EACH of these essays/entries is intended to stand alone, so there is a certain degree of duplication in them as it is unlikely they will be read in sequence or even that all will be read by a visitor to these pages. This is intentional: someone reading an essay/entry must not be puzzled by some allusion she or he might not understand because they have not read the other essays/entries.
Under fire, Hemingway lost all fear of risking himself in war and all the tact and restraint that had characterised his behaviour in Spain. His deliberate exposure to danger was inspired by a number of complex factors: a fatalistic attitude, an ability to dismiss the possibility of death, a belief that he was lucky and therefore invulnerable, and a desire to make an impressive adolescent gesture – even at the risk of his life – which would prove his courage
Jeffery Meyers, Hemingway, A Biography.
Did he receive preferential treatment as a war correspondent? Yes, I’m sure he did. So did a great many others . . . This accrues to fame and wide circulation. But Hemingway’s special privileges by no means depended on his literary renown. He had covered wars before and was, moreover, very much a military buff. He was he was an expert on strategy, tactics and military history. He spoke the same language as senior officers and many of them sought his company and conceived a great respect and personal affection for him.
Jeffery Meyers, in Hemingway, a biography
quoting fellow war correspondent Charles Collingwood.
The Tempest is a great, gaunt airplane. It is the fastest pursuit job in the world and is as tough as a mule. It has been reported with a speed of 400mph and should dive way ahead of its own noise. Where we were living, its job was to intercept the pilotless planes and shoot them down over the sea or in the open country as they came in on their sputtering roar toward London. . . . You love a lot of things if you live around them, but there isn’t any woman and there isn’t any horse, nor any before nor any after, that is as lovely as a great airplane, and men who love them are faithful to them even though they leave them for others. A man has only one virginity to lose in fighters, and if it is a lovely plane he loses it to, there his heart will always be.
Ernest Hemingway, London Fights The
Robots, Collier’s, August 19, 1944.
inspecting the RAF’s new Tempest aircraft and joining several bombing missions over France as an observer (which flights he described in later life as ‘serving with the RAF’).
Many of those he met had read his work, and he was largely celebrated as ‘the famous author Ernest Hemingway’, but he did not impress everyone. After he was introduced to several senior officers in the mess of one RAF station, he later wondered in print why they had not joined the more junior ranks on dangerous missions over Europe.
The implication that they were keeping out of harm’s way annoyed many — Hemingway did not know that these officers were privy to the D Day plans and the War Office had grounded them in case they crashed in France, were captured and interrogated.
Though Hemingway would not have been told why they were not flying, it was distinctly tactless of him to suggest they were cowards. Generally, there was a feeling that Hemingway, all high spirits and bonhomie, was trying too hard to be ‘Hemingway’.
In his biography, Carlos Baker quotes an RAF public relations officer John Pudney, who found Hemingway’s behaviour curiously offensive:
‘To me,’ said Pudney, ‘he was a fellow obsessed with playing the part of the Ernest Hemingway and hamming it to boot, a sentimental 19th-century actor called upon to act the part of the 20th-century tough guy. Set beside . . . a crowd of young men who walked so modestly and stylishly with Death he seemed a bizarre cardboard figure.’
. . .
After a brief one-week visit to France in mid-July when Hemingway was attached to one of General George’s Patton’s tank divisions, he returned to London complaining he did not understand tank warfare and was bored.
He was soon back in Normandy, attaching himself to the 22nd regiment of General Raymond Barton’s infantry division under Colonel Charles ‘Buck’ Lanham (right with Hemingway). For the next seven
Hemingway idealised Lanham, though largely in his own interests, and partly based Colonel Richard Cantwell, the central protagonist of his later novel Across The River And Into The Trees, on him. Jeffrey Reynolds sums it up well:
It would not be an exaggeration to say that Lanham, Hemingway’s alter ego, was one of his greatest fictional creations. He was idealized to heroic proportions to match Hemingway’s urgent need for a wartime comrade who would reflect, confirm, exalt and perpetuate his own martial expertise and daring adventures.
Meyers quotes fellow correspondent Bill Walton (also attached to the 22nd regiment) describing Lanham as ‘small, delicate and very neurotic’ and, adds Meyers,
With his lean, gray look, [Lanham] bore a striking resemblance to Dashiell Hammett.
Though a gallant soldier, he was also old-fashioned, straitlaced, thoroughly conventional, personally unimpressive and surprisingly dull. Gregory Hemingway [Hemingway’s third son who met him later when Lanham visited Havana] characterized him — in a far-fetched but perfectly appropriate word — as ‘nebbish’.
According to Meyers Lanham also seems to have idolised Hemingway. He writes that Lanham
Just as a Cuban submarine commander had suggested Hemingway was merely ‘a playboy’ when he was supposedly hunting German U-boots a year earlier (and fooling no one but himself), much the same might be claimed of his ‘soldiering’ in France after D Day, although he was certainly sometimes in danger and on one or two occasions could well have died.
There are several accounts of Hemingway’s sang froid, but his biographers cannot decide whether he was brave or simply reckless. Meyers writes
As for his apparent fearlessness, it is argued that he was, perhaps, simply no longer thinking straight. Barely two months after sustaining concussion in London in his early morning, blackout car crash, at the beginning of August in France he was again concussed.
He banged his head after leaping to safety from a motorcycle when he and photographer Robert Capa rounded a bend in the road and came face to face with a German anti-tank gun.
For several weeks he suffered from constant ringing in his ears, his speech was slow and slurred, he had a continual headache and complained he could not think clearly. That mishap also exacerbated the impotence (as his letters to Welsh indicate) which had started after the London crash and that lasted until well into November.
At one point Hemingway gave up all pretence of being a war correspondent when he ‘took command’ of a ragtag of French resistance fighters he had come across and who had adopted him as their leader and addressed him as ‘captain’ and ‘colonel’.
He and ‘his men’ made their headquarters in a hotel in Rambouillet, a town 30 miles south-west of Paris, and he sent out them out on patrol to garner intelligence on German positions.
In this instance Hemingway could well be accused of ‘playing soldier’ — he had removed his ‘war correspondent’ insignia from his uniform, acquired a large arsenal of rifles, pistols, ammunition and grenades in his hotel rooms, and interrogated German soldiers who had surrendered or been captured.
When his fellow correspondents arrived with the US army four days later — some of whom were not keen on Hemingway and his grandiosity — they felt his activities were putting their lives in danger: the Germans were entitled to execute as a spy a correspondent in uniform without credentials and might decide that Hemingway antics made all correspondents fair game.
They complained and at the beginning of October Hemingway was eventually summoned finally to testify before a military investigation.
It wasn’t just Hemingway’s fellow correspondents who were irritated by his grandiose airs. The French general Jacques-Phillipe Leclerc had been nominated by General Charles de Gaulle to lead the French forces into a liberated Paris, which he did on August 25, and he had arrived at the Chateau to Rambouillet, which was the summer residence of the French presidents, in preparation for the French forces’ triumphal entry.
Hemingway with Colonel David Bruce, who headed the newly formed OSS in France, arrived and announced he wanted to advise Leclerc on the best way to approach the city. In short order Leclerc told him to ‘fuck off’ and mind his own business.
But a chastened Hemingway got his slight revenge: in a piece for Collier’s which appeared on October 18 several weeks later he wrote that he had been
Later in his Collier’s piece Hemingway (adopting his persona as a man-of-the-world who regularly consorted with generals), wrote
Two weeks before the Collier’s piece appeared, Hemingway had arrived in Nancy to give evidence at the investigation the US army had ordered into his conduct. For the first time in his life Hemingway played down his claims of derring-do (and with a view to containing the matter quickly, he had been instructed by General George Patton’s staff to perjure himself).
Yes, he admitted to the investigating officer, information about German activities had come his way, but this had been passed on to brigade headquarters as was his ‘duty as a loyal American’.
Yes, he had carried arms, but he had never done so in the town and it was for his own safety. (In fact, most correspondents carried a weapon for their own safety even though they were not allowed to do so.)
And, yes, if on occasion his insignia marking him out as a war correspondent was not visible, it was because it was attached to his jacket and this he had often removed because of the hot weather.
According to Meyers Lanham also seems to have idolised Hemingway. He writes that Lanham
like Mary [Welsh] accepted [Hemingway’s] faults and adored him. Lanham, with some exaggeration (Hemingway never carried a canteen of vermouth and did not drink heavily in war) told the New York Times correspondent C L Sulzberger: ‘Hemingway has the heart of the lion and is first class in war, but horrible in peace. Hemingway used to wander around with two canteens strapped to his belt. One was filled with gin and the other with vermouth. Whenever there was a quiet moment, he would haul out a battered tin cup and suggest: ‘Let’s have a martini’ he was a good fighter with all weapons, although strictly speaking he was not permitted to bear arms . . . He is entirely fearless.Despite Hemingway’s claims later in life, his experience of ‘the war’, as a correspondent as well as at the front, was patchy.
Just as a Cuban submarine commander had suggested Hemingway was merely ‘a playboy’ when he was supposedly hunting German U-boots a year earlier (and fooling no one but himself), much the same might be claimed of his ‘soldiering’ in France after D Day, although he was certainly sometimes in danger and on one or two occasions could well have died.
There are several accounts of Hemingway’s sang froid, but his biographers cannot decide whether he was brave or simply reckless. Meyers writes
Under fire, Hemingway lost all fear of risking himself in war and all the tact and restraint that had characterised his behaviour in Spain. His deliberate exposure to danger was inspired by a number of complex factors: a fatalistic attitude, an ability to dismiss the possibility of death, a belief that he was lucky and therefore invulnerable, and a desire to make an impressive adolescent gesture – even at the risk of his life – which would prove his courage.Perhaps the pertinent word here is ‘adolescent’: Hemingway’s conduct and behaviour which might be regarded as essentially adolescent was his bragging about sex (hinting at all the ‘broads’ he had bedded and later embarrassing Lanham and other friends about how many times he and Mary Welsh were having intercourse); his almost neurotic competitiveness, and his constant need to be the best at, and an expert on, everything; assuming his habitual no-nonsense, anti-intellectual tough-guy stance and playing down any notion that he might have sensitivity almost screams of teenage insecurity and does not speak of great maturity.
As for his apparent fearlessness, it is argued that he was, perhaps, simply no longer thinking straight. Barely two months after sustaining concussion in London in his early morning, blackout car crash, at the beginning of August in France he was again concussed.
He banged his head after leaping to safety from a motorcycle when he and photographer Robert Capa rounded a bend in the road and came face to face with a German anti-tank gun.
For several weeks he suffered from constant ringing in his ears, his speech was slow and slurred, he had a continual headache and complained he could not think clearly. That mishap also exacerbated the impotence (as his letters to Welsh indicate) which had started after the London crash and that lasted until well into November.
At one point Hemingway gave up all pretence of being a war correspondent when he ‘took command’ of a ragtag of French resistance fighters he had come across and who had adopted him as their leader and addressed him as ‘captain’ and ‘colonel’.
He and ‘his men’ made their headquarters in a hotel in Rambouillet, a town 30 miles south-west of Paris, and he sent out them out on patrol to garner intelligence on German positions.
In this instance Hemingway could well be accused of ‘playing soldier’ — he had removed his ‘war correspondent’ insignia from his uniform, acquired a large arsenal of rifles, pistols, ammunition and grenades in his hotel rooms, and interrogated German soldiers who had surrendered or been captured.
When his fellow correspondents arrived with the US army four days later — some of whom were not keen on Hemingway and his grandiosity — they felt his activities were putting their lives in danger: the Germans were entitled to execute as a spy a correspondent in uniform without credentials and might decide that Hemingway antics made all correspondents fair game.
They complained and at the beginning of October Hemingway was eventually summoned finally to testify before a military investigation.
. . .
Hemingway with Colonel David Bruce, who headed the newly formed OSS in France, arrived and announced he wanted to advise Leclerc on the best way to approach the city. In short order Leclerc told him to ‘fuck off’ and mind his own business.
But a chastened Hemingway got his slight revenge: in a piece for Collier’s which appeared on October 18 several weeks later he wrote that he had been
informed that the general [Leclerc] himself was just down the road and anxious to see us. Accompanied by one of the big shots of the resistance movement and Colonel B [David Bruce] . . . we advanced in some state toward the general. His greeting — unprintable — will live in my ears forever.It is improbable that Leclerc, who — as Hemingway admits — dismissed him out-of-hand, was in any way ‘anxious’ to see him or solicit his advice, and it hurt Hemingway’s vanity to such an extent that for the rest of his life he referred to the general as ‘that jerk Leclerc’.
Later in his Collier’s piece Hemingway (adopting his persona as a man-of-the-world who regularly consorted with generals), wrote
In war, my experience has been that a rude general is a nervous general.and hoped thereby to biff one back at Leclerc, but is was a tad feeble. Given Leclerc’s military experience (which dwarfed Hemingway’s), his courage and his determination, nervousness was one fault of which he could not be accused.
Two weeks before the Collier’s piece appeared, Hemingway had arrived in Nancy to give evidence at the investigation the US army had ordered into his conduct. For the first time in his life Hemingway played down his claims of derring-do (and with a view to containing the matter quickly, he had been instructed by General George Patton’s staff to perjure himself).
Yes, he admitted to the investigating officer, information about German activities had come his way, but this had been passed on to brigade headquarters as was his ‘duty as a loyal American’.
Yes, he had carried arms, but he had never done so in the town and it was for his own safety. (In fact, most correspondents carried a weapon for their own safety even though they were not allowed to do so.)
And, yes, if on occasion his insignia marking him out as a war correspondent was not visible, it was because it was attached to his jacket and this he had often removed because of the hot weather.
All in all, the army had felt obliged to follow up the correspondent’s complaints if only to keep them happy, but it was not inclined to be seen to punish ‘a loyal American’ simply ‘doing his duty’. Had he been
found to have contravened the rules governing accredited correspondents, Hemingway would have been stripped of his accreditation and sent back to the US (and it would have done his reputation not good at all).
In fact, Hemingway was let off the hook, and some accounts even suggest the investigation was regarded as something of a joke by the army. One practical consequence was that from then on until he was back in Cuba Hemingway made a point in letters and conversation of stressing that he was always ‘going by the book’. He wasn’t, of course.
Hemingway certainly sometimes shared the discomforts and tribulations of war with the officers and men (as did all frontline correspondents), especially during the disastrous — and as historians now argue — wholly unnecessary Hürtigenwald campaign between mid-September and mid-December 1944.
But in his book Hemingway Goes To War, Charles Whiting suggests that the longest Hemingway was at the front at one stretch before he took off back to Paris was eighteen days.
It must, though, be added that Whiting is guilty of at least one howler — that Hemingway’s maternal grandfather was a ‘Hadley’ and that ‘Hadley’ was Hemingway’s middle name. Such a gross error does counsel caution, but other biographers confirm that after the liberation of Paris in mid-August Hemingway seems to have spent more time living it up in Ritz Hotel than reporting on ‘the fighting’.
In fact after returning from Hürtigenwald in mid-December, he had joined Lanham’s 22nd regiment on the Belgian border with Germany, but spent almost all his time at Lanham’s HQ bed-ridden with pneumonia.
Then after he and, by an ironic chance, his estranged wife Martha (who had been invited by a mutual friend and did not know she and Hemingway had split up) spent Christmas and New Year with Charles Lanham, he returned to Paris and never returned ‘to the front’.
Between July 22 when Hemingway’s first dispatch, Voyage To Victory, was published by Collier’s and November 18 when his final report, War In [sic] The Siegfried Line, appeared, Hemingway had filed just six pieces. As these cost Collier’s $3,000 ($44,937 in 2022) each, the magazine was not happy, but that did not bother Hemingway.
By his own admission he had travelled to ‘the war in Europe’ for material to turn into fiction. Jeffery Meyers writes that the children’s author Roald Dahl (who had helped find Hemingway a berth on an RAF plane to Europe in mid-1944) was distinctly underwhelmed by Hemingway’s performance as a war correspondent after he had read several pieces.
. . .
Hemingway certainly sometimes shared the discomforts and tribulations of war with the officers and men (as did all frontline correspondents), especially during the disastrous — and as historians now argue — wholly unnecessary Hürtigenwald campaign between mid-September and mid-December 1944.
But in his book Hemingway Goes To War, Charles Whiting suggests that the longest Hemingway was at the front at one stretch before he took off back to Paris was eighteen days.
It must, though, be added that Whiting is guilty of at least one howler — that Hemingway’s maternal grandfather was a ‘Hadley’ and that ‘Hadley’ was Hemingway’s middle name. Such a gross error does counsel caution, but other biographers confirm that after the liberation of Paris in mid-August Hemingway seems to have spent more time living it up in Ritz Hotel than reporting on ‘the fighting’.
In fact after returning from Hürtigenwald in mid-December, he had joined Lanham’s 22nd regiment on the Belgian border with Germany, but spent almost all his time at Lanham’s HQ bed-ridden with pneumonia.
Then after he and, by an ironic chance, his estranged wife Martha (who had been invited by a mutual friend and did not know she and Hemingway had split up) spent Christmas and New Year with Charles Lanham, he returned to Paris and never returned ‘to the front’.
Between July 22 when Hemingway’s first dispatch, Voyage To Victory, was published by Collier’s and November 18 when his final report, War In [sic] The Siegfried Line, appeared, Hemingway had filed just six pieces. As these cost Collier’s $3,000 ($44,937 in 2022) each, the magazine was not happy, but that did not bother Hemingway.
By his own admission he had travelled to ‘the war in Europe’ for material to turn into fiction. Jeffery Meyers writes that the children’s author Roald Dahl (who had helped find Hemingway a berth on an RAF plane to Europe in mid-1944) was distinctly underwhelmed by Hemingway’s performance as a war correspondent after he had read several pieces.
In a letter to Meyers Dahl admitted
We know that he was ensconced at the Ritz Hotel where he had been joined by Mary Welsh and where he proceeded to cajole her into marrying him. But what he actually did, apart from drink and party, is not recorded. He certainly did not file any more copy to Collier’s.
Just as whether or not Ernest Hemingway was one of the 20th century’s great modernist writers is a matter of choice, persuasion or prejudice, whether or not he was a brave combatant for several months in World War II or essentially a martial dilettante is equally debatable.
Knowing quite what to believe is almost impossible, and given his propensity in later life for making extraordinary claims about his exploits, it is advisable to treat them all with extreme caution.
He certainly did kill one or two German — that he gunned some down when the plywood cabin in Hürtigenwald that Col Lanham had made his headquarters came under attack has been documented. But his tales of taking the lives of over one hundred Germans, a figure which grew ever larger in each subsequent telling, are nonsense.
In a letter he sent after the war he even claimed:
Hemingway was certainly a soldier manqué — some biographers claim that rather than having been rejected by the armed forces when the US declared war on Germany in 1917, he hadn’t even bothered trying to enlist as he suspected his weak left eye would disqualify him from service.
But he had, and did, read widely and deeply on military matters, and even though he had never led men in battle — certainly not, as he later claimed, leading a command of Arditi as its youngest ever lieutenant in the Battle of Monte Grappa — he was accepted by many professionals as having a good military brain.
Yet to his eternal chagrin, and despite his later very tall stories, he had never actually been under arms.
I would rate [Hemingway] as very poor, but he didn’t try to be good then. I remember him telling me about a wonderful episode concerning a man jumping out of a burning tank after his return from the invasion and when I said ‘But you have to put that in your Collier’s piece,’ he answered, ‘you don't think I’m going to give them that do you? I’m keeping it for a book.Another story also illustrates the quality of Hemingway’s dispatches for Collier’s. In early August 1944 when several correspondents spent a long weekend at a hotel on Mount St Michel, Hemingway had shown his then most recent piece to fellow scribe Charles Collingwood and asked for his comments. In a letter to Jeffery Meyers, Collingwood reports that
Being a brash youngster, I blurted out ‘Well, Papa, it sounds like a parody of Ernest Hemingway.’ His face froze, and I forget whether he actually ushered my out or made it very clear I was to leave, which of course, I did — feeling like the most insensitive clown after so flattering a gesture on his part. He cut me dead for weeks . . . [But after the war, in Cuba] he asked me if I remembered the time in France when he had asked me for my opinion of a piece he had written for Collier’s and I [had] said it sounded like a parody of Ernest Hemingway. ‘You were right, of course,’ he said.Collingwood confirmed that like many of the more famous figures who worked as correspondents, Hemingway did receive preferential treatment, but, he added
Hemingway’s special privileges by no means depended upon his literary renown. He had covered wars before and was very much a military buff. He was an expert on strategy, tactics and military history. He spoke the same language as senior officers and many of them sought his company and conceived a great respect and personal affection for him.Tellingly, none of his biographers gives any detail at all of what Hemingway was up to between New Year 1945 and the end of March when he was back in Cuba.
We know that he was ensconced at the Ritz Hotel where he had been joined by Mary Welsh and where he proceeded to cajole her into marrying him. But what he actually did, apart from drink and party, is not recorded. He certainly did not file any more copy to Collier’s.
Just as whether or not Ernest Hemingway was one of the 20th century’s great modernist writers is a matter of choice, persuasion or prejudice, whether or not he was a brave combatant for several months in World War II or essentially a martial dilettante is equally debatable.
Knowing quite what to believe is almost impossible, and given his propensity in later life for making extraordinary claims about his exploits, it is advisable to treat them all with extreme caution.
He certainly did kill one or two German — that he gunned some down when the plywood cabin in Hürtigenwald that Col Lanham had made his headquarters came under attack has been documented. But his tales of taking the lives of over one hundred Germans, a figure which grew ever larger in each subsequent telling, are nonsense.
In a letter he sent after the war he even claimed:
One time I killed a very snotty SS kraut who, when I told him I would kill him unless he revealed what his escape route signs were said: You will not kill me, because you are afraid to and because you are a race of mongrel degenerates. Besides it is against the Geneva Convention. What a mistake you made, brother, I told him and shot him three times in the belly fast and then, when he went down on his knees, shot him on the topside so his brains came out of his mouth or I guess it was his nose. The next SS I interrogated talked wonderfully.
But he had, and did, read widely and deeply on military matters, and even though he had never led men in battle — certainly not, as he later claimed, leading a command of Arditi as its youngest ever lieutenant in the Battle of Monte Grappa — he was accepted by many professionals as having a good military brain.
Yet to his eternal chagrin, and despite his later very tall stories, he had never actually been under arms.
His few weeks leading in August freelancing with a gaggle of French resistance men and the times he was present at the Hürtigenwald offensive with Lanham and his 22nd regiment were the sum total of the World War II ‘fighting’ as far as he was concerned.
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