest Hemingway, son of Dr. and Mrs. C.E. Hemingway and a member of the Red Cross Ambulance Corps in Italy, received his baptism of fire just five weeks after his arrival overseas and, moreover, has won a citation for bravery."

Hem, how did you do it? With over 200 pieces of shell lodged in your body you managed to rescue and carry a fellow soldier to the first aid dug-out. Your friend Ted writes to your parents, "An enormous trench mortar hit within a few feet of Ernest while he was giving out chocolate. The concussion of the explosion knocked him unconscious and buried him with earth. There was an Italian between Ernest and the shell. He was instantly killed while another, standing a few feet away, had both his legs blown off. A third Italian was badly wounded and this one Ernest, after he had regained consciousness, picked up on his back and carried to the first aid dug-out."

You later wrote your parents about the event, "You know they say there isn't anything funny about this war. And there isn't. I would say it was hell, because that's been a bit overworked since Gen. Sherman's time, but there have been 8 times when I would have welcomed Hell... F'rexample. In the trenches during an attack when a shell makes a direct hit in a group where you're standing. Shells aren't bad except direct hits. You just take chances on the fragments of the bursts. But when there is a direct hit your pals get spattered all over you. Spattered is literal."

You, who just turned 19 in July, now laid up for months in a military hospital in Italy would struggle for much longer than you expected in order to recover from your wounds. At the end of August you wrote your mother to tell her that your still awfully weak yet, that your right leg was taken out of the cast and that there's still more "carving" that has to happen to repair the damage.

As always a romantic, you also wrote her that you have fallen in love with an American nurse who works at the Hospital, though you try to play it down as you know your Mother has a habit of getting worked up over news like that.

You write your parents, at the end of September, that you're getting out and about a bit and that you are enjoying your recovery time in Italy now that you are more mobile. One of the most poignant things that you wrote your parents about the war has to do with death and dying, "There are no heroes in this war. We all offer our bodies and only a few are chosen, but it shouldn't reflect any special credit on those that are chosen. They are just the lucky ones. I am very proud and happy that mine was chosen, but it shouldn't give me any extra credit. Think of the thousands of other boys that offered. All the heroes are dead. And the real heroes are the parents. Dying is a very simple thing. I've looked at death, and really I know. If I should have died it would have been very easy for me. Quite the easiest thing I ever did. But the people at home do not realize that. They suffer a thousand times more. When a mother brings a son into the world she must know that some day the son will die. And the mother of a son that has died for his country should be the proudest woman in the world, and the happiest. And how much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered."

How has your view of the world and yourself changed, Ernest? Is the burden of these events weighing on you? Do you dream of your prewar life and does it now seem forever lost in the stark light of war and death? 

As I look ahead to your own eventual aging and death I wonder if you still felt that way when you were older - if you still felt that dying in a youthful "blaze of light" outweighed old age and death. In your mind did aging exclude youthfulness? I may have thought that in my 20s, but I've discovered that the mind ages differently than the body and that it's possible to remain youthful in thought and view well into the more advanced years of life. That discovery, for me was a revelation, as I had assumed, aging precluded a youthful mind. I am hard-pressed, at times, in marrying the thoughts of "growing old gracefully", however, I don't necessarily see youth as an advantage either. Each stage of life comes with its upside and its downside.

What I see, for you, is that the idea of adventure as lived by inexperienced youth has been seriously wounded by the reality of war. It will be interesting to see what comes out the other side of recovery.

THE PULL OF WAR

Ernest Hemingway, Ambulance Driver

Well, Ernest,
We both knew this time was coming.

You're off to war!

In a flurry of bustle and preparing you've left family, home, and the familiar behind. In your eyes, another great adventure!

As you travel east by train, you write your grandparents, "We are at Cleveland and having a great trip. It is a fine bunch of fellows."

You continue by writing your parents, "We are having a great trip and the bunch is very good. There are 15 fellows from mostly New Trier and Evanston and they are a dandy bunch...At New York I am going to get a canvass water proof Duffel bag with a chain and lock to keep all my stuff in. The meals have been very good so far."

Your train journey ends with a letter to your grandparents, "We are stopping at a hotel in Washington Square and are being completely equipped and uniformed. New York is a beautiful (city). Everything is lovely. I don't know my overseas address yet."

Your brief stay in New York where you are staging for passage to Europe is marked by excitement, discovery and eager anticipation,"We are quartered here at a very nice Hotel in Washington Square. The heart of Greenwich Village. It is just a half block from 5th Ave. and the arch and right on the square...Our uniforms are regular United States Army officers' and look like a million dollars. Privates and non coms must salute us smartly."

You shared with your parents how you met up with your friend, Ted, "I met Ted all right yesterday and we are rooming together here. We have a bunch of dandy fellows in our unit and are going to have a wonderful time...We bummed around and went up in the top of the Woolworth Tower 796 feet - 62 stories high. We could see the camouflaged boats going in and out of the harbor and see way up the East river to Hell's Gate."

Hem, what were you thinking? You wrote your parents in a letter dated May 18, 1918, "Have decided against ye little choich around the corner temporarily. Much nicer to be engaged."

You mother lapsed into epiplectic worry and your father writes (after you wired that it was a joke), "Your wire explained the 'joke' which has taken five nights sleep from your mother and father... hope you have written your dear mother, who was broken hearted."

Hem, your parents are filled with concern for what is coming. However you seem to be simply full of love of the adventure! You write, "Cheer up Ye Old Pop for nobody gets my insurance save yourself... we sail Wednesday via France. Landing at Bordeaux. Go to Paris, and then to Milan. Were going on a rotten old tub on the French line... We are having a great time. Don't worry about me whatever you do and trust my good judgement."

Hem, you're 19 years old. Your world and life is about to change in ways you never expected. You write you father about getting engaged to Mae Marsh, the actress, "Miss Marsh no kidding says she loves me. I suggested the little church around the corner but she opined as how ye ware widow appealed not to her. So I sunk the 150 plunks Pop gave me in a ring so I am engaged anyway. Also broke. Dead... Any way my girl loves me and says she believes I am going to be a great newspaper man and says she will wait for me." When interviewed years later Mae Marsh would deny ever meeting you.

What is going through your mind? Is there fear, some desperation, the need for something to hold onto? Your life is morphing faster than you can keep up with. What acts of grasping at what straws unfold as you are pulled inexorably towards the killing fields of Italy?

You write your parents from shipboard, before landing, "According to the latest dope we are going right down to our headquarters after we leave Paris and then go right out to the lines. To take the place of the gang whose time is up. Our six months start from the day we start driving so it will probably carry us pretty well into the winter. Address me care of the American Consul Milano Italy, Italian Ambulance Service American Red Cross. Much Love Ernie."

Hem, your in the mix now! 


EVENTS IN EUROPE AT THAT TIME: May 28-29, 1918 - Troops of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division capture the village of Cantigny from the Germans and hold it. The American Expeditionary Force (AEF) is commanded by General John Pershing who is determined to maintain all-American fighting units, rather than parcel out American troops to the British and French armies. By now, 650,000 American soldiers have arrived in France, with the number growing by 10,000 per day.

You arrive in Italy following their lowest point and worst defeat. They are a battered nation who will carry the scars of this war for generations, never mind the resentment at not having been given what they felt they had been promised at the Treaty of London, and disappointment and resentment would fester for years following the disappointment.

EVENTS IN ITALY: In October 1917 came the disaster of Caporetto. In this battle, in fact a series of battles, the Italians had to fight the whole Austrian Army and 7 divisions of German troops. The Italian Army lost 300,000 men. Though the Italians had a victory at Vittorio Veneto in 1918, the psychological impact of Caporetto was huge. The retreat brought shame and humiliation to Italy.

You, dear Ernest are walking into the middle of a lit powder keg.