HEMINGWAY

in OAKPARK
Oak Park Oak Leaves | 2014 Sun-Times Media | All rights reserved
Thewidelawns myth, alookinsidethe
Hemingway archives andmore. | PAGES23-34
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THE ERNEST
HEMINGWAY
EDITION
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Celebrate a midsummers night
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Hemingways Paris in Oak Park
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SPECIALEDITION
Hemingway in Oak Park
Te cover logo on this edition is in Hemingways handwriting, taken from
his account book from 1913, when he delivered the Oak Leaves as a teen.
| Photographedat TheErnest Hemingway Foundationof OakParkArchives by Robert K. Elder/Sun-Times Media PAGES23-34
COMMUNITY.............................................. 6
BLOTTER....................................................10
OPINION..................................................... 12
REALESTATE............................................. 14
CALENDAR.................................................16
BUSINESS..................................................19
TREND.......................................................20
GO..............................................................38
OBITUARIES.............................................49
CROSSWORD...........................................50
SPORTS..................................................... 54
CORRECTION
A sidebar in last weeks paper misstated
the IHSA rule about howmany high
school teammates can play together
on a club basketball team. The number
of high school teammates on the same
travel teamis capped at two only if the
club teamis coached by one of their high
school coaches. The limit does not apply
to all non-school basketball teams.
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OAK | RFO A PIONEER PRESS PUBLICATION | THURSDAY, JULY 17, 2014 | 23
Inthisissue, welookintoHemingwayslegacyinOakParkduringthemonthof
hisbirthandthe100thanniversaryof WorldWar I, inwhichHemingwaywas
woundedwhileservingasanambulancedriver for theRedCross.
HEMINGWAY
INOAKPARK
The Ernest
Hemingway
Museumat 200
N. Oak Park Ave.
in Oak Park.
| ROBERT K. ELDER/
SUN-TIMES MEDIA
E
rnest Hemingway
was born on July
21, 1899, to Dr.
Clarence and Grace
Hemingway, and lived at
339 N. Oak Park Ave. until
he was 6. Each summer,
the family traveled to their
vacation home on Walloon
Lake in Michigan, where
they enjoyed fishing and
hunting.
Hemingway was greatly
influenced by both his
grandfathers, who were
Civil War veterans, and
learned from his paternal
grandfather that war was
an arena for men to dem-
onstrate courage and earn
respect. When his maternal grandfather
died in 1905, the family used the inheritance
to build Graces 4,500-square-foot, prairie-
style dreamhome at 600 N. Kenilworth
Ave. Hemingway lived there until he gradu-
ated fromhigh school.
Grace wanted to raise Ernest and his
older sister Marcelline as twins, and she
held Marcelline back so the two could
progress through school at the same time.
Both started first grade at Oliver Wendell
Holmes Elementary School in 1905 and
later attended Oak Park and River Forest
Township High School.
In high school, Hemingway participated
in several activities, including football,
swimming, track, rifle club, the literary
magazine and his school newspaper, The
Trapeze. His first article, Concert a Suc-
cess, was a reviewof the Chicago Sympho-
ny Orchestra in 1916. Hemingway graduated
in 1917, then left home to be a cub reporter
for the Kansas City Star.
Hemingway returned home infrequently
after being wounded in World War I while
serving in the Red Cross. Even as his liter-
ary career gathered steam, Hemingway
struggled to gain his familys acceptance of
his stark, often brutal tales.
Though Oak Park was no longer home,
many of the Oak Park values remained,
wrote biographer Nancy Sindelar in
Influencing Hemingway.
His study of classical literature and his
lifelong interest in reading, nurtured by
his parents and expanded during his high
school years, enabled himto absorb both
the old and the newliterary ideas....
BYJOSHUAJONES | For Sun-Times Media
All you have to
do is write one
true sentence.
Write the truest
sentence that
you know.
A Moveable Feast
24 | THURSDAY, JULY 17, 2014 | A PIONEER PRESS PUBLICATION OAK | RFO
BYROBERTK. ELDER
relder@suntimes.com | @RobertKElder
His father, Dr. Clarence Hemingway, sent back all
six copies of the 1924 Paris edition of his sons auto-
biographically-inspired short story collection In Our
Time. His parents were particularly horrified by their
sons matter-of-fact prose about a war veteran catching
gonorrhea from a sales girl in the back of Lincoln Park
taxi. Dr. Hemingway said he would not tolerate such
filth in his house.
Trust you will see and describe more of humanity of
a different character in future, the doctor wrote to his
son. Remember God holds us each responsible to do
our best.
Later, Hemingway jokingly wondered if the U.S.
edition of his book will be burned on the steps of the
O.P. Library in 1925 missive recently reprinted in The
Letters of Ernest Hemingway: Volume 2, 1923-1925.
Tensions with his family boiled over when Heming-
ways first novel, The Sun Also Rises, made him a
literary star in 1926. His mother, Grace Hall Heming-
way, called it one of the filthiest books of the year and
I
ts a very compact, Hemingway-esque line, repeated
often here in Oak Park. But it appears that Ernest
Hemingway never said or wrote that his home-
town was a place of wide lawns and narrowminds.
Weve never found it, says Rose Marie Burwell,
scholar and author of Hemingway: The Postwar Years
and the Posthumous Novels.
However, Burwell thinks the line expresses what
Hemingway saw as the narrowness of the social and
religious teachings that were so dense in his home.
Oftentimes, his frustration seemed
to be with his family, rather than
Oak Park itself.
In his early letters, Hemingway
expressed a fondness for friends
and family in Oak Park. In fact,
he participated in school plays,
varsity football and was declared
class prophet in his high school
yearbook. As an ambulance driver
in World War I, he told a friend
that he was from Oak Park, near
Chicago, Way out where the West
begins. When he was wounded
in 1918, he sent letters home ask-
ing for copies of his high school
newspaper The Trapeze, and the
Oak Leaves.
He even came back to Oak Park
to speak about his war experiences
and was treated as a hero. The March 22, 1919, edition
of the Oak Leaves recounted a nervous Hemingways
address to his high school.
Anybody who says he wasnt scared in this war was
either a liar or else wasnt in it, he said. One way a
soldier has of telling he is scared is that he cant spit. I
couldnt spit right now to save myself.
Then, of course, the 20-year-old Hemingway regaled
the crowd with tales of his own heroism and the
horrors of trench warfare.
But his relationship with his parents becomes tense
after he starts publishing fiction.
ABOVE: Ernest
Hemingway remains
popular with writing
instructors who,
according to one
academic, prize
Hemingways work
for what it can teach
students about the
craft of fiction.
| APPHOTO/LIBRARY OF
CONGRESS, A.E. HOTCHNER
Ernest Hemingways birthplace and childhood
home at 339N. Oak Park Ave.
Te Ernest Hemingway edition
Te wide lawns myth:
HEMINGWAY
in
Oak Park
Courage is
grace under
pressure.
In a letter to
F. Scott Fitzgerald,1926
Ernest Hemingway (center) poses for a
portrait with his family in Oak Park, 1917.
Left to right: His father Clarence Edwards,
mother Grace Hall, Carol, Leicester, Ursula,
Madelaine Sunny, and Marcelline. | PHOTOS
FROMTHE ERNEST HEMINGWAY COLLECTION. JOHNF. KEN-
NEDY PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY ANDMUSEUM, BOSTON.
OAK | RFO A PIONEER PRESS PUBLICATION | THURSDAY, JULY 17, 2014 | 25
objected to his use of foul
language.
What is the matter? Have
you ceased to be interested
in loyalty, nobility, honor and
fineness in life? she wrote
him. Every page fills me
with a sick loathing if I
should pick up a book by any
other writer with such words in
it, I should read no more but
pitch it in the fire.
In reply, Hemingway defended
himself in a letter to both parents:
...I am in no way ashamed of the
book, except in as I may have failed
in accurately portraying the people
I wrote of, or in making them really
come alive to the reader. I am sure
the book is unpleasant. But it is not
all unpleasant and I am sure is no
more unpleasant than the real inner
lives of some of our best Oak Park
families.
Nancy Sindelar, author of Influ-
encing Hemingway, said Heming-
ways relationship with Oak Park and
his parents was complicated.
He had a work ethic all his life
because of his parents. He got a fabulous education in
the Oak Park schools, and his parents were very loving,
but very strict, said Sindelar.
Hemingway was hurt by his familys reaction and
lack of acceptance of his early work, she said, but later
on they did accept it.
In 1929, Hemingways mother applauds his book
A Farewell to Arms, and included positive press
reviews in a letter. She wrote to her son: It is the
best you have done yet and deserves the high praise it
is receiving.
Ernest
Hemingway
at five
months in
Oak Park,
December
1899.
The Hemingway
family poses for
a portrait in Oak
Park, 1906. Left to
right: Marcelline,
Madelaine Sunny,
Clarence Edwards,
Grace Hall, Ursula,
and Ernest, age 7.
Ernest Hemingway, age 4, with
a wagon outside his childhood
home in Oak Park, 1903. | PHOTOS
FROMTHE ERNEST HEMINGWAY COLLECTION.
JOHNF. KENNEDY PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY
ANDMUSEUM, BOSTON.
Te Ernest Hemingway edition
26 | THURSDAY, JULY 17, 2014 | A PIONEER PRESS PUBLICATION OAK | RFO
ways handwriting, taken fromhis account book from1913
(see our piece Inside the Hemingway Archives). He made
$1.20 delivering the paper in most entries, compared to
his allowance of 14 cents.
And while the budding author did work as a reporter,
he primarily wrote for the Kansas City
Star and the Toronto Star. However, the
Oak Leaves did publish Hemingway.
After he was wounded as a Red
Cross ambulance driver in World War I,
Hemingway wrote home and his father
submitted his letter to the Oak Leaves
for publication.
The headline read: Wounded 227
Times, referring to the shrapnel wounds Hemingway
suffered mostly in his legs, knees and feet during an Aus-
trian mortar attack in Italy.
The 19-year-old Hemingway wrote: there must have
been a great burble about my getting shot up. Oak Leaves
and the opposition came today and I have begun to think.
Family, that maybe you didnt appreciate me when I used
to reside in the bosom. Its the next best thing to getting
killed and reading your own obituary.
He was, however, not happy with his father, who gave
his letter to newspapers (The Kansas City Star also
published the same letter). Hemingway feared he would
be seen as a glory hound.
To his sister Marcelline, he wrote:
NowKid who in hell is giving all my
letters out for publication? When I
write home to the family I dont write
to the Chicago Herald Examiner or
anybody else but to the family.
Somebody has a lot of gall publishing
themand it will look like Imtrying to
pull hero stuff. Gee I was sore when I heard they were
using my stuff in Oak Leaves. Pop must be Mal di Testa
[headache in Italian].
Appearances mattered to the young Hemingway and
so did hometown news. In August of that year, he wrote:
Say, if it were not too difficult, send the Oak Leaves
every week, will you?
W
hen I first started as editor in chief for the
Oak Leaves, people would say, Yknow,
Ernest Hemingway used to work for the
Oak Leaves. Neighbors told me, friends re-
peated it. Even community members would say, I heard
that Hemingway used to work for you guys.
After a year of hearing this, I decided to hunt down the
truth. And, after sifting through the Ernest Hemingway
Foundation of Oak Park Archives, it can definitely said:
Yes and sort of.
Yes, Hemingway did work for the Oak Leaves. He
delivered the newspaper in his early teens. The cover logo
on this edition of the Oak Leaves, in fact, is in Heming-
BYROBERTK. ELDER | relder@suntimes.com | @RobertKElder
Te Ernest Hemingway edition
American Red Cross volunteer, Ernest Hemingway, 19years old,
recuperates fromwounds at a hospital in Milan, Italy, 1918. | ERNEST
HEMINGWAY COLLECTION. JOHNF. KENNEDY PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY ANDMUSEUM, BOSTON.
SEEPAGE30
For Hemingways letters and
an article about himas they
appeared in the Oak Leaves
There is no
friend as loyal
as a book.
HEMINGWAY
inthe pages of the
OakLeaves
As quoted by A.E. Hotchner in The Good Life According to Hemingway
OAK | RFO A PIONEER PRESS PUBLICATION | THURSDAY, JULY 17, 2014 | 27
Te Ernest Hemingway edition
Short story collections:
Three Stories &TenPoems 1923
InOur Time 1925
Menwithout Women1927
Winner Take Nothing1933
The FifthColumnandthe First Forty-Nine Stories 1938
Novels/Novella:
The Torrents of Spring 1926
The SunAlsoRises 1926
AFarewell toArms 1929
ToHave andToHave Not 1937
For Whomthe Bell Tolls 1940
Across the River andintothe Trees 1950
The OldManandthe Sea1952
Islands inthe Stream(posthumous) 1970
Nonction:
Deathinthe Afternoon1932
GreenHills of Africa1935
AMoveable Feast posthumous) 1964
Hemingways major works
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HEMINGWAYTIMELINE
1899, July 21
Ernest Miller Hemingway born
in Oak Park to Clarence E.
Hemingway, a family doctor, and
Grace Hall Hemingway, a singer
and music teacher.
1917, June
Hemingway graduates fromOak
Park High School, where he was
editor of the school newspaper,
The Trapeze, and published
articles in the literary magazine,
Tabula.
1918, May
Hemingway volunteers as a Red
Cross ambulance driver during
World War I in Italy.
1918, July 8
Hemingway is wounded while
passing out supplies to soldiers.
While recovering, he has a
romance with nurse Agnes von
Kurowsky.
1919, January
Hemingway returns to Oak Park
without von Kurowsky, who
breaks of the engagement
via mail.
1920, January-May
Hemingway moves to Toronto,
Canada as reporter for the
Toronto Star.
1920, December
Moves back to Chicago.
1921, September 3
Hemingway marries his rst
wife, Hadley Richardson.
1921, December 8
The Hemingways move from
Chicago to Paris while he works
for as a foreign correspondent.
T
he Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park
Archives sits in a quiet corner on the third floor of
his hometowns library. Most patrons never see the
vastness of the collection, the bulk of which was donated by
Waring Jones, a collector who spent years gathering letters
and artifacts from the authors life.
Recently, the Foundations Barbara Ballinger invited
the Oak Leaves to tour its archives, which includes letters,
manuscripts, family heirlooms, first and foreign editions of
the authors books, and the following curiosities:
Te Ernest Hemingway edition
BYROBERTK. ELDER | relder@suntimes.com | @RobertKElder
Ernest Hemingways high school yearbook from1917,
his senior year at Oak Park and River Forest Township
High School. Titled Senior Tabula, the yearbook lists
his older sister Marcelline Hemingway in the same
graduating class. Marcelline was held back a year so
the pair could attend school together. Ernest is listed
as the Class Prophet and this quote follows his list of
accomplishments and club memberships: None are to
be found more clever than Ernie.
Ernest Hemingways
dental radiograph
or X-ray froma Paris
dentist, Dr. Robert
Wallich, in 1936.
Inside the
Hemingway
The butlers pantry key
fromWindemere, Ernest
Hemingways family cottage
on Lake Walloon in Michigan.
Hemingway spent many of his
boyhood summers here learning
to sh and hunt. Originally from
the collection of Waring Jones, benefactor of The
Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park Archives.
Archives
Agnes Aggie von Kurowskys break up letter to Ernest Hemingway,
dated March 7, 1919. Von Kurowsky was Hemingways nurse after he
was wounded in Italy while serving as an ambulance driver in World
War I. Despite their age diference she was seven years older than
Hemingways 19years they planned to marry until von Kurowsky
abruptly called ofthe wedding, telling Hemingway that she was
engaged to an Italian ofcer. Von Kurowsky became the inspiration for
Catherine Barkley in Hemingways novel AFarewell to Arms. Sandra
Bullock played von Kurowsky and Chris ODonnell played Hemingway
in the 1996movie In Love and War. This is one of four letters fromvon
Kurowsky in The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park Archives.
30 | THURSDAY, JULY 17, 2014 | A PIONEER PRESS PUBLICATION OAK | RFO
Fromthe Oak Leaves: Oct. 5, 1918:
Ernest M. Hemingway Describes His
Emotions at Supreme Moment --
Letter fromAmericanConsul
Dr. C. E. Hemingway, whose son, Ernest
M. Hemingway, was the hero of a fine Red
Cross exploit in Italy, as told in a recent is-
sue of Oak Leaves, has received a letter from
North Winship, American consul at Milan,
Italy, praising the courage of the doctors son
and announcing his intention of keeping an
eye on him. And fromErnest, in the hospital,
comes the following
letter:
Dear Folks: Gee,
Family, but there must
have been a great burble
about my getting shot
up. Oak Leaves and the
opposition came today
and I have begun to
think, Family, that maybe
you didnt appreciate me
when I used to reside in
the bosom. Its the next
best thing to getting
killed and reading your
own obituary.
You knowthey say
there isnt anything
funny about this war, and
there isnt. I wouldnt
say that it was hell, because thats been a bit
over-worked since General Shermans time,
but there have been about eight times when
I would have welcomed hell, just on a chance
that it couldnt come up to the phase of war I
was experiencing.
For example, in the trenches, during an
attack, when a shell makes a direct hit in a
group where youre standing. Shells arent
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.
During the six days I was up in the front
line trenches only fifty yards fromthe Aus-
trians I got the rep of having a charmed
life. The rep of having one doesnt mean
much, but having one does. I hope I have
one. That knocking sound is my knuckles
striking the wooden bed-tray.
Well I can nowhold up my hand and say
that Ive been shelled by high explosives,
shrapnel and gas; shot at by trench mortars,
snipers and machine guns, and as an added
attraction, an aeroplane machine gunning the
line. Ive never had a hand grenade thrown
at me, but a rifle grenade struck rather close.
Maybe Ill get a hand grenade later.
Nowout of all that mess to only get struck
by a trench mortar and a machine gun bullet
while advancing toward the rear, as the Irish
say, was fairly lucky. What, Family?
The 227 wounds I got
fromthe trench mortar
didnt hurt a bit at the
time, only my feet felt
like I had rubber boots
full of water on (hot wa-
ter), and my knee cap
was acting queer. The
machine gun bullet just
felt like a sharp smack
on the leg with an icy
snowball. However it
spilled me. But I got
up again and got my
wounded into the dug-
out. I kind of collapsed
at the dugout.
The Italian I had
with me had bled all
over me and my coat
and pants looked like someone had made
currant jelly in themand then punched holes
to let the pulp out. Well, my captain who
was a great pal of mine (it was his dugout)
said, Poor Hem., hell be R.I.P. soon. Rest in
peace, that is.
You see, they thought I was shot thru my
chest, because of my bloody coat. But made
themtake my coat and shirt off (I wasnt
wearing any undershirt) and the old torso
was intact. Then they said that I would prob-
ably live. That cheered me up any amount.
I told themin Italian that I wanted to see
my legs, tho I was afraid to look at them. So
they took off my trousers and the old limbs
were still there, but gee, they were a mess.
They couldnt figure out howI had walked
a hundred and fifty yards with such a load,
with both knees shot thru and my right shoe
punctured in two big places; also over 200
flesh wounds.
Oh, says I, in
Italian, my captain,
it is of nothing. In
America they all do
it. It is thought well
not to allowthe en-
emy to perceive that
they have captured
our goats. The goat
speech required
some masterful lin-
gual ability, but I got
it across and then
went to sleep for a
couple of minutes.
After I came to
they carried me on
a stretcher three
kilometers back to a dressing station. The
stretcher bearers had to go over lots, as the
road was having the entrails shelled out of it.
Whenever a big one would come, whe-e-ee-
eeee-whoo-oosh -- boom, they would lay me
down and get flat.
My wounds were nowhurting like 227
little devils driving nails into the raw. The
dressing station had been evacuated dur-
ing the attack, so I lay for two hours in a
stable with its roof shot off, waiting for an
ambulance. When it came I ordered it down
the road to get the soldiers that had been
wounded first. It came back with a load and
then they lifted me in.
The shelling was still pretty thick and
our batteries were going off all the time
way back of us, and the big 350s and 250s
going overhead for Austria with a noise like
a railway train. Then, wed hear the burst
back of the lines. Then, shriek would come a
big Austrian shell and then the crack of the
burst. But we were giving themmore and
bigger stuff than they sent.
Then a battery of field guns would go
off just back of the shed boomboom!
Boomboom! and the 75s and 149s would
go whimpering over to the Austrian lines.
And the star shells going up all the time and
the machine guns going like riveters tat-
a-tat-tat.
After a ride of a couple of kilometers in
an Italian ambulance they unloaded me at
a dressing station,
where I had a lot
of pals among the
medical officers.
They gave me a shot
of morphine and
anti-tetanus serum
an shaved my legs
and took twenty-
eight shell fragments
varying in size... out
of my legs.
Then they did a
fine job in bandaging
and all shook hands
with me and would
have kissed me, but
I kidded themalong.
Then I stayed five
days at a field hospital and was evacuated to
the base hospital here.
I sent you that cable so you wouldnt
worry. I have been in the hospital a month
and twelve days and hope to be out in
another month. The Italian surgeon did
a peach of an operation on my right knee
joint and my right foot; took twenty-eight
stitches, and assures me that I will be able
to walk as well as ever. The wounds all
healed up clean and there was no infection.
He has my right leg in a plaster splint now,
so that will be all right.
I have some snappy souvenirs that he
took out at the last operation. I wouldnt
really be comfortable now unless I had
some pain. The surgeon is going to take
the plaster off in a week now and will allow
me on crutches in ten days. I will have to
learn to walk again.
This is the longest letter I have ever
written to anyone and it says the least.
Give my love to everybody that asks about
me and as Ma Pettingill says, Leave us
keep the home fires burning.
Te Ernest Hemingway edition
PIONEERPRESSSTAFF| @oakleavesnews
HEMINGWAYINTHEHOSPITAL
Photo of the Oak Park boy recovering
fromwounds in Italian refuge. He is shown
whistling, as in his childhood days he
would whistle instead of cry, when hurt.
This is the first photograph of local men in
an army hospital published in Oak Leaves.
Ernest Hemingways republished letters and an article
about himas they appeared in the Oak Leaves.
WOUNDED
227 TIMES
Letter Wounded 227 Times as it appeared in the
Oak Leaves in 1918.
FROMTHE ARCHIVES
:
The Oak Leaves
cover banner as
it appeared in
1918.
OAK | RFO A PIONEER PRESS PUBLICATION | THURSDAY, JULY 17, 2014 | 31
Te Ernest Hemingway edition
Fromthe Oak Leaves: Aug. 10, 1918
Ernest Hemingway to Receive Valor
Badge for Exploit at Piave River
Recovering in Milan
Ernest Hemingway, who was wounded
during a spectacular action on the Ital-
ian front, is in the Red Cross hospital
at Milan, recovering from his wounds.
A letter received by his father, Dr. C. E.
Hemingway, from Theodore B. Brumback,
a friend of Ernest, formerly a reporter on
the Kansas City Star, tells something of
the heroism displayed by the Oak Park
youth, which brought him to the hospital.
Ernest is to be given a silver medal for
valor, his friend reports; meanwhile, he is
on the high road to recovery. Mr. Brum-
backs letter follows:
Dear Dr. Hemingway: I have just come
from seeing Ernest at the American Red
Cross hospital here. He is fast on the road
to recovery and will be out a whole man
once again, so the doctor says, in a couple
of weeks.
Although some two hundred pieces of
shell were lodged in him, none of themare
above the hip joint. Only a fewof these
pieces was large enough to cut deep, the
most serious of these being two in the knee
and two in the right foot. The doctor says
there will be no trouble about these wounds
healing and that Ernest will regain entire
use of both legs.
Nowthat I have told you about his condi-
tion, I suppose you would like to knowall
the circumstances of the case. Let me say
right here that you can be very proud of
your sons actions. He is going to receive
a silver medal of valor, which is a very
high medal indeed and corresponds to the
medaille militaire or Legion of Honor of
France.
At the time he was wounded Ernest was
not in the regular ambulance service, but in
charge of a Red Cross canteen at the front.
Ernest, among several others in our section,
which was in the mountains where there
was not very much action, volunteered to
go down on the Piave and help out with the
canteen work. This was at the time when
the Italians were engaged in pushing the
Austrians back over the river, so he got to
see all the action he wanted.
Ernest was not satisfied with the regular
canteen service behind the lines. He thought
he could do more good and be of more ser-
vice by going straight up to the trenches. He
told the Italian commander about his desire.
Abicycle was given him, which he used
to ride to the trenches every day laden
down with chocolate, cigars, cigarets and
postcards. The Italians in the trenches got
to knowhis smiling face and were always
asking for their giovane Americano.
Well, things went along fine for six days.
But about midnight on the seventh day an
enormous trench mortar bomb lit within a
fewfeet of Ernest while he was giving out
chocolate. The concussion of the explosion
knocked himunconscious and buried himin
earth. There was an Italian between Ernest
and the shell. He was instantly killed, while
another, standing a fewfeet away, had both
his legs blown off.
Athird Italian was badly wounded and
this one Ernest, after he had regained
consciousness, picked up on his back and
carried to the first aid dugout. He says he did
not remember howhe got there, nor that he
had carried a man, until the next day, when
an Italian officer told himall about it and
said that it had been voted to give hima valor
medal for the act.
Naturally, being an American, Ernest re-
ceived the best of medical attention. He had
only to remain a day or so at a hospital at the
front when he was sent to Milan to the Red
Cross hospital. Here he is being showered
with attention by American nurses, as he is
one of the first patients in the hospital.
I have never seen a cleaner, neater and
prettier place than that hospital. You can rest
easy in your mind that he is receiving the
best care in Europe. And you need have no
fear for the future for Ernest tells me that he
intends nowto stick to regular ambulance
work which, to use his own words, is almost
as safe as being at home.
Since writing the last lines I have seen
Ernest again. He told me the doctor had
just seen himand made another careful
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32 | THURSDAY, JULY 17, 2014 | A PIONEER PRESS PUBLICATION OAK | RFO
Fromthe Oak Leaves: March 22, 1919
HighSchool Student Body Hears Story
of the Ardenti andof Fighting
onPiave
There are so many scores of stars in Oak
Park Highs service flag that those luminous
bodies are left perforce to twinkle unheeded
in their own particular corners. Nowand
then, however, a particularly vivid comet
goes flashing across the military heavens,
and the alert school astronomers whose
telescopes are kept continually leveled sight
the luminary and transplant it to terra firma
and fame. Two weeks ago the schools bright
particular constellation was Lieut. Alan
Winslow; last week it was Lieut. Ernest
Hemingway. Both warriors addressed great
audiences at assembly, audiences that made
the four walls echo with their cheers.
Lieutenant Hemingway, the first Ameri-
can and only Oak Park man to be wounded
in Italy, and bearing in his body one hundred
odd shrapnel wounds, told the story of the
Italian retreat and advance with the journal-
ists instinct for dramatic touches and the
Yanks love of humor. Beside himsat his
grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. A. T. Heming-
way, and his mother, Mrs. C. E. Hemingway,
representing the three generations. Miss
Caroline Bagley, a classmate of Lieutenant
Hemingways in 17, introduced him. She
told of her first acquaintance with himin
their grade school days when Lieutenant
Hemingway was chosen to be the monk in
the class play, The Lay of the Last Min-
strel. Tho Ernests chief occupation seemed
to be just sitting on a grave stone during the
entire performance, he made a big hit.
It is not so much because of his record
in the war that we all honor himtoday, said
Miss Bagley, as it is because he is such an
all-round, regular fellow.
Lieutenant Hemingway prefaced his
address with a naive commentary on his
feelings.
Anybody who says he wasnt scared in
this war was either a liar or else he wasnt
in it. One way a soldier has of telling he is
scared is that he cant spit. I couldnt spit
right nowto save myself.
Lieutenant Hemingway described his
adventures in Italy, moving wounded from
first aid stations to base hospitals along
mountain roads that were like safety
razors, with thousand-foot drops on one
side and the constant spatter of bullets
everywhere. He told of the gallantry of
the Italian soldier, the Bersaglieri, dapper,
brave in their feathered caps and brilliant
uniforms, utterly fearless; of the Ardenti,
the majority of whomare criminals released
to fight as shock troops, who go into battle
stripped to the waist, loaded to the teeth
with hand grenades and murderous-looking
knives, singing their infamous war song, the
repetition of which before the war meant
imprisonment for three months; of the in-
fantry, which always had the burnt edge of
the stick, which was always in the rottenest
hole which was always being shot at, which
at the end of the war consisted mostly of
boys of 19 or men of 40 because all the
others had been killed off. He related the
story of an Ardenti who came into a first aid
station where he was with a bullet hole in
FROMITALIANFRONT
Te Ernest Hemingway edition
examination. The result showed that no
bones were broken and the joints were
unharmed, all the splinters making merely
flesh wounds.
By the time this letter will reach you
he will be back in the section. He has not
written himself because one or two of the
splinters lodged in his fingers. We have
made a collection of shell fragments and
bullets that were taken out of Ernies leg,
which will be made up into rings.
Ernie says hell write very soon. He
dictates love to ye old Ivory, Ura, Nun-
bones, Nub-bins, ye young Brute.
Please include my love also, although I
havent had the pleasure of meeting the fore-
going. Tell Mrs. Hemingway howsorry I was
that I didnt get to see her while in Chicago.
In a postscript to the foregoing, Ernest
himself adds, whimsically:
Dear Folks: I am all O.K. and include
much love to ye parents. Im not near so
much of a hell roarer as Brummy makes
me out. Lots of love.
ERNIE
Sh . Dont worry, Pop!
MEDAL, CONTINUED FROMPAGE 31
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OAK | RFO A PIONEER PRESS PUBLICATION | THURSDAY, JULY 17, 2014 | 33
his chest. Upon investigation it was found
that he had stuffed the gaping wound with
cigarets. The soldier protested desperately
when they told him he would have to stay
for treatment. His plan was to go right on
fighting as soon as the hole was bandaged.
In the night he got up, stole the uniform of
the man next [to] him, and escaped back
to the front. He was killed [the] next day.
Lieutenant Hemingway limned the
graphic tale of his own mishap, when ac-
companying an Italian infantry regiment
to the front, he had volunteered to carry
food to the front line trenches. A trench
mortar got him in the legs, and when he
recovered consciousness he found himself
half buried in sand bags and earth and
dead and dying soldiers. One man near
him whose leg had been shattered was
crying openly and calling his mothers
name. Lieutenant Hemingway told him
with characteristic Yankee repression to
Shut up with that noise. Then bundled
him on his back and started back. His legs
were beginning to sting as if red-hot nee-
dles had pierced them, his knees sagged,
but he stumbled on. Then two other
bullets got him, and when he returned to
consciousness a second time he was lying
in a dugout wracked with pain. It seemed
Te Ernest Hemingway edition
Nurse Agnes von Kurowsky and her patient Ernest Hemingway in Italy, 1918. Hemingway was wounded
while passing out supplies to soldiers. While Hemingway recovered, the pair had a romance. | FROMTHE
COLLECTIONOF THE ERNEST HEMINGWAY FOUNDATIONOF OAKPARK.
The most painful thing is losing
yourself in the process of loving
someone too much, and forgetting
that you are special too.
Men Without Women
SEE FRONT, PAGE 34
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hours before the stretcher bearer arrived.
He threw his revolver away, the tempta-
tion to finish up the job was so acute. At
length came the stretcher. And then, said
Lieutenant Hemingway, I did the only
brave thing I did in the whole war -- I told
them to take the other
guys first; that I was all
right.
The Italian doctors
extracted thirty-two
pieces of shrapnel from
him, all of which they
swiped as souvenirs.
When the victim
himself feebly demanded a souvenir of his
own, they informed him jauntily that there
were twenty more pieces inside him yet
and he could have them.
A craving to see one of his own country-
men after the long weeks with the Italian
soldiers seized him. In vain he begged one
of the doctors to procure him one just to
look at. Then a familiar khaki uniform ap-
peared at the other end of the room.
Americano? yelled Lieutenant
Hemingway.
What the devil do you think I am?
answered the voice peevishly.
Turning, the figure in khaki was re-
vealed as one of the wounded mans best
friends.
My gosh, Stein, greeted the soldier,
youre not going to die, are you?
Right then and there
Lieutenant Hemingway
decided that he wasnt.
One of his most piti-
ful experiences was his
first view of his nurse.
Visions of a dark-eyed
Italian lady bending
soulfully over his cot
had sustained his feeble spirits during his
long drive to the hospital. And when he
saw her, she wore a long, bristling beard
and spoke Italian in a masculine bass.
Lieutenant Hemingway coined some
interesting war epigrams in the course of
his address. Some of them were these:
A trench mortar is like a glorified gas
pipe.
A machine gun resembles closely a
crazy typewriter.
Te Ernest Hemingway edition
SEEGOSECTION
For an interviewwith
Sandra Spanier, editor of
Hemingway Letters Project
FRONT, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 33
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