One Esprit de Corps
The story of Ernest Hemingwayâs involvement in the Great War begins with the formation of volunteer ambulance services at the outbreak of hostilities in August of 1914. During the summer before Hemingwayâs sophomore year in high school, Americans in charge of the hospital in the Paris suburb of Neuilly instituted a plan to provide aid for wounded soldiers on the Western front.1 As Arlen Hansen explains in Gentleman Volunteers: The Story of the American Ambulance Drivers in the Great War, August 1914âSeptember 1918, the service eventually developed into three separate groups operating in France. Each one of them came to be led by influential figures: H. Herman Harjes, Senior Partner of the Morgan-Harjes Bank in Paris; Richard Norton, archeologist and son of the esteemed Harvard professor of art history, Charles Eliot Norton; and A. Piatt Andrew, a former assistant professor of economics at Harvard who went on to direct the United States Mint and later assumed the role of assistant secretary of the Treasury. The volunteers affiliated with the Harjes and Norton corps eventually merged under the sponsorship of the American Red Cross in 1917, and Andrewâs organization developed into the American Field Service, by far the most extensive group of volunteers aiding wounded soldiers in France.2
The ambulance service, as James Nagel has commented, âhad a literary and academic dimension that is at times astonishing.â3 Not only did the corps eventually include John Dos Passos, E. E. Cummings, Malcolm Cowley, Harry Crosby, Dashiell Hammett, and Louis Bromfield among other writers, but literary figures were also instrumental in its inception. In 1914, Henry James volunteered to write a pamphlet praising the work of Richard Norton to help enlist others in the cause. Jamesâs essay appeared as an âopen letterâ in âa variety of journals in the United States,â and the esteemed novelist offered to write additional tracts to promote the service as well.4 In early 1917, prior to emerging as one of the most influential figures in the postwar Parisian literary milieu, Gertrude Stein volunteered to drive her Ford, nicknamed âAuntie,â to cart supplies and soldiers along the Western front.5 When the Red Cross developed their ambulance corps in Italy in the fall of 1917, the American Poets Committee was among the first groups to offer its support, donating fifty vehicles.6 Afterward, Robert W. Bates recorded an anecdote about an Austrianâs response of disbelief when, after having been captured by the Italians, the prisoner of war noticed insignia on vehicles affiliating the Red Cross workers with writers. As Bates explained, an Italian captain responded to his enemyâs surprise by assuring him that his observation was correct: âSo you see,â the captain told him, âyou have the entire world against you, even the American poets.â7 The goading comment, delivered partly in jest, nonetheless calls attention to a significant distinguishing feature of the volunteer organizations that derived major support from a wide array of writers.
The backing for ambulance services reflects important values related to the Allied cause that were instrumental in leading to Hemingwayâs involvement. The men who formed the units often exhibited, as Charles Fenton has explained, âa spirit of humanitarianismâ that compelled them to ameliorate the horrific conditions endured by wounded soldiers who waited for medical treatment.8 After Richard Norton accepted Bates for service in France, for example, the latter notified his family to say that his âambulance dream has been realized,â explaining that
I cannot bear to sit by idly while the greatest conflict man has ever known and probably will know is devouring the world. I cannot bear to be part of this oasis of peace while the world is suffering and struggling madly about me. I have got to take some small part in it and if I cannot be of the world as well as in it my life is not worth thinking much about.9
Bates, like many other volunteers, was inspired by the writings of Leslie Buswell, a driver from France whose publications during the war served to characterize ambulance work as âgrandlyâ altruistic and in vital need of support from ambitious philanthropists.10 Despite later cynicism expressed by some writers toward the units, the contemporaneous documents overwhelmingly show, as Fenton has discussed, that âthe vast majority of volunteers sustained throughout the war and into the peace a firm belief in the validity and necessity of their conduct.â11 Hemingway later came to identify with similar ideals as he became involved with the Red Cross in Italy.
Fentonâs emphasis on the selflessness associated with ambulance driving is well-founded, but volunteers were also undoubtedly inspired by the opportunity for thrill-seeking. In addition to expressing his desire to offer assistance abroad, for example, A. Piatt Andrew, well before he took charge of the largest outfit serving on the Western front, wrote his parents about an opportunity to haul wounded men, telling them about âthe possibility of having even an infinitesimal part in one of the greatest events in all historyâ as well as the chance for âwitnessing some of the gravest scenes in this gravest of spectacles.â12 Malcolm Cowley, who served as camion driver in Andrewâs Field Service, noted that many college students volunteered âfeeling certain that it would bear us into new adventures.â13 Although his account of the experience in Exileâs Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s is steeped in postwar disillusionment, Cowley was, like several others, âeager to get into action.â14 Stories relating the daring work undertaken by drivers, such as those published in The Harvard Volunteers in Europe (1916), motivated potential recruits as much as the testimonials describing the work as a chance to perform acts of good will.15
Even so, when Hemingway began exploring possibilities for involvement in the Great War in the fall of 1917, the ambulance service in France was not an option. Several months after the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, the units that operated along the Western front were militarized.16 Because of his defective vision, he was ineligible for enlistment according to army regulations; moreover, he was too young to join an armed force without parental consent, which his father and mother were unwilling to provide.17 At the same time he began his assignment as cub reporter for the Kansas City Star in October, however, front-page headlines reported the disastrous outcome of the Battle of Caporetto that led to the need for a new corps of ambulance drivers on the Italian front.18
Beginning on October 24, 1917, a week after Hemingway arrived for work at the Kansas City Star, the changing conditions in Italy commanded the worldâs attention. German and Austrian soldiers broke through the lines on the Isonzo River, and soon the enemy was in control of a significant amount of territory in the vicinity of the Bainsizza Plateau. âIt is Italyâs Verdun,â one article announced.19 The ensuing retreat of Italian soldiers developed into a wholesale evacuation of the region. Italyâs third and second armies were separated, and the Austrians who occupied the breach employed a âcunning device.â Similar to the sequence of events that leads to suspicion of Frederic Henry as an enemy infiltrator in A Farewell to Arms, soldiers were
dressed in Italian uniforms so as to permit them to spread out over the country or mingle with the Italian forces on both sides of the gap. The Austrians thus garbed were enabled to advance unopposed and then opened fire with machine guns on retreating parties. Some of the Austrians were smuggled forward in motor lorries and then turned against the westward-moving forces.20
Refugees dispersed through points south, and estimates indicated that the population in Rome had increased by one million as a result of the displaced people from towns above the Piave River, where the Italians finally hindered the enemyâs advance. By November 10, the newspaper had published a map of Italyâs new front. General Luigi Cadorna had been replaced by General Armando Diaz, and British and French troops arrived to help reinforce the new positions. The Piave was expected to be the site of the next major battle of the war.21 At the end of November, an article reported that the threat was still a grave one, but German forces were digging in for the winter. Over the next several months, Italy continued to suffer from the aftermath of the tremendous defeat, and the Allies were required to plot a new course of action for the coming year.22
By the first week of November, Italian officials petitioned the United States to declare war on Austria-Hungary, asking Americans to lend the âgreatest service to Italy and to the cause of the Entente during the critical events of the present time.â23 Officials grew increasingly concerned that the Central Powers might achieve continued success in Italy, gaining a significant advantage over the Allies. Maps were printed in the Kansas City Star indicating that if the Piave line did not hold in the coming battles of 1918, the enemy might advance to Vicenza and eventually the Po River, a position that would enable them to conquer the entire northern region.24 Meanwhile, Austria had been showering the countryside with âpeace bombs,â propagandistic leaflets suggesting that Italy was a mere pawn, disregarded by the United States and controlled by the interests of Great Britain and France. Using a phrase that Hemingway later employed about protagonists who renounce their commitment to war, the newspaper reported that the tracts encouraged Italian soldiers to declare a âseparate peace,â a tactic that had also been employed with Belgium and Russia. The Central Powers were attempting to capitalize on internal strife within enemy states by debilitating them to the point of complete failure, leading those countries to negotiate their own truces independent of the Allied Cause. Such an agreement in Italy, war strategists feared, would allow Germany to concentrate forces more effectively on the Western front.25
These concerns proved influential in the findings of the American Senate Foreign Relations Committee as its members weighed potential strategies for the coming months. Their report, printed on the front page of the Kansas City Star, announced that âas a result of this situation, the Allies have rushed aid to Italy, and the United States is sending ships, money and supplies, and will probably send troops, who will be facing and making war on Austrian soldiers.â26 The following day, December 7, the United States issued a formal declaration of war on Austria-Hungary. Thomas Nelson Page, American ambassador to Italy, promised an enthusiastic crowd, who gathered at the U.S. embassy in Rome, that âit is to Italy, lover and champion of liberty, in her hour of distress, that my people come as one man, pledging every resource for her relief; and be sure we will not stop until we have won.â27 Although members of the Allied Cause had not yet agreed upon a specific timetable for the commitment of armed forces in Italy, even the promise of troops carrying the Stars and Stripes into the region had increased optimism throughout the war-torn country.
Headlines announced news of the disastrous circumstances during the retreat from the Isonzo River, while at the same time feature articles in the Kansas City Star romanticized the Italian front. Burris Jenkins, a local minister who had spent time in Europe, published a series of essays describing the theater of operations as âthe most dramatic, the most spectacular battle line in Europe.â28 Unlike the topography of the Western front, âthe Alps lift the whole line up and hang it in festoons over their shoulders. You can look down upon the eveningâs guns, watch their fire, trace their projectiles, hear and see them fall and explode.â29 Indeed, the mountainous combat zone seemed âhung like a picture on the wall.â30 According to one article, King Victor Emmanuel III made frequent visits to the âcommon manâ in the trenches, and the transports full of soldiers motoring to the lines resounded with song, details that would also appear in A Farewell to Arms minus the exuberance of Jenkinsâs account. Another report describes a field hospital under the able command of an exemplary and high-spirited surgeon overseeing the wounded, bloody, and bandaged that are well-served by British Red Cross workers, who âlend a hand to brothers in arms.â31 Perhaps âAmerica can lend a handâ too, he suggests.32 The âmost romantic of the battle fronts,â Jenkins maintained, âhere war retains something of its old glamour.â33 Steve Paul writes that Hemingway could have been âprimed byâ these remarks, not only as they might have inspired him to enlist but also because the writings suggest an influence on later portrayals of landscapes in his fiction.34 Hemingway never referred to the articles as an inspiration, but the features nonetheless demonstrate how idealized accounts about the emerging significance of the Italian front served to promote U.S. involvement in aiding her distressed ally. Publicity asserting the validity of that cause was a major factor resulting in Ernestâs involvement with the American Red Cross.
Three months before the Battle of Caporetto, Americans had already initiated a plan for aid to Italy. Henry P. Davison, chairman of the Red Cross War Council, dispatched a temporary commission in late July of 1917 under the direction of George F. Baker Jr. vice president of the First National Bank. Bakerâs group included philanthropic businessmen, experts in health-related professions, and, according to the Red Cross Bulletin, âone of the leading authorities in this country on Italy,â Harvard professor Chandler R. Post.35 Their mission was âto investigate conditionsâ and report âhow activity can best be utilized to meet needs of the suffering soldiers and the civilian population of Italy.â36 After a tour of several cities and the frontline trenches, the men returned to the United States on October 2.
As Charles Bakewell recal...