Courage is “grace under pressure.”  

Ernest Hemingway as quoted by Dorothy Parker in her November 1929 New Yorker profile.

I hesitated before writing this article.  There are few individuals who have had as much ink spilled on their behalf than Hemingway.  A literary titan in his own time, he remains a larger than life figure whose full-throttled life full of sport, violence, women, and drink (and not necessarily in that order) has now become almost a cliche.  In our changing times, much of what people found attractive about Hemingway is now looked at askance, if not downright disdain…and.. Yet he remains both a guiding star and cautionary tale for those who seek out a certain type of life-rich in adventure, a similar ethos to that we attempt to capture on Pushinghorizons.com. 

In fact, while Andy and I were pressed against the barricades in the medieval city of Siena, waiting in the hot sun for men to recklessly ride horses against each other around the Campo, I couldn’t help but notice the young American college student next to us, with a battered Hemingway paperback tucked under his arm.  My first thought was “of course” that is what he is reading. My second thought, upon reflection, was “of course” that is what he is reading, and why not. I too had been drawn to Hemingway’s work as a young man and after moving to Italy, I recently dusted off my old college copy of A Farewell to Arms to discover anew the feel of retreat from Caporetto in World War I.   In spite of, and beyond, the caricature, Hemingway’s terse prose-which revolutionized writing- hold timeless truth, just as he intended. 

While living the life that would provide Hemingway the copy for his books, he experienced much of the armed conflict which dominated the twentieth century.  From his time as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front in the First World War, where he was wounded, to the Cold War twilight struggle that hovered around his estate near Havana during the Cuban Revolution, it seems Hemingway sought out war, all the while emphasizing its tragedy. 

As a journalist, he witnessed the war which led to the creation of modern Turkey, the Spanish Civil War, and the convoluted fighting in China; both between the Chinese and against Japan.  During the Second World War, he chased German U-boats in the Caribbean before accompanying the 4th Infantry Division from Normandy to the Huertgen Forest. In his typical penetrating insight, he captured the human aspect of war and was forever haunted, it seems, by the decisions he made as a participant in such conflict.  Many men fought more than him in the twentieth century, and some men can write better. But I can think of very few who write as well and experienced as much war as old Hemingway. The following three works are a window into Hemingway’s view of human conflict and the experiences he had which shaped those views.   

Men at War, edited by Ernest Hemingway in 1942

“When you go to war as a boy you have this 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.”

-From the Introduction to Men at War

A forgotten gem in the pantheon of Hemingway works, this book was created in the heady patriotic atmosphere of America’s entry into World War Two.  In coordination with a Marine Corps Officer who was a good friend of his, Hemingway collected what he believed were the most insightful works on armed conflict in one single volume.  When reading the work, it becomes clear that the intended audience were the millions of American citizens who were joining the military and would soon be entering combat. Hemingway included everything from historical accounts of medieval warfare to what was then recent fictional works from the Second World War and organized them in accordance with Clausewitz’s various definitions of war.  

I found that the various works included by Hemingway were all powerful stories on humankind’s deadly addiction to violent competition.  For modern readers, it is also interesting to see what one of America’s greatest writers thought was great war writing. For example, he insisted that all of Stephen Cranes’ Red Badge of Courage on bravery and cowardice in the American Civil War be included.   In spite of the patriotic atmosphere in which it is published, and Hemingway’s clear commitment to defeat the fascist forces, he does not shy away from highlighting the tragedy and suffering which Clausewitz highlighted as the realm of war. 

Hemingway On War, edited and with an introduction by Sean Hemingway.

“German prisoners who had been taken by irregulars were often as cooperative as head waiters or minor diplomats.  In general we regarded the Germans as perverted Boy Scouts. This is another way of saying they were splendid soldiers.  We were not splendid soldiers. We were specialists in a dirty trade. In French we said, “un metier tres sale.”

From the short story Black Ass at the Cross Roads

Hemingway’s grandson collected much of Hemingway’s writings on war in this book first published in 2003.  It highlights the great breath of both his experiences and his work. There are the rough short stories Hemingway wrote after World War I, selections from his play on espionage in the Spanish Civil War, and his correspondence as a journalist on Mustafa Kemal’s rise to power during the Greco-Turkish War.  One of the most poignant short stories I found in the book describes the deep sadness which infects the narrator after his band of French resistance fighters kill a young German soldier fleeing the Allied Advance from Normandy. An excerpt of which is above. The book is an excellent single repository of Hemingway’s own words on war.

Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway’s Secret Adventures, 1935-1961. by Nicholas Reynolds.

“After a few months of work, I started to see the outline of a Hemingway portrait that was very different from the others I had known.  The writer had-almost obsessively I thought-tried his hand at various forms of spying and fighting on two continents from 1937 on, before and during World War II.  The way stations were varied, often exotic: the battlefields of Spain, the back streets of Havana, a junk on the North River in China. He seemed to gravitate to men and women who operated on their own in the shadows.”

Although I have waited to discuss this book until the end of this article, I won’t withhold the startling thesis.  The author argues, convincingly, that Ernest Hemingway was a source for the Soviet NKVD, a precursor of the KGB. My first inclination would be to dismiss such an accusation as an exaggerated claim of a passionate doctoral student desperate to stand out from his peers.  However, Reynolds was the official historian of the Central Intelligence Agency Museum and a career intelligence and Marine Corps Officer. He makes a convincing argument that Hemingway’s communist sympathies, disillusionment with America’s neutrality in the Spanish Civil War, as well as his fascination with both adventure and intrigue led him to be recruited by NKVD.  The damning evidence is limited to reports from the Soviet intelligence archives during the small window after the end of the Cold War when there was access to such archives.  

Reynolds uses this admittedly slender evidence and weaves a convincing and fascinating story of Hemingway, that in many ways is the biography of a man drawn to adventure and conflict.  For not only did Hemingway work with Russian intelligence but he apparently also ran sources on behalf of the American government in Havana, led sanctioned U-boat hunting expeditions from his fishing boat, and organized a band of French resistance fighters who screened the Allied advance on Paris.  Reynold suggests, less convincingly, that Hemingway’s earlier dalliance with the Soviet Intelligence Service drove a paranoia later in life, during the cold war, that resulted in his ultimate suicide. This is a window into Hemingway’s life which enriches and explains the impetus behind the two books above.  It is a fascinating story, one which I was unaware of when I read his legendary fiction as a young man, and highlights why Hemingway is both a guiding star and cautionary tale for those who seek out adventure. 

Roland Minez is a co-founder of Pushing Horizons.

Disclaimer: All views expressed are that of the author.