Hemingway an Ambulance Driver - ARC Section Four. 1918

The Red Cross accepted Hemingway as an ambulance driver but recommended that he saw an optician and bought a pair of glasses.

Hemingway ignored the advice, underwent his indoctrination period of two weeks and by May 23rd he was aboard the ship, the Chicago, bound for Bordeaux, France and for onward journey to his final destination, Italy.

He had his friend Theodore Brumback and a new pal, Howell Jenkins, beside him.

The trip from America to Italy was a long and tiring one. The three men, Ernest, Thoedore and Howell stopped off in Paris en route to Italy.

High explosive shells from the German artillery, fell in the streets around them as they went sightseeing. They spent two days in Paris and then boarded a train for Italy.

On the morning of June 7, 1918, 18-year-old Hemingway stepped off a train at Milan's Garbaldi Station and assumed the duties of a Red Cross ambulance driver. Hemingway and his two pals were quickly sent to work in Milan.

There were many casualties in the First World War. Conditions were very bad for the soldiers, apart from falling sick with medical complaints such as trench foot and diseases derived from poor food and conditions, many soldiers were wounded and killed.

Ambulance drivers were important personel and played a very important part in the war. They had to risk their own lives and go into battlefields and pick up the wounded. Surrounded by gunfire they had to carry the wounded back to the ambulance and then drive them on to makeshift hospitals. Or in the worst case pick up the dead and take them to the mortuary.

As soon as Hemingway arrived in Milan an entire munitions factory exploded.

Hemingway's initiation into his new job was sharp and shocking. He picked up the bodies of the dead and carried them to an improvised mortuary.

He wrote a postcard to the Star telling them of his considerable shock at the work he was doing, especially finding women among the dead.

Two days later, Hemingway, Brumback and twenty three others who comprised ACR Section Four were on a train to Vicenza.

Then on to Schio, 24 Kilometres to the northwest of Milan in the foothills of the Dolomites. Hemingway named the headquarters the Schio Country Club.

A newspaper of sorts was published by the regiment, called Ciao and Ernest wrote a contribution somewhat sending up himself and his fellow ambulance drivers.

Hemingway found his assignment in Schio boring. He'd seen action, he'd had an intial taste of war of Milan, (with the munitions factory blowing up) but now he was in a place that was a long way from the front (where the fighting was) and he was doing mundane, boring work, mainly helping civilians. This was not what he wanted or had expected.

Feeling he was not properly involved in the war and wanting to see action, troops and fighting, Hemingway signed up for a different job - canteen duty.

The Red Cross ( a charitable foundation), mounted canteens that fed and provided for the troops who were on the 'battlefield'.

Hemingway was placed in Fossalta, a low lying, heavily damaged village in the middle of the fighting. His job may have been mundane, giving out food to the army but he was right in the middle of the fighting, he was working in a battle ground.

On July 8th 1918 Hemingway was hit by Austrian artillery, six days before his nineteenth birthday.

He had been injured in his knee and foot and had to return to Milan for hospitalization and many operations on his wounded limbs. .

It wasn't until two months later that he was able to walk with the aid of crutches.

But he had been promoted to First Lieutenant and awarded a silver medal of valor.

By October, Hemingway was back in his regiment of Section Four but then he had jaundice and had to return yet again to Milan for hospitalization.

By December 1918 he had left the service and by January 1919 he was back in America with 227 scars on his wounded leg.

Whilst in hospital in Milan, he met and fell in love with Agnes von Kurowsky. Agnes and Hemingway spent some time together (see the category Agnes Von Kurowsky) but she dismissed him as being too young for her. She later wrote to him after he had returned to the States telling him that she had found someone else. Ten years later, Hemingway recounted his experiences in "A Farewell To Arms," his 1929 novel about an affair between a wounded World War I soldier and his nurse

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