Immediately after High School, Hemingway volunteered to drive an ambulance in WWI. He was severely injured by machine gun fire and a mortar blast and then emotionally crushed when his nurse & lover rejected him. He married Hadley Richardson from St. Louis who loved him deeply and was dedicated to support his dream to become a writer.
They moved to Paris where he was mentored by Gertrude Stein, befriended F. Scott Fitzgerald, fathered his first son, wrote The Sun Also Rises and fell is love with the Pauline Pfeiffer - Hadley’s best friend from St. Louis. A rich woman, Pauline was even more willing to put Hemingway’s needs first.
They moved to Key West, into the largest house on the Island. There Hemingway fathered two more sons and wrote Farewell to Arms and many excellent short stories included “Snows of Kilimanjaro.” But when Martha Gellhorn (also from St. Louis) walked into Sloppy Joe’s that fateful day in December 1936, it had been 8 years since his last masterpiece. Hemingway had recently written to his Editor: “I’m domesticated as an old cow. Nice family. Nice house. Nice boat. Life shouldn't be this soft. Brain's blunted with the boredom.” He was getting ready to go to Spain as a war correspondent to cover their Civil War. Martha Gellhorn desperately wanted to come with him.
Tall, 9 years younger, fiercely independent and dedicated to her own writing career, Martha Gellhorn was nothing like his past and future wives. His warning for relationships had always been “Govern or be Governed.” As to why he got involved with this beautiful, brave, brainy, bossy Blonde, Hemingway wrote: “Because I want to make an absolutely, colossal mistake.” During their tumultuously-entertaining relationship he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls.
After D-Day, Hemingway distinguished himself through death denying war reporting and counter-intelligence activities with the French Resistance. He reported from the Battle of the Bulge, Liberation of Paris and personally liberated the Bar at the Paris Ritz. His 4th wife was the diminutive Mary Walsh (who he made damn sure wasn’t from St. Louis). In 1954, he received the Nobel Price for The Old Man and the Sea. In failing health, no longer able to write, Hemingway died of a self-inflicted shotgun wound in 1961. He was 62 years old.
