http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2006/spring/hemingway.html
In 1944 he returned to Europe to witness key moments in World War II, including the D-day landings. He was 44 at the time and, comparing his photograph on his Certificate of Identity of Noncombatant to the portrait of the young 19-year-old who volunteered in World War I, one notices how distinguished the internationally renowned author had become in those 25 years.
Hemingway accompanied American troops as they stormed to shore on Omaha Beach—though as a civilian correspondent he was not allowed to land himself. Weeks later he returned to Normandy, attaching himself to the 22nd Regiment commanded by Col. Charles "Buck" Lanham as it drove toward Paris (whose liberation he would later witness and write about). Before doing so, Hemingway led a controversial effort to gather military intelligence in the village of Rambouillet and, with military authorization, took up arms himself with his small band of irregulars.
According to World War II historian Paul Fussell, "Hemingway got into considerable trouble playing infantry captain to a group of Resistance people that he gathered because a correspondent is not supposed to lead troops, even if he does it well."
http://www.notablebiographies.com/He-Ho/Hemingway-Ernest.html
World War II
Following the critical and popular success of For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway lapsed into a literary silence that lasted a full decade and was largely the result of his strenuous, frequently reckless, activities during World War II (1939–45; a war in which France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States fought against Germany, Italy, and Japan). In 1942, as a Collier's correspondent with the Third Army, he witnessed some of the bloodiest battles in Europe. At this time he received the nickname of "Papa" from his admirers, both military and literary.
In 1944 while in London, Hemingway met and soon married Mary Welsh, a Time reporter. His three previous marriages—to Hadley Richardson, mother of one son; to Pauline Pfeiffer, mother of his second and third sons; and to Martha Gelhorn—had all ended in divorce. Following the war, Hemingway and his wife purchased a home, Finca Vigía, near Havana, Cuba.
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His experience in China apparently gave Hemingway a taste for espionage, for when he returned to his home in Cuba, he organized a network of amateur spies who gathered information for the FBI on Axis sympathizers and operatives on the island. After this venture fizzled, Hemingway and his drinking buddies used his fishing boat Pilar to hunt for U-boats operating in the Caribbean, thinking they could surprise one and drop explosives down its conning-tower hatch.
Hemingway also applied to the new Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1944. But it turned him down, believing--correctly--he was "too much of an individualist to work under military supervision."
From 1941 to 1944 Gellhorn covered the war in Europe for Collier's from London. Upon returning to Cuba in March 1944, she pleaded with Hemingway to come to Europe. He finally agreed to cover the war, also for Collier's. Hemingway received the magazine's front-line accreditation, and as the military allotted only one per publication, he effectively ensured Gellhorn would not receive it (as a woman, she was unlikely to get it at the time anyway). He also arranged a flight to London for himself, leaving Gellhorn to cross the North Atlantic aboard a munitions ship.
By the time Gellhorn arrived in England in late May 1944, Hemingway was enraptured with Time/Life magazine correspondent Mary Welsh. The following months were marked by his disintegrating relationship with Gellhorn, his blossoming affair with Welsh, and his legendary contribution to the capture of France and Western Germany.
World War II had less impact on Hemingway's art than his earlier conflicts, as he wrote about the war peripherally only in the mediocre novel Across the River and Into the Trees and in stories published posthumously. But his actions in 1944 greatly amplified the Hemingway mystique. In the presence of soldiers and male journalists (who dutifully recorded his exploits), he was a swashbuckling irregular--jolly, courageous, foolhardy. And while he later claimed to have beaten Free French General Philippe Leclerc into Paris and to have liberated the city's famed Ritz Hotel, it is extremely difficult to pin down the facts, as Hemingway--and others-again greatly exaggerated his exploits.
We do know that Hemingway's last war began on the morning of June 6, when he clambered from a troopship into a Higgins boat bound for Normandy's Omaha Beach. Due to confusion on the beach, his craft had to bob off the French coast until the troops could be put ashore. Correspondents were not yet permitted ashore, so Hemingway returned to England aboard a transport and was outraged when he learned Gellhorn had stowed away on a hospital ship and snuck ashore before him.
Hemingway returned to France on July 18 and soon joined the Allied advance on Paris. He considered journalism a poor outlet for his talents and filed only six pieces to Collier's from Europe. Hemingway could read maps, speak French and some German, and had an appreciation for tactics. He also possessed a forceful personality and was a natural leader. Hemingway kept in contact with both the OSS and French Resistance and was reportedly armed and shooting at the enemy. On July 30 he "liberated" a German motorcycle with sidecar. Hemingway and his jeep driver, Private Red Pelkey, also flushed six German soldiers from a farmhouse with hand grenades and took them prisoner. Two days later, near SaintPois, he spent an afternoon pinned in a ditch by machine-gun fire after a German shell upended his motorcycle. Though his role in the liberation of Paris was frequently distorted, he did arrive in the city on August 25, the day Leclerc's Free French took the city, and Hemingway and his entourage did indeed dine at the Ritz that night.
He continued to travel with journalists (many of whom considered him a reckless braggart) and attached himself to the U.S. 22nd Infantry Regiment, whose commander, Col. Charles "Buck" Lanham, became a fast friend. Hemingway traveled with the regiment (returning to Paris occasionally to be with Mary Welsh) right through to the bloody fighting in Germany's Hurtgen Forest in the winter of 1944-1945. At one point, the inspector general of the Third Army, prompted by complaints from other correspondents, investigated whether Hemingway's actions in combat violated regulations governing civilian war correspondents. In response, he denied participating in combat.
Hemingway often displayed an almost insane disdain for danger. On one occasion, he and other guests were dining at Lanham's command post in a farmhouse near the Siegfried Line when a shell crashed through a wall. The others dove into a potato cellar, then peeked out to find Hemingway still at the table, calmly eating his steak. When Lanham ordered him to take cover, the writer replied that a shell would be as likely to hit one place as another, so he would remain where he was. Lanham argued with him as another round came through the wall. The others stayed in the shelter, watching their colonel berate Hemingway as more shells hit.
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It's a great story, but it highlights a darker side of Hemingway's behavior. Throughout his time with the 22nd Infantry, Hemingway wrote Welsh letters saying he'd once again cheated the "old whore, Death." Biographer Michael Reynolds concluded that Hemingway--his third marriage a failure and his head still ringing from a concussion sustained in a traffic accident just after his arrival in London--"simply no longer cared if he lived or died."
The fierce combat in the Hurtgen only intensified Hemingway's inner gloom. The 22nd Infantry sustained more than 2,800 casualties in the battle, and the writer was almost among them. Lanham later reported seeing Hemingway armed with a rifle and shooting as the regiment advanced near the infamous "Valley of Death."
On Dec. 3, 1944, Hemingway, Pelkey and Time/Life correspondent Bill Walton were riding down an exposed road when Hemingway ordered Pelkey to stop the jeep. They heard a faint hum, then Hemingway yelled, "Oh, God, jump!" The trio landed in the dirt just as a diving German fighter strafed their vehicle. Hemingway had recognized the engine noise from the Spanish Civil War.
We had reached the cross roads before noon and had shot a French civilian by mistake. He had run across the field on our right beyond the farmhouse when he saw the first jeep come up. Claude had ordered him to halt and when he had kept on running across the field Red shot him. It was the first man he had killed that day and he was very pleased.
--"Black Ass at the Cross Roads"
Ernest Hemingway did not see combat again after late 1944. He once mentioned to Mary, who became his fourth wife, that he might "attend" the Korean War, but nothing ever came of it. The "old whore, Death" never caught up with Hemingway in a war zone, but that's not to say he escaped war unscathed. He suffered nightmares and insomnia for decades after his wounding in Italy, symptoms representative of what is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder.
But while Hemingway suffered from his exposure to war, it inarguably enriched both his life and the body of global literature. Few writers have employed war as a motif so successfully. "After his wounding in World War I, Hemingway viewed armed combat as the most central experience of his century," Reynolds wrote. "Here a man could see his species stripped down to a primal level; here he could test his own emotional resources." Hemingway's own emotional resources were vast, but in the end, they were not infinite.
