Ernest Hemingway
20 Interesting Facts of
20 Facts
- • Oak Park. Ernest Hemingway had five siblings that all grew up in Oak Park under the care of his parents, Grace and Clarence Hemingway.
- • Italy. After his ambulance service to Italy, he was drafted into the U.S. Army. Here he traveled with the 4th Infantry Division under the 22nd Regiment as a T/4 sergeant in charge of the classification section. (Basically his job was to replace depeleted rifle companies with new soldiers.)
• Ernest Hemingway married four women during his life, Hadley Richardson, Pauline Pfeiffer, Martha Gellhorn, Mary Welsh
• The Old Man and the Sea. All of these were written by Hemingway, but were much earlier than 1953. 'To Have and Have Not' was published in 1937, 'A Farewell to Arms' was published in 1929, and 'In Our Time' (a collection of short stories) was published in 1924
• The FBI maintained an open file on Hemingway from World War II onwards.
• As a teenager, Hemingway volunteered for war work and was wounded on the Italian front in 1918, (World War 1).
• He enlisted in the Red Cross medical service, driving an ambulance on the Italian front.
• After having over 200 shell fragments removed from his legs and body, Hemingway next enlisted in the Italian infantry
• Served on the Austrian front until the armistice, and was decorated for bravery by the Italian government
• His father commited suicide several years later which left young Hemmingway with a deep emotional scar.
• Hemmingway suffered from alcholism and depression.
• Hemingway's mother dressed him as a little girl when he was young
• "Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter. You will meet them doing various things with resolve, but their interest rarely holds because after the other thing ordinary life is as flat as the taste of wine when the taste buds have been burned off your tongue." ('On the Blue Water' in Esquire, April 1936)
• A willing ambassador for the Lost Generation, the globe trotting, prize-winning author was wounded in WWI, cavorted with Hollywood stars, tracked game through the African bush, fished the Gulf Stream, survived two plane crashes, and even once hunted German U-boats in the Caribbean.