My Brother, Ernest Hemingway

part IV

In the first three parts of his biography. Leicester Hemingway described the celebrated author's rise to maturity both as an artist and as a man. He recalled with fraternal insight his brother's strict childhood and youthful misadventures, his severe wounding in World War I and his dramatic expulsion from the Hemingway household, his first marriage and the subsequent expatriate years, wherein the young short-story writer and foreign correspondent emerged, with the publication of "The Sun Also Rises," as a novelist of major stature. Writing with affectionate understanding, and drawing on his own unique store of shared experience, Leicester told of the years devoted to deep-sea fishing off Key West and Cuba and to big-game hunting in Africa, and traced Ernest's tumultuous life through divorce and remarriage to the private tragedy of their father's strangely prophetic suicide and the public glory that followed the appearance of "A Farewell to Arms" and "To Have and Have Not." Next followed Ernest's coverage of the civil war in Spain, where he found inspiration for the masterful novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls," and his meeting with writer Martha Gellhorn, who was to be his third wife. Leicester related as much as may be told of Ernest's secret missions in the Caribbean, his escapades early in World War II as a news-bureau chief in London, and his meeting with his future (and fourth) wife, Mary Welsh. At the beginning of Part IV -- the final installment -- we find the novelist once more on the eve of battle, as he crosses the English Channel on D-Day to continue his obsessive lifelong study of conflict, bravery and death.

D-Day: aboard his assault boat, Ernest identified the mine-swept Channel to the south for the lieutenant in command, while the spume and spray sifted down over the company. He went ashore under heavy fire in a 36-foot LCVP, through antitank obstacles on Fox Green Beach. Behind, to the northeast, the U.S. battleship Texas fired salvo after salvo over the landing craft. A great flash of white licked out at every salvo. The 16-inch guns of the Texas accounted for a number of objectives off the Cherbourg peninsula. Ernest told me afterward in London, "She looked huge and formidable. It was comforting to feel that big battlewagon whooshing those hunks of stuff inland and well over us. We figured somebody could always call in and ask them to blast a little closer, even though the rebound might be down our necks. She was our Navy, and never seemed so good before, even in a newsreel with bugle calls."

I asked him about the enemy planes down his way. "No aircraft worth mentioning. I figured we must have fighter cover for hundreds of miles to group surface targets that way. We even reached our coastal area on time." Ernest was pleased. "As far as my eyes could see, ships were behind us and spread out on both sides. Going into the beach was easy. There between Easy Red and Fox Green, the lousy cliffs west of Thionville stared down at us--it was the Krauts there doing the staring. Once we waded ashore, they began doing their stuff. But whole platoons of our guys would flop into the sand, thinking that was cover. They'd just lie there while heavy metal whistled over. They didn't seem to realize they were being observed and that the Germans were shortening the range every minute they stayed down. I looked where we'd come from. Enemy fire was creeping closer and closer.

"There was a lieutenant near me. 'Come on, boy,' I said, 'they'll zero in here in a minute.' He shook his head. So I said, 'You mother unprintable, unmentionable, undoable, let's get up the beach to where we can shoot back,' and I kicked him squarely in the butt as I got going forward. That got action. He could have let me have it with the Tommy gun, but instead he followed with his men and we moved farther in. Those guys who stayed back in the sand won't ever move again."

I told him of my own luck down the coast.

"What about Shaw? Was he with you?" he asked.

"Irwin? Not him. He'd cooked up a superprivate deal to go in with Commandos. Then they didn't go. He never landed or saw our kind of action the whole week."

"Tough luck," Ernest grinned. "But don't underestimate him. He's fast."

Some British reporters came to see Ernest then, hearing he'd returned. The questions came thick and fast. I was typing clean copy for a dispatch Ernest wanted to send off by radio and I needed to keep the pages moving, no matter how interesting the drinking and laughter became. Right then anyone who could type and concentrate was in demand. Having a brother and a sister-in-law with officer status, this Private Hemingway was one of the luckiest and busiest enlisted men in the Army. I knew that what I was running through was a pleasure compared to KP duty. It lasted longer, too.

"Come on over, Baron," Ernest called. "I admire your concentration in this setup. But I want you to meet these gentlemen from the London press. Friends, my kid brother, Leicester, like the Square. But he's shaping up and rounding off, a little more all the time." There was appreciative laughter. I refilled glasses and brought in more soda.

"Goddamnit, my head still hurts," Ernest exclaimed. "What any wound needs is a good stiff drink... Make a note of it, Baron. Future historians will one day realize that alcohol has been one of the most profound contributions to the prosecution of any war known to man."

Glasses were raised and clinked to this.

That week the first buzz bombs came over London. Their targets were unpredictable and senseless. One would hit a vacant lot in the suburbs. The next would plop into the Thames. A third would come down on a small hotel, or a barracks, scattering parts of both buildings and people over acres of nearby areas. For several days the flying bombs were an official secret. When they were finally admitted to be "pilotless aircraft," the evidence of their destructive power was so formidable that it convinced the most skeptical citizens that Hitler had developed a really nasty weapon. The swift, buzzing drone would approach in the still air. Then as the engine stopped, everyone would almost stop breathing. The "Blam!" of the explosion, however near, was a relief. If it hadn't blown you into the air, it had been a clean miss.

"There's no way to figure where the next one will come down," Ernest said. "From now on, we'll all be able to sleep better on the Normandy beachhead than anywhere in London."

Ernest was itching to get back to the Continent. All other local members of Collier's staff were there covering specific operations. He wanted to report the actions of ground troops again himself.

My film outfit, traveling with vehicles, took two weeks to reach France. When we were settled, we began working out of liberated territory and checking in with Allied Press Headquarters. There a group of correspondents had just arrived. Among them was Ernest.

I was able to reach the press camp two days later. Ernest was just shoving off. "Jump in, kid. The commanding officer at this field is a friend. He's Charlie Wertenbaker's brother, so be polite, for Christ's sake. Remember the Air Force isn't like the unprintable Signal Corps." Then he laughed to take the sting away.

At the airstrip, Thunderbolt fighters were taking off and landing with great regularity. The strip was less than a mile from where my outfit was bivouacked, but our commander had said there would be no visiting. So none of us ever officially went there during our stay in Normandy.

Colonel Wertenbaker was a tall, easygoing flier who had a tight schedule of dive-bombing and ground support during daylight hours. He ate when he got a chance and invited us. In the mess tent everyone was polite. Clean linen covered the tables and the food was excellent.

"Does the Air Force always live like this, sir?"

"Oh yes. Things get better when we're more settled. The front's only Hemingway(continued) three miles from here and we may get pushed somewhat. But if we do have to evacuate, it will be in a hurry. We've moved swiftly before."

"General, do you personally check the day's operations from the air?" Ernest asked.

"Why yes. Would you care to come along one day?"

So Ernest arranged to be over the next morning. He had a chance to look around and get the feel of how it was done from a two-seater Thunderbolt right over the lines. The experience made an excellent magazine piece. Later I asked him, "Why did you always address him as General, when he was wearing eagles?"

"Always call a colonel a general. That's what he's intent on becoming and he will think well of you for knowing what's on his mind. When you've learned that, you know something about war."

The hedgerow fighting in Normandy continued, though the 4th Division had long since cleaned up the Cotentin Peninsula. Nazi resistance was very effective in containing the beachhead. Ernest continued to check on the progress of the 4th, but he wanted to learn about everything else he could before the breakthrough that experienced observers predicted would come.

Finally the day we'd been waiting for actually arrived. We'd heard of it ever since the rumor first started around. "There's going to be a hell of a bombing, all in one place, right south of us. It will chew things up and the stalled infantry can jump off. Then the armor will get going and we'll tag along and shoot liberation stuff -- we hope."

I checked with Ernest and found he was going to move out with the 4th Division, whatever its fortunes. General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., had died weeks earlier, during the peninsular campaign. But Ernest liked the new general, Barton, and the general thought well of him.

The morning of the big bombardment we were up early, having been wakened by the warming engines of the fighter planes over at the airstrip. I had watched those planes coming in after sunset many nights, and on their first flights out; and I had developed an affection for them. "All planes are mechanical," Ernest had told me, "but the way men handle them they become alive, like boats under stress of weather."

The flights that morning were like those of migrating birds, high and in good company. They came over in nines, 27s, and in converging formations. The sun glinted on their wings and they made a thunder that shook the ground where we stood in the field. Once the bombing started, the taut canvas of our pup tents quivered, though we were several miles from the impact area. Planes came over in waves. They thundered on, shaking their eggs as in some gigantic fertility rite, and disappeared in the distance. The bombing continued until nearly noon. By midafternoon we had the word. The breakthrough was a success. Some nervous bombardiers had dumped their loads too early and killed General McNair and others back of the bomb line. But men on foot were moving through, and armor was ready to run as far and as fast as the Nazis could be shown the error of their ways.

The next day there was no permission yet for photographers or correspondents to go up. We waited days. Irwin Shaw somehow managed to get permission to take two cameramen out on patrol. When he got back, Ivan Moffet and I helped him go through three of the bottles he'd brought back. He was loaded with information and wonderful film, and needed to relax. Then word came that the whole unit could take off and catch everything filmable. We stowed gear in a hurry and left caretakers to bring up what was left to the château that was our next base camp before Paris.

Ernest's foresight and good judgment in rejoining the 4th Infantry Division were amply borne out by his luck and skill in literally commanding a unit on reconnaissance patrol ahead of the outfit. He was guided unerringly by his inborn partridge sense. The partridge is a bird seldom shot because it seems to sense what is coming long before it arrives.

Ernest was there when the combat troops of the different regiments jumped off after the hole had been made for them by air power. He had been with one regiment when it drove in close pursuit of the attack. And he had been through a rugged counterattack by Nazi tanks that threatened to wipe the unit right out of its wooded position between Villedieu and Avranches. General "Lightning Joe" Collins, the 8th Corps commander, had commended the entire 4th Division "for its great contribution."

By then in hot pursuit again, driving to and beyond Saint-Pois, Ernest realized that this outfit might actually be the one that would reach and take Paris, ahead of everyone else. "I always keep a pin on the map for old Ernie Hemingway," General Barton said when asked by correspondents what was going on. "Ernie is way out in front," the general explained, and added that he was the kind of war correspondent you dreamed of having with you, or even nearby, when a combat outfit was taking territory. He sniffed around for intelligence data, usually found it, and passed it back successfully. It was just what a great agent would come up with, and it was accurate. What more could anyone want?

There were several things Ernest Hemingway(continued) wanted then, and they were commodities that were in short supply, like sleep, relaxation and a hot bath. Ernest's jeep had acquired first two, and then three, young members of the French Forces of the Interior. They were Jean Decamp, a former Pathé news cameraman, and Marcel and Richard, younger men who had amazing records in the Resistance.

The first week in August Ernest had gone much farther than minimum prudence would suggest. The 4th Division had to fight off a counterattack by General von Kluge who was heading his crack panzer divisions down west. All three regiments were thrown into a slaughter. Battalions were reduced to 200 men. By August 12, the counterattack was stopped, near Mortagne, and from then on the Nazi retreat was a rout.

The 4th Division and the French 2nd Armored Division were in the clear for the race to Paris. By then Ernest was up at Rambouillet. He slowed to a halt, realizing the need for reinforcements and the necessity to learn enemy strength in the area.

"I had Jean and Richard bring in the locals who knew what was going on," Ernest told me in Paris the week afterward. "Marcel was in charge of prisoners. Red Pelky [his driver] and I kept our headquarters operating in the Hotel du Grand Vineur, which had a splendid wine cellar. When locals came in with information, I debriefed them and made notes. We had maps that were invaluable."

His personal intelligence system was extremely accurate. "Send these men out on their bicycles on all side roads. I want them to check personally every patch of woods," Ernest told Jean. "We need to know where all enemy tanks are, how many, what kind, and their situations and ammo supplies, if possible. Tell them I want no estimated reports. They are not to tell me about tanks unless they've actually gone up and touched them with their hands."

Ernest soon had the background and details of the local picture. Working with these young Resistance fighters was as natural to him as writing short, lucid sentences. He'd been running his own private resistance movement all his life.

When they rode along they sang:

Dix bis Avenue des Gobelins,

Dix bis Avenue des Gobelins,

Dix bis Avenue des Gobelins,

That's where my Bumby lives.

This was the song Ernest had taught his young son years before in Paris in case the boy ever got lost.

Colonel David Bruce, commander of all OSS forces in Northern Europe, showed up in Rambouillet while the intelligence network was operating. He and Ernest had many mutual friends and they instantly joined forces on the problem at hand. It was a combat operation; but without its success, Bruce would never be able to use Paris and its communications for future efforts.

"The colonel was in command," Ernest told me, "but he let me complete what I'd started, because it was bringing in fantastic results. Those locals were enormously reliable, the way people should behave under stress knowing that they may be counterattacked and liquidated at any moment. Besides, I was working for their side, too, you could honestly say. And they trusted me."

Then he told me about the deserters from the Wehrmacht, and the local girls, and the obstreperous prisoner they'd put to peeling potatoes in the hotel kitchen, after removing his pants so that he wouldn't run away. He described the dinner they'd had with General Leclerc's chief of staff and the Allied intelligence agent from the area. They'd made drawings, given Leclerc's chief their maps, soothed his feelings, and felt full of virtue.

But General Leclerc had a very low opinion of all civilians, and correspondents were in a special category of their own, very possibly below civilians. Ernest was forbidden to accompany the Leclerc column, which had been chosen by Allied headquarters to liberate Paris.

Ernest then vanished. Nobody saw him go. He just disappeared.

"I still have that champagne cork the maid gave me at the Dorchester before I went flying," he told me later. "Such things have no monetary value. They're priceless. She said it would bring me luck, and who do you see before you? The luckiest guy I know!" He laughed.

By driving a few blocks away, Ernest and the FFI boys in the rear seat had advanced parallel to one of Leclerc's columns to the edge of Versailles. Then they took a series of side roads while the Leclerc units were held up by some serious resistance that evening.

Their jeep soon joined elements of the 4th Division that swept in, liberating the first city that Ernest had ever loved. Ernest checked on Sylvia Beach and found that she was in fine shape, and then he directed his driver over to the Place de la Concorde and to the Ritz Hotel. They piled out, cocked their weapons, and swept through the hotel's cellars, taking two prisoners and noting an excellent supply of brandy. Then they cleaned out the upper floors. Ernest picked himself a suite, posted guards, checked over the staff, and then settled back, ready and free to handle whatever situations might arise. There were many. In the main, they were delightful. There were alarums, excursions, welcomes to late arrivals, chases of the milice, the calming down of a mob that wanted to cut off the hair of the many local girls who had been fraternizing with the Nazis. And there was some drinking to be done.

I didn't reach Paris until Sunday evening, coming in with the first convoy of food for the city since the Liberation. By then Irwin Shaw's unit was already there with Robert Capa, the photographer, and many correspondents. They had taken over the Hotel Scribe. I checked in with Ernest as soon as possible and found him still excited.

"Our friends came through in good shape, Baron. As far as we know none of the press people got hurt coming here. The Krauts are still in full retreat. I checked with Division, and until they reach the homeland, this ought to be a piece of cake, as the RAF types say." Ernest grinned. "Bloody unprintable job of getting info about the opposition," he added. Then he told me about the intelligence work.

"What happened to Leclerc?" I asked.

"He was damned rude," Ernest said.

"Told us to go unprintable, so we did. And beat him into this burg. But speaking of the old ballroom bananas, I had fun with one gent, a very serious type who came up with Leclerc's chief of staff. He was a veritable boy, but with rank. So he could talk down to me. He was studying this," Ernest touched his head wound, "and he said, 'Whatever kept you from failing to rise from captain? With your age you must have had experience. I thought our American friends were more generous with their promotions.'

"'My friend, it is for a very simple reason. I neither learned to read nor write,' I said. You should have seen his face. First he wouldn't believe it. Then he did. Then he was sore at being taken in, but not quite sure. It was the works." Ernest shook with laughter.

Then he went on, "But I tell you, Baron, General Barton said I did good. You know what a lift that gives." He patted himself over the heart, then abruptly changed the subject. "You seen the catacombs yet? No? Hell, there hasn't been time. But I'll bet there are plenty guys down there waiting to be taken prisoner. These Nazis are like rabbits, once you get real close. They freeze with expectation."

Very soon, though, the friendliness among the press people was gone. The correspondents were showing off again and whatever ability they had to help each other had been smothered in compliments, credits, and an almost visible desire to climb to the top of the heap. Ernest refused tocompete and declared no contest existed as far as he himself was concerned.

"How did Hemingway get here first, when we had to wait," the jealous ones cried.

With the jealousy and envy common to competitors, they decided to see what trouble they could create for Ernest. He was soon informed that he had been placed under investigation for possible revocation of his status as correspondent. The charges against him included bearing arms and taking part in combat, actions prohibited to correspondents by the Geneva Convention. As a result he faced possible removal from the area at a fascinating time.

But there were still the good moments. Every night, Ernest, Mary Welsh, Capa, Marcel Duhamel, Red Pelky and I went out for dinner in a new place. Marcel, who was Ernest's translator in France, knew where the food was. The second night he took us to a small restaurant on the Rue de Seine where Pablo Picasso ate frequently. Pablo and Ernest saw each other from a distance of about 20 feet.

"Pablito!"

"Ernesto!" The abrazos were complete. Tears streamed from the eyes of these old friends. Then there was a lot of fascinating talk while we enjoyed the red wine and fresh lamb. The next afternoon, we went over to where Picasso lived. He showed us what he was doing, led us through his studio, and he and Ernest talked.

"Your connecting corridor is like the deck of a ship bowling along in the trades, at about a 30-degree angle," Ernest said.

"Yes, when I start out toward my work, I have to keep moving toward it or I slide downhill." Picasso laughed.

He showed us the bicycle handlebars he had used as a surrealistic representation of the horns of a large animal, and pointed out how you could use other items from daily life within a design to make a grand composition.

When Ernest checked and found that the investigation of his activities was likely to be a drawn-out affair, he promptly headed off to catch up with the 4th Division. He reasoned that if he stuck with the outfit a little longer he would know a lot about this war, and the outcome of the investigation would not matter.

He rejoined the 4th in Belgium before the attack on the Siegfried line, and was there when the 105mm. tank destroyers with their great shocking power were used to blast in the entrance doors of the concrete blockhouses.

"Those wump guns were the answer," he told me later. "The Krauts still alive Hemingway(continued) would come staggering out. They were dazed, unable to see or hear, blood streaming from nostrils and ears from the shock-wave pressure."

In a few weeks, Ernest went back to Paris to check on the political machinations there. The investigation was still dragging on. He reengaged his suite at the Ritz and life picked up. Mary Welsh had a suite directly above his and the Ritz became a social spot with lots of daily visitors. Within a few days, however, Ernest was again missing his friends in the Division, in the 22nd Regiment especially, and the excitement of combat action. Again, he hurried to the front.

In another month he had to return to Paris to see how the investigation was coming along. By the time he reached the Ritz he had a bad cold that turned into something a little worse than pneumonia. However the investigation was suddenly completed and he was cleared of all charges against him.

Meanwhile Ernest's illness became more severe. Mary got back again, and his morale picked up. She soon had to leave, but he kept on gaining. Through Marcel Duhamel, who appointed himself social secretary, the backlog of callers, well-wishers, and true aficionados built up. For the first few days, Ernest had been too sick to be tough with anybody. When he began getting better, he was propped up in that big white bed, in the ornate gold-and-white room. There he held court afternoons and evenings. Those he wanted to see, he saw. Others were told, with considerable truth, that he was too sick for visitors and probably would be until after Christmas.

Ernest was still regretting how little time there had been to see Marlene Dietrich during a recent entertainment she had given for combat troops in a rest area near where the 4th Division was fighting yard by yard.

"Marlene's voice was as fantastically throaty as ever, Baron. And the stomping and yelling whenever she did a number was 10 times the volume for any night-club act she's ever done. When you hear her sing the Kraut makes up for everything you've ever missed in life. It was almost like when we met on that French ship coming back from the Spanish War. When I see her, she always seems a kind of talisman."

One afternoon Marcel came in. He was excited. "Sartre wants very much to meet you. So does his girl."

"All right," Ernest decided. "Tell them to come about eight. The Baron will still be here. He can be bartender."

Jean-Paul Sartre came on time. He was a short man with myopic eyes and a friendly laugh. His girl, Castor, better known as Simone de Beauvoir, was taller, darker, and more likable. We started on champagne. About the third bottle, Castor wanted to know how seriously ill Ernest really was.

"I'm this sick ... healthy as hell. see?" Ernest kicked back the bedclothes, flexed a well-muscled leg, and grinned. In the next hour, he insisted repeatedly that he was feeling tremendous. He sat up straight, made good jokes, and spoke scornfully of his compatriots who were keeping the home fires burning while the eastern edge of France, down in the Vosges, still needed liberation, and the Krauts needed to have their ears permanently boxed for having debased civilization as we knew it.

When André Malraux came to Paris, Ernest immediately invited him up. "Come have a drink," he said on the phone. "I'm not sick. They just say I am." André wore the uniform of a colonel in the French army. He had been a flier, and a flying officer, in the Spanish War. Now he commanded infantry.

"Mon vieux," he began. Then they were off, both talking at the same time. I opened new chilled bottles, filled and rinsed glasses, opened more bottles, and listened as rhetoric flowed. André had a command of the language that would have awed a Marseilles fishwife.

With gestures, Ernest told about the pompous Nazi officer they'd taken prisoner after entering Paris. When he had demanded his rights as a prisoner of war, the members of Ernest's local FFI unit had been so taken aback by the effrontery of his choice of words, they had removed his pants and marched him up the Avenue de la Grande-Armée to the Etoile. "It destroyed his dignity very effectively," Ernest said.

Malraux had been on the southern front as a Resistance leader in the FFI. The Gestapo had captured him before the invasion and they were preparing to torture him when he pulled his gigantic bluff. "Listen. I know your superiors and they respect me," he told them. "If they hear of anything being done to me, you will each be executed, one by one." It worked. He was treated as an honored prisoner of war, and later escaped.

When the big Nazi counterattack came against the northern front on December 16, it took several hours for word to filter back. Then there was sudden strict censorship. Few people in Paris realized that the Battle of the Bulge had begun. Ernest had enough facts to know the seriousness of the situation.

"There's been a complete breakthrough, kid. Got to go back up right away. This thing could cost us the works.

Their armor is pouring in. They're taking no prisoners."

He was putting in calls about transport and a few minutes later told me, "General Red O'Hare is sending a jeep over for me. Load these clips. Wipe every cartridge clean. We may have a bad time getting up there. The Germans have infiltrated with guys in GI uniforms. Jeep coming in 15 minutes. Try to get up there yourself, and look me up at the 4th. Now look after yourself, will you, Baron? Good luck, kid."

In the first week, the Nazi counterattack slowed. But it had done enormous damage. The 4th, from its position on the eastern edge of Luxembourg, fought well. It was after Christmas when I got there, on detached service as aide and cameraman with William Wyler, an Air Force colonel who knew how to shoot documentary films as well as Hollywood epics. For more than a week I was able to join Ernest and the 4th Division during its time of pressure, and then relaxation, as the Nazi attack was blunted and then fell back.

The truth was that Ernest was at home with the 4th Division. General Barton had been transferred right after Christmas because of sickness. But his successor, General Blakely, was a calm and competent officer who had handled division artillery for many months.

While in Luxembourg, Ernest had taken a hotel room across from the hospital, locked himself in, and poured out the makings of dispatches and great fiction. He came out to relax with good pals like Kurt Show, who had been General Roosevelt's driver, Red Pelky, Jean, Marcel, Reg Denny of The New York Times, Hank Gorrell of United Press, Jimmy Cannon of Stars and Stripes, and J.D.Salinger, who was a good CIC man with the division. Ernest was the dominant figure. He loved to tell stories, drink, and listen. The different companies and battalions were fighting all night as well as all day. In many instances they were cut off. All anyone could do was wait and either move up to them or hear about their last moments.

When Ernest greeted me at his hotel, he was effusive. "I'm in another belle epoch, "he announced. That was the term he used to describe those times when he was writing very well. "And you, Baron, you are at the right place and on time."

"Is it still bad?"

"That's the wrong word. Wonderful is more accurate. I'll show you the positions. How long have you got? I'll take you on patrol, and I'll show you, point by point, where the Germans came from and what we did and how everything is now. This has been a time from which to learn, if ever men could learn."

We did all of those things, our boots squeaking on the snow as we tramped Hemingway (continued) through the trees, down into valleys, and up along the ridges, Ernest explaining, the entire time, the actions that had taken place in each area. He was experiencing a pure delight in living.

"My chest doesn't bother me any more. Dry air is a help." He breathed in deeply to demonstrate. It was very cold, but he loved it. The snow and high-pressure areas made us feel good. We skied and sang off key, and we had plenty of food and drink as well.

Then Colonel William Wyler and I worked our way into Bastogne while it was fighting free, and checked out the fighting in the far south, along the Swiss border. We got wonderful film and didn't reach Paris for another month. When we got in, I phoned the Ritz.

"Come over, Baron. Lots of news." Ernest sounded distraught. When I got to the hotel he told me, "Bumby's been captured. He was on an OSS mission and got hit and picked up by the Krauts. We may be able to pull a snatch job and get him back. I'm getting more information."

He kept pacing the floor and slamming his right fist into his left palm. What had him in this impotent rage was that he didn't know if Bumby would be treated as a prisoner of war or as an enemy agent. Ernest was determined to try to get his son back. But so far he had not even been able to find out how far to the rear Bumby had been taken.

A week went by with no new information. Then the good word arrived. Through the International Red Cross, Ernest learned that Bumby was officially a prisoner of war. It was possible to relax.

In the meantime, Marlene Dietrich had returned to Paris from her many front-line visits, and in an intimate talk with Mary and Ernest convinced Mary that she should try and make a life with him, despite his uninhibited behavior. Ernest, feeling pretty good, had fired his pistol into the toilet. This action had upset Mary, and Marlene says she took some time to quiet down. "You two need each other, and it will be good for you," Marlene said. Ernest and Mary made up, and went on from there.

By March, Ernest knew how the war would come out. He headed back for New York. He wanted to write. He had had his firsthand view of the war, and he said that it made sense. He said that World War I had made no sense to him at all. Twenty years after the Spanish War, he said the more he read and remembered about that one, the less he understood any of it. But World War II made sense.

In Havana after the war, Ernest wrote steadily. In December 1945 he and Martha Gellhorn were divorced; and in March 1946 he married Mary Welsh. The Finca and the Pilar required a great deal of attention in those early post war months. He built the tower workroom, and out fitted the boat again. Then he got back to his routine of writing in the early hours. He described his work habits to columnists Leonard Lyons and Earl Wilson. In turn, they described them to the world. And he was absolutely honest in his advice to writers, urging them to read the best works available; to try to see, feel and know as much as possible about their subjects; and always to stop the day's writing at the point where the writer knew what was coming next -- so that the next day's work would start easily.

That summer we had a chance to meet and talk out at the Finca. Mary was away visiting her folks. Patrick was very sick. Ernest was caring for him and asked me to stay for a week so that we could talk. It was a time of strain, of evaluation, and of loneliness.

"Goddamnit, Baron, there have been so many brain-pickers down here lately. They all want to do magazine pieces or get ideas or find out what their thoughts are worth. It's a cheerful thing to see somebody with plans of his own. Stick around. We need to fill the air and let the thoughts fall where they may."

I had planned to stay about three days and said I didn't know if I could be free for a week.

"A bloody week won't ruin you. Patricio will appreciate it and we've got to get him eating and on the mend. And we need to talk. I'll tell you how to pick them in the quinielas. I'll tellyou what's worth reading, and how to write from imagination as well as from what you know. I'll tell you about women ... What do you want to know?"

It wasn't feasible to leave the house long enough to go fishing. But other things were possible. We swam, shot doves, boxed, drank, ate, read, talked, and Ernest got tired enough to sleep, which was what he really needed to do.

Ernest was writing well, and not showing his work around. He kept the production flowing, in between head wounds, automobile accidents, and jarring concussions. When his postwar profits from foreign rights built up to good proportions, he and Mary took a trip to Europe. He wanted to see northern Italy again, where he had worked so well and had been so pleased with life in his first years overseas. While duck shooting in the marshes near Venice, he had got a bit of shell wadding blown into his eye by the wind, and a serious infection developed. It looked for a time as though it could cost him his sight, perhaps his life. But many millions of units of penicillin later, he came out of the experience. And he had the manuscript of Across the River and Into the Trees. It had been written with urgency. But Ernest thought it excellent and was annoyed by the critical barbs that followed its serialization in Cosmopolitan.

After the eye infection had healed and the book had been published, Ernest wrote Marlene offering to do a wonderful Dietrich scenario based on the search for the Holy Grail, in which there would be an innocent German girl who had to find her way through whole countries of unpleasant people. He said she was not to feel too cocky about a happy outcome for the story, for they were both to remember Ingrid, who had herself been burned at the stake in full armor and with the handles on, yet all she had gotten out of it was Rossellini. Ernest said he loved Marlene very much, as she damned well knew, and that some day maybe he would write a story about both of them and then they could live happily forever.

The following year, he was persuaded by Leland Hayward to publish The Old Man and the Sea, first in Life magazine and then as a book. Ernest knew he had written a memorable story, with power and value beyond anything he'd ever done. It still gratified him, though, when The Old Man won him a Pulitzer Prize.

With plenty of production behind him, Ernest headed for Europe again, and reentered Spain for the first time since the closing weeks of the Spanish War. From Spain, Ernest and Mary went down to British East Africa for another hunt with Philip Percival. Ernest wanted to find out about the feelings of a hunter on foot, at night, in good leopard country. He was working up to this by substituting as a game ranger in one area, and killing some marauding lions in grass 15 feet high with poor visibility and excellent chances of a surprise attack.

Then, wanting to see Victoria Falls and the back country, Ernest and Mary chartered a four-seater Cessna monoplane with Roy Marsh, an American pilot. Near the falls, Marsh encountered a flock of ibis. Diving to avoid them, he hit an abandoned telephone line and crash-landed nearby.

They were considerably shaken by the impact. The worst injured was Mary, who cracked two ribs. After a rough night on the ground near the plane, with elephants taking a disturbing interest in them, the party hailed a passing launch on the river nearby, and reached Butiaba. There they chartered another plane. On takeoff, it crashed and burned. (continued on page 106)Hemingway(continued from page 42) By then a search plane had spotted their first plane and reported no signs of life. The world press was informed of this and obituaries flowed freely. Ernest had been almost fatally shaken up in the second crash. His internal organs had been wrenched out of place, his spine was injured, and he was bleeding from every orifice when he reached medical aid at Nairobi by car. The doctor there explained that by all medical logic he should have died during the night. In the next few days he was able to read the many choice obituaries of himself while resting in bed. He ignored the pain to savor the experience.

After the crashes, Ernest and Mary returned to Cuba by way of Europe. Ernest was still hurting and the intensity and depth of the pain were great. He said he could take his mind off of it sometimes while he worked, but night was the worst time for that kind of pain.

Writing Marlene, Ernest urged her to come to Cuba and visit the Finca, promising not to make bad gallows jokes or to let her read his obituaries. He said the waves of pain at times were rougher than rough, but that at those times he would think about her and then for a while he did not hurt at all. He said he wished they had more contact, for there was always a part of him that stopped aching when he put his arms around her.

In 1954 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He made no speeches, except over the Cuban TV network. After remarking on how much pleasure it would have given him to have seen Isak Dinesen, Bernard Berenson or Carl Sandburg receive it, he calmed down and accepted the award with humility. His doctor refused to let him go to Sweden for the award and Ernest refused to send Mary, so the American Ambassador made the formal acceptance. The medal and money reached Ernest in due time. He gave the medal to the shrine of Virgen de Cobre in eastern Cuba, remarking that nobody ever really had a thing until it was given away.

In the years between Ernest's African crashes and his revisiting Europe, I had repeatedly written him but learned later that few of the letters had reached him. I had published a novel, remarried, and done some things that logically would have interested him. It was during this time that Ernest asked mutual friends he saw, such as John Groth, the artist, and others to whom he wrote, why he didn't hear from me and what news did they have. Finally a letter I sent to Spain reached Ernest, and in a return letter he rehashed personal and public events, the business of writing, and other matters. He had been infuriated with a single line concerning a character in my novel, but I recalled his advice to me at the Finca after the war:

"Never hesitate to call a spade a dirty unprintable shovel. And regarding unsympathetic characters, blast the unprintables with everything you have and let them dare to sue. Good guys we level on also, but more gently. Nothing is worth a damn but the truth as you know it, feel it, and create it in fiction. Nobody ever sued me in England over The Sun Also Rises. Yet the characters in it had very real origins. Some went around pleasuring themselves with identification and being literarily angry for some time. So slip it to them, every one. If a writer cannot do with words what a cartoonist or artist does with lines, he should write political speeches where the premium is on volume without insight."

During the fall of 1955, Ernest worked with Spencer Tracy in Cuba making most of the sequences for the film version of The Old Man and the Sea. Ernest, Spencer and Leland Hayward had agreed that they would each share a third of the picture's gross in return for their roles as writer, star and producer. But there were countless delays in shooting parts of the script. The camera crews were excellent, but hurricanes Hilda and Ione bitched the schedule with gale winds and ground swells that halted all activities. On good days Ernest spent eight to nine hours on the Pilar's flying bridge, maneuvering the vessel for the camera crews. Then he would stagger ashore for a rubdown before having his evening meal -- and all the sleep possible.

Before the main Cuban segment of the picture was finished on September 15, Ernest was almost sick with frustration. He declared that he was a writer and had to be faithful to his trade. He had to continue working in his one-man fiction factory, no matter how absorbing the film work might become. He made up for the time out to some extent during the winter that followed. By the next spring, another camera crew journeyed with him to Peru, where it was hoped a giant marlin could be taken and used for the final scenes.

In the first 14 solid days of fishing there were no marlin strikes. Then in the next two weeks, six fish hit the baits and four of these were boated. They were big marlin by any standards. They ran 14 feet and over. But they were not huge, and the picture needed one such fish. It was finally necessary to resort to Hollywood magic to obtain the desired effect. It took something out of Ernest when that decision was made.

Throughout the Fifties, in letters and conversations with friends, and in comments while enjoying the sports he loved, Ernest threw away more shrewd observations than most men make in a lifetime.

His interests were unlimited. He followed the entire world around him, through the newspapers, magazines and books that flowed in from the farthest corners of everywhere. Visitors, invitations and distractions came in from everywhere, too. Through it all, Ernest worked steadily. In letters he noted that one of the problems of the working writer in Cuba was to be in his best form early in the morning, and to get the work done by midday before sweat streaked down the arms, ruining the paper. On boxing, Ernest made predictions of coming matches that proved to be two-thirds correct. In one prediction-making mood he bet that crime would win over Kefauver, Eisenhower over Truman, and income tax over Hemingway.

On Southerners, Ernest had succinct advice. He felt that the rule should be never to trust anybody with a Southern accent unless he was a Negro. On novel writing, he advised having the kind of self-confidence a structural steel worker had, especially when he reached the level of about the 72nd floor. Ernest said there had been some wonderful men in the recent human past. These included Cervantes, Cellini and the Elizabethans, and among contemporary writers he had affection for George Orwell, Edwin Balmer, Edwin Fuller, John Peale Bishop and Owen Wister, as well as Dos Passos and MacLeish.

Writing Marlene Dietrich, Ernest talked of the new work he was doing. He said it was much better than the great poem on war he had written during that bad winter of the Ardennes offensive, which he wanted her to have, if he ever ceased being around, and which he had already placed in a safety-deposit box for her. He said Marlene would always have him with her wherever she was, since he believed in her without reservations, and nobody loved her as he did.

The summer of 1959 he and Mary went to Spain. They had an exciting time following the many competing corridas between Dominguín and Ordóñez. Previously. Ernest had thought tremendously well of Dominguín and had come to know him and Walter Chiari when they were both squiring Ava Gardner around. He thought well of Ava, too. In one of his letters Ernest declared that Ava certainly had the body and he certainly had the morale.

But Ernest was finding that morale was not enough. He instigated and prosecuted battles of insults with other journalists. And in reporting and writing the Dominguín-Ordóñez season, which he published in sections as The Dangerous Summer in Life, he was again writing as a journalist. His agreement with Life stated this, but some readers criticized the material for not being literature.

Ernest headed for New York in October. Once there, he dipped down to Havana for only two days before going out to Sun Valley for the fall hunting season. He was not feeling well but kept telling himself that everything was all right.

And then, in the midst of a cold, hostile winter, Mary had a nasty accident which shattered her right arm. It kept her near medical care until the end of January. When she was finally able to travel, she and Ernest went down to Havana again. I talked to him by telephone before he left Idaho and he seemed very cheerful, though slow on answers.

But much of what Ernest had known in Cuba had undergone change. Fidel's decrees were shaking the economy, the foreign colony, and the existing business structure. So quietly, in the spring, Ernest left Cuba with 32 pieces of luggage and headed for Idaho. He was going home.

Ernest's weight had dropped to 173 by fall. His answers were coming with great effort and hesitation, no matter who addressed the questions. When Leslie Fiedler and Seymour Betsky from Montana State University drove to Ketchum to interview him, they were taken aback by Ernest's appearance, behavior and loss of confidence in his words.

In November, Ernest went to the Mayo Clinic with his own doctor from Ketchum, was admitted under the doctor's name, and became for a time George Xavier at the St. Mary's Hospital of the Mayo Clinic. When word reached the public that Ernest was there, a bulletin was released stating that he was under treatment for an unidentified ailment. Later releases stated it was hypertension. There Marlene Dietrich was able to reach him by telephone, and he talked slowly, but clearly, about his condition.

"I'm able to keep the blood pressure within limits, Daughter," he told Marlene, "but it's very lonely sometimes and the weight is a separate problem. It's so wonderful just to hear your voice." While in the hospital, Ernest received 15 electroshock treatments. He was released after Christmas and he returned to Sun Valley.

Before entering the Mayo Clinic, Ernest's blood pressure had been 220/125 and he had a mild form of diabetes mellitus that was diagnosed during his stay. He hoped to maintain his weight at 175 with diet and exercise. After leaving the Clinic, his blood pressure was considerably lower. On February 15, 1961, the last reading he had was 138/80; however, tests at the Clinic had uncovered the possibility that Ernest might have hemochromatosis, a very rare disease that could bring an end to the functioning of various organs.

By March, Ernest was still feeling depressed. One day that April, a lively party was in progress in a friend's apartment in New York. George Plimpton, who had done a recorded interview with Ernest that was published in The Paris Review, was there; also there was A. E. Hotchner, who had adapted some of Ernest's stories and books for TV. So was George Brown, Ernest's sparring partner, conditioner, and friend of more than a generation. They put through a phone call to Ernest and each of the men took a turn talking with him, trying to cheer him up.

Soon after, Ernest took a plane back to the Mayo Clinic. He was admitted under his own name, and had 10 more electroshock treatments administered. Temporarily he seemed more alert, less withdrawn, less depressed. He wrote calm, pleasant and lucid letters in longhand, and showed awareness of political as well as domestic problems. He swam in the pool frequently.

In the last week of June, he was released. By then he was down to a gaunt 155 pounds. That week Mary phoned George Brown in New York and asked him to come out and drive them to Sun Valley. A car was rented, and the trip West was made in five days. The daily runs often ended shortly after noon when a picnic lunch, prepared by Mary, was served. Ernest ate sparingly. He watched the road a great deal; he was concerned about reaching each appointed destination -- seemed worried about the gas supply, the tires and the road, and followed their progress constantly on a large map which he carried.

When they finally reached Ketchum, Ernest seemed relieved. Saturday night George, Mary and Ernest went into town and had dinner at the Christiania Inn. It was a quiet meal and Ernest seemed preoccupied. He had lost so much weight he seemed frail.

He had been deeply distressed by the deaths of his good friends Gary Cooper and George Vanderbilt. And a letter he had written to our parents more than 40 years earlier may have come to mind. Ernest had written the family in 1918, after being wounded, that dying was a very simple thing, for he had looked at death and he knew. He said that it was undoubtedly better to die in the happy period of youth, going out in a blaze of light, rather than having one's body worn out and old, and illusions shattered. And then, what has been called "the incredible accident" took place, ending the career of this century's greatest American writer.

Early the next morning, July 2, 1961, he took the final positive action of his life. Like a samurai who felt dishonored by the word or deed of another, Ernest felt his own body had betrayed him. Rather than allow it to betray him further, he, who had given what he once described as the gift of death to so many living creatures in his lifetime, loaded the weapon he held and then leaned forward as he placed the stock of his favorite shotgun on the floor of the foyer, and found a way to trip the cocked hammers of the gun.