The great American novelist was born today in 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois.
Before becoming the acclaimed author of such novels as The Old Man and the Sea and A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway responded to an American Red Cross recruitment drive to assist the troops fighting in Europe during World War I. In June 1918, he arrived in Italy and began his assignment as an ambulance driver. In July, he was badly wounded by shrapnel when mortar fire hit his ambulance, however he still managed to rescue a number of Italian soldiers and was awarded the Italian silver cross for his efforts.
After six months recuperation in an Italian hospital, Hemingway returned America began a career in journalism and writing. The horror of the battlefield informed Hemingway’s later writing, and he described what he saw in his nonfiction book Death in the Afternoon. By the end of his life, Hemingway had published 7 novels, 2 nonfiction works, and 7 collections of short stories. He won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1954 for his novel The Old Man and the Sea.
