[Grantham Forester]

There was no question during WW1, when Italy was NOT an ally of Germany, unlike WW11, about Hemingway's courage. He lied about his age by one year and tried to get into the US Army, but was turned down due to poor eyesight, mainly in his right eye. So he volunteered for the Red Cross as an ambulance driver, received a commission as a Lt. by the Italian Army, and went under heavy fire to rescue two Italian soldiers wounded by German mortar fire. Both his legs were filled with shrapnel, and he recuperated in an Italian hospital (later the theme in "A Farewell To Arms") and fell in love with a nurse who tended to his wounds. His short story "Soldier's Home" may speak to what we now commonly call PTSD.

Hemingway's mother, Grace Hall, was a somewhat talented opera singer and musician, about in the order of German opera singer Gertrude Schenk. She lived across the street from Dr. Hemingway, who had his medical practice in his home, and after a courtship, they were married. She dominated Dr. Hemingway in their marriage and the five children they had together, two boys: Ernest, and his 15 year old junior brother, Leicester, the last of the litter. Both Ernest, Leicester, his father Dr. Clarence Hemingway and later Hemingway's third son, Gregory-- committed suicide.

In one of his stories about his boyhood in Oak Park, Hemingway detailed his mother's callous disregard for her husband. He had just returned from a hunting trip (he was a superb wingshot with hawk-like vision, unlike Ernest) and while he was gone Grace threw out all his bottled collection of bird and animal specimens, plus his collection of Indian artifacts, mostly arrowheads picked up when they summered in Northern MI at their Windemeer cottage on Walloon Lake--