Hemingway Adventure

Series: Hemingway Adventure
Chapter: Milan
Country/sea: Italy
Place: Milan
Book page no: 69

Milan

The wounded hero, Milan 1918. The story of A Farewell to Arms was born out of what happened here.

The newspapers this morning lead with stories of unheard-of weather conditions. Winds from Siberia, snow in Sicily.

Oddly, the worst weather is in the south. Perhaps it's too cold to snow up here. Instead we have bright, crisp sunshine as our train pulls out through the straggling northern suburbs of Milan, heading for the lakes and the mountains.

Italy has been a revelation. I have seen where Hemingway shot and was shot at. I've drunk in his bars and sat in his hotel. I have walked the cities where he fell in love. I've seen where the legend of the warrior began and met those who saw the start of his final decline.

But that is to jump ahead.

When Hemingway first left Italy he was nineteen. A Farewell to Arms would not be written for another ten years. He was, however, already somebody special. He had been to war, he had recovered from a bomb blast that had left 227 separate wounds in his legs and he would go back to America as a war hero. 'Worst Shot-Up Man in US Returns Home' shouted the Chicago American as he arrived in New York. The beautiful woman who'd nursed him was in love with him and the Italians had given him a medal. And all because he had followed his own gut instinct, made his own moves, wriggled out of the loving, stifling grasp of his family.

He tried to adjust to life back home, but once the war-hero adulation had worn off and his beautiful nurse had written to tell him she'd found someone else, the old frustration set in.

The next time Hemingway left for Europe it was not six months but nine years before he came back to live in America.

Sudden blackness. Into the tunnel and under the Alps. We shall be in Paris in another four hours.