Military Days

In World War 1, Ernest Hemingway volunteered to serve in Italy as an ambulance driver with the American Red Cross. In June 1918, he was running a mobile canteen where he dispensed chocolate and cigarettes to thousands of soldiers when he was wounded by Austrian mortar fire. Even after being injured, Hemingway managed to carry several civilians to safety when he was shot with a machine gun.  For the heroic actions, he was awarded a Silver Metal of Valor and was one of the first American's issued one by the Italian Government. 

In one of Hemingway's most famous war quotes he says: "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. After being severely wounded two weeks before my nineteenth birthday I had a bad time until I figured out that nothing could happen to me that had not happened to all men before me. Whatever I had to do men had always done. If they had done it then I could do it too and the best thing was not to worry about it."

Recuperating for six months in a Milan hospital, Hemingway fell in love with Agnes von Kurowsky, an American Red Cross nurse who refused to marry him. He returned home a new man with experience of travel, combat, heartbreak. .