A Military Expert

“Then there was a flash, as when a blast-furnace door is swung open, and a roar that started white and went red…I tried to breathe, but my breath would not come. The ground was torn up and in front of my head there was a splintered beam of wood. In the jolt of my head I heard somebody crying…I tried to but could not move. I heard the machine guns and rifles firing across the river. (July 8, 1918)”

Shrapnel from a trench mortar blast had inflicted more than two hundred separate wounds in his legs. Despite his serious injuries, he carried a wounded Italian soldier to safety, but only after a round of heavy machine gun fire tore into his right knee. Hemingway was awarded the Silver Medal of Valor and the Croce di Guerra, and promoted to first lieutenant in the Italian army.