This article is from WeChat official account: blood diamond story (ID: xuezuangushi) , Author: Chu East Wood, head of FIG. Source: “Hemingway and cap Erhorn”
People can be destroyed,
But cannot be defeated
——Hemingway
Mature Ceremony of Blood and Fire
On the night of July 8, 1918, the sky over the Piave River in northern Italy was suddenly bright as day. The Austro-Hungarian army on the other side of the river fired the flares. After a burst of white light, filled with iron pieces and scrap metal. The shotgun screamed, and an American medical soldier who had just stepped out of the air-raid shelter and jumped into the trench was shocked by the shell. The only feeling was that his legs were so hot.
The name of the medical soldier was Ernest Hemingway, and he was only 13 days away from his 19th birthday. After returning to his soul, Hemingway saw a person crying loudly lying beside him. He was probably seriously injured. He dragged his heavy legs to the front, and supported the person on his back. The command post of meters far away.
Walking less than fifty meters, a bullet fired by a heavy machine gun from the other side hit his right knee again. Hemingway staggered, trying to touch his knee with his hand, and found that the knee had fallen to his calf. He just walked the remaining fifty meters with the wounded soldier on his back with unknowing strength, and finally fainted in front of the command post.
This is a battle near the end of the First World War. Four years of fighting, there are mothers who lost their children everywhere in Europe. No one cares why the war started. People only remember that the crown prince of Austria-Hungary was shot. He was killed, and then declared war on Serbia. Germany, France, Russia, Italy, and Japan, which had been in the arms race between the two countries for many years, also declared war one after another. As a result, millions of young people rushed to the front and died without even understanding what the war was Abroad.
In the year when World War I broke out, Hemingway entered the first year of high school. He was very good at boxing and football. He was also an editor of the journal. After graduating from high school, he did not go to university. He was introduced as a reporter. After six months of work, he couldn’t wait to go to Europe to experience the real war. Due to his poor eyesight, he was transferred to the Red Cross rescue team on the front line in Italy. .
Hemingway at the Milan Hospital, Italy
Before 227 wounds were exploded by the shrapnel, Hemingway’s understanding of war was “others will die, but I won’t.” When the shell exploded at his feet, the illusion was shattered. The dying soldier, Hemingway once wanted to deal with himself with a pistol.
Hemingway was awarded the Silver Medal of Bravery for saving people bravely on the battlefield. He also gained and lost his first love affair in the Red Cross Hospital in Milan. In the days of recuperation in the hospital bed, Hemingway occasionally picked up a pen to write down his feelings about war, but it took ten years before he wrote the novel “Farewell, Weapon” that made him debut in the literary world.
That year, a German soldier who was wounded on the Western Front also published a novel. This soldier was named Remak. He was one year older than Hemingway. The novel was called “No War on the Western Front”. The battlefield story of nine-year-old student Paul and his classmates.
In the novel, Remarck uses Paul’s perspective to restore the two warring parties to ordinary people with names and surnames. Paul stabbed to death the French soldier Duvale, a typographer, in the trench. He said to the body, “In the past, you were just a concept to me. Now, I see that you are the same person as me.”
In October 1918, the only classmate left by Paul who was on the front line died peacefully. The battlefield was surprisingly quiet that day, and the news in the newspaper only wrote one sentence: No war on the Western Front.
“Farewell, Weapons” and “No War on the Western Front” were put on screen by Hollywood in the 1930s. On the day of the premiere of “West” in Berlin, Goebbels, the propaganda commander of the Nazi Party, sent people Sprinkling peppers in the auditorium and throwing hordes of mice, the frightened audience rushed out of the theater. This novel became a banned book after the Nazis officially came to power. Remark was deprived of German nationality and left for the United States.
In December 1943, Remark’s sister was arrested and beheaded by the Nazis. The charge was “disruption of the army”, and the judge’s verdict was “you must atone for your brother.”
After settling in the United States, Remarck and Hemingway became friends, and the two of them cherished each other. Remarck had a high evaluation of “The Old Man and the Sea”. He thought Hemingway had written his unfinished words back then. He said, “With Hemingway Than, I am a trivial writer.”
The First World War is over, but the Paris Peace Conference, where the powers divided the spoils, planted the seeds of revenge. Hemingway, who spent his life and death as a bar mitzvah, returned to his hometown. The war left permanent pain on his body. Left behind the sequelae of a lifelong passion for chasing danger.
The death of a soldier
In July 1936, a civil war broke out in Spain. The fascist Phalan Party led by the right-wing soldier Franco launched a war on the People’s Front of the left-wing political coalition that won the election. Behind Franco was Hitler’s support, and the People’s Front was Stalin. The support of this civil war is also known as the prelude to the Second World War.
At the end of that year, the manager of the North American Press Union found Hemingway, who was already a well-known writer, and invited him to Spain to report on the battle. Hemingway, who had been to Spain to see bullfights before, happily went there despite the opposition of his wife and editor.
In March 1937, Hemingway arrived in Madrid, the capital city under siege by Franco’s army. The largest city in Spain had just gone through a four-month defense war at the time. In addition to the government-led Republican Army, three people from 56 countries The international column of more than 10,000 volunteers also played a big role.
Hemingway in Spain
These people include veterans who participated in World War I, workers, doctors, journalists, and artists, such as Bethune who led the Canadian medical team, George Orwell, the British writer who wrote “1984”, and Chilean diplomacy in Spain Official and Chilean poet Neruda.
Hemingway’s hotel was very close to the forward position.