The day he arrived, a munitions factory
exploded and he had to carry mutilated bodies and body parts to a
makeshift morgue; it was an immediate and powerful initiation into the
horrors of war.
At a young age and early in his career as an ambulance driver, Ernest already had a horrific war experience.
In a letter
to Hemingway's father, Ted Brumback, one of Ernest's fellow ambulance
drivers, wrote that despite over 200 pieces of shrapnel being lodged in
Hemingway's legs he still managed to carry another wounded soldier back
to the first aid station; along the way he was hit in the legs by
several machine gun bullets. Whether he carried the wounded soldier or
not, doesn't diminish Hemingway's sacrifice.
Hemingway has consideration to try to save a fellow soldier.
Hemingway's
wounding along the Piave River in Italy and his subsequent recovery at a
hospital in Milan, including the relationship with his nurse Agnes von
Kurowsky, all inspired his great novel A Farewell To Arms.