Hemingway, the Red Cross, and the Great War

Chapter 3: Active Duty

ACTIVE DUTY 43 Three Active Duty After Ernest Hemingway left New York in the spring of 1918, he told his parents that his period of active duty would begin “from the day we start driving” and “probably carry us pretty well into the winter.”1 Instead , his term as an ambulance driver lasted for only fifteen days. When he joined the canteen service immediately following, his work continued for another two weeks before he was wounded.2 In many ways, the locales near Schio and the Piave River where he operated during this “shortlived tour,” as Michael Reynolds has explained, “bore no resemblance to the front at which Frederic [Henry] had served for two years as an ambulance driver in the Italian army.”3 Nevertheless, the existing records add not only important details of Hemingway’s biography but also show that he incorporated substantial material from his experience into A Farewell to Arms and his other writing about the Great War. Indeed , many aspects of the fictional settings and themes originated with his time in the ambulance and canteen units that lasted for roughly one month during the late spring and early summer of 1918. By June of that year, the Red Cross service was approaching the peak of its effectiveness in the field. Earlier that spring the corps had included “135 ambulance drivers,” as James Nagel has pointed out.4 By the time of Hemingway’s arrival, the outfit increased to 148 men, with six more scheduled to arrive in July.5 Indeed, Robert W. Bates noted that the recruitment campaign conducted during April by George Utassy had been so successful that they even “had men to spare.”6 The new volunteers were divided among four sections, and there was a fifth in the formative stages but not yet fully deployed. Distributed directly behind the front, the units were headquartered in locations that stretched from the mountainous area in the west to the lowlands of the Piave River, which becomes increasingly marshy in the coastal region of the Veneto. Hemingway’s section at Schio was situated in a picturesque locale some twenty-six kilometers northwest of Vicenza in the Leogra Valley 43 44 HEMINGWAY, THE RED CROSS, AND THE GREAT WAR at the base of the Little Dolomites. James Mellow indicates that the town was “about four miles from the Austrian lines.”7 Even so, it was the farthest from the Piave, where the most intense action developed during June and July. With thirty-six drivers, Section Four was also the largest group among the five units.8 According to Bates, they aided the “5th Army Corps of the 1st Army.”9 The town, known for textile production , provided accommodations in a wool factory with access to another building for a kitchen. The drivers had ample parking nearby for their vehicles: seventeen Fiat and six Ford ambulances, two trucks, a staff car, and a motorcycle.10 The other divisions were located east of Schio: Section One was attached to the Ninth Army Corps at Bassano near Monte Grappa; Section Two operated with the Thirteenth Army Corps from Roncade, a town north of Venice; and Section Three served the Twenty-Third Army Corps in the same region from Casale Sul Sile.11 After members of the fifth unit picked up their newly manufactured ambulances from Varese on July 4, the “Yankee Doodle Section,” as they referred to themselves, entered the field the following week and worked from Fanzolo between the Bassano and Roncade posts.12 Hemingway arrived three days after Captain Bates issued his latest memo dealing with a lingering controversy over “the matter of censorship .” Bates had asked the heads of each unit to “please explain” for “the benefit of the new men” the “trouble we have had in the past and warn them against any improper remarks.” After receiving a report from the General Intendenza stating that another missive was “held up by the censor ,” the captain announced that the government had agreed to send “the objectionable letter” to Red Cross administrators “so that we are able to fasten the blame on an individual man.” Bates also explained that “we are requested by the Supreme Command to notify them of whatever action we take.” The latest memo, he noted, had been distributed “as a warning to the new men who may not realize the seriousness of the censorship situation.” The “old men,” he mentioned, “have been sufficiently warned.”13 Indeed, John Dos Passos was a central figure in...