Men At War

1942 – Men at War – Volunteered with the war effort in Cuba by organizing a private spy network against Nazi sympathizers, The Crook Factory.

“Hemingway convinced the American ambassador to Cuba that his forty-foot fishing boat, the Pilar, could be converted into a sub destroyer and that she could easily sink one of the German submarines that were preying on Allied ships in the Straits of Florida…

…Two men were stationed in the bow with sub-machine guns and two in the stern with BARs and hand grenades. Papa steered on the bow and up there with him was ‘The Bomb,’ a huge explosive device, shaped like a coffin, with handles on each end. The idea was to maneuver the Pilar next to a sub-how exactly was not clear-whereupon a pair of over-the-hill jai alai players with more guts than brains would heave ‘The Bomb’ into the open hatch of the conning tower. And then ‘The Bomb’ would presumably blow the submarine to kingdom come…

…(Papa) recalled seeing a whale shark, the largest fish in the sea, sixty feet long, with black and white polka dots on its dorsal side. Since the giant fish was just basking on the surface, and appeared docile and harmless, they pulled up alongside it. The first mate, Gregorio Fuentes, poked it in the side with an oar to see if he could make it move. As my father remembered it, it was like poking the side of a building. ‘Christ,’ Gregorio said, ‘that thing is enormous.’ ‘Yes,’ Papa replied, ‘almost a third of the size of the sub we are looking for.’

There certainly were German submarines running throughout the Caribbean and even along the coast of North America at this time. Although Hemingway never closed on one, he did report useful intelligence on U-boat movements.”