The Real British Red Cross and Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms

Using G. M. Trevelyan's Scenes From Italy's War and other first-hand sources, this essay uncovers an impression of the working conditions for VAD nurses and ambulance drivers on the Isonzo Front during World War I. In this way, the significance of many of A Farewell to Arms's oblique aspects—the recent arrival of women at the front, the 1915 cholera outbreak, and the importance of road building—are better understood. Furthermore, I reveal that, in his descriptions of the preparations for the attack at Plava and the retreat from Caporetto, Hemingway's appropriations of Trevelyan are more extensive than previously thought.